Siddhartha Khosla and Us | Composer
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This is the episode I've been looking forward to maybe more than any other episode. Today, we have the musician extraordinaire, composer for This Is Us, Sid Khosla. Hi, guys.

I was going to say, if you love our show, one of the reasons you love it is because of Sid's contribution. This is absolutely true. Your fingerprints are all over the show. The emotion that is elicited doesn't just come from the words. It comes from your score. Thank you, guys. That was...

rewarded over time, acknowledged over time with awards and all of that sort of stuff. I mean, it's like, it's undeniable. You are just such, again, part of the fabric of the show. Mandy and I have a unique experience in that we have seen episodes of this show with no score. Before the music comes in, correct. And I sent a panicked email to John Huertas. I'm like, what I have directed is terrible. Yeah.

It is awful. And he essentially said, don't worry, Dan and Sid will fix it. Yeah. Sid hasn't worked his magic yet. I don't agree with that. And the reason why is that what makes the show as emotional as it is, I know you guys say it's the score oftentimes. I am seeing, I remember my experience on the show, the very, very first time, we can get into more of the granular details of what happened early on and how it started, but

My experience on the show time and time again was seeing picture that already moved me. And I had to sort of like, I had to find that balance between just like giving just enough sort of push to maybe open up the tear ducts a hair more. And it was because it was already there. I'm telling you, it was already there. It was shot beautifully. It was performed beautifully. It was written beautifully. So I never felt like I had to cover up anything that wasn't there.

And that's what the magic of all that together is what made the show, I think, great, is all of that. I will say this. In a rewatching of season one, what I have realized that the music does for me is it makes me feel safe to experience this show.

Yeah, that's such a good point. It's like this emotional guardrail that says what you're feeling is valid, what you're feeling is true, and here, here's this warm musical hug to allow you to just kind of feel along with what's happening. Yeah, and you're safe to do so. And you're safe. Yeah. I mean, I'll say like, this is tangential because there's the score, and then there's just like,

The songs that they picked that also compliment the score, like all of it. And as I watch it too, 'cause sometimes I'd be like, "Oh, I don't know. Is that gonna fit? What now?" It feels timeless. Like the show feels like it existed contemporaneously as when we were shooting it. But I'm sure like people will watch it 20, 30 years from now and be like, "Oh, this could happen like right now."

So tell us how you came to the show, your history with Dan Fogelman and scoring film and television. So Dan and I went to college together. It's going to be crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

We were freshman year hallmates. This is nuts. It's nuts. This is you, Penn. This is you, Penn. Right on. Flex on them, Jack. Let them know. This is to give you a sense of our age. We're talking about 1994. Oh, my God. Freshman year. Yeah. I graduated in 98. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on. Oh, that's right. We're the same year. We're the same year. 94, we were hallmates. And my sort of...

experience freshman year, like I was known in the hallway, in our hall for singing karaoke into our Iowa stereo system we had. There was like these karaoke sound systems and we would turn the speakers outward from our window into the quad. And as people would go by, I would just start like heckling people or just singing songs. People would look up and then Dan would sometimes hang in the room with us.

And it was just, we developed this sort of friendship just through just, you know, in the hallway, you kind of see what your other kids you go to college with are doing. And Dan and I just gravitated towards each other.

We became really good friends and then we lived together the following year in a house together. - What did you guys bond over initially? I mean, were you video game dudes? Were you sports guys? Like both over a love of music, over love of art? Like what was the connective thing that brought you together? - Dan had an Indian roommate. That was like the only connective thing between us.

But we didn't really, I don't know what it is. We have very different interests, right? And I was an acapella dork, like singing in acapella group. And Dan and like our hallmates, people would come to the shows. Okay. Acapella studs, we call them. Acapella studs. But Dan's strength, and it's still his strength to this day,

is that he's able to bring people together from all walks of life who are very different and put them all together in one room and say, you all belong. This is a very Fogelman thing to do without realizing he's doing it. It's just how he, it's in his DNA. Wow, that's cool. And Dan assembled a house of, it was like a motley crew of guys. It was like, you know, Indian acapella dorks

Indian acapella stud dork. Stork. Stork, you said? Stork, yeah. Stork. They were like basketball players, football players. Wow.

So it was like all these jocks and then like, you know, some nerdy kids. Like that was, I was in the nerdy. You guys lived like in a row house or something? Is that what? It was at Penn. There were like these, there was off campus living in these like, in these, in these old, like beaten up, beat up little homes that had like, you know, your room was maybe like 150 square feet. Okay. And so we all, he put this house together and he put all of us together. And then we lived together this sophomore year and had an amazing time. Great experiences together. But it was like the first, and in,

in that sophomore year when we lived together we would be wasted at like three o'clock in the morning and and i remember these conversations it was me dan and another one of our friends and dan would always say

He's like, Dan's like, I'm talking about himself. Dan's like, I'm going to be a famous writer one day. And he goes, Sid, you're going to be a famous musician one day. And our other friend, Chris, he's like, you're going to be a famous lawyer one day. And this is, we'd get drunk and just talk about our future. Chris is homeless now. Yeah, Chris is, Chris is. Two out of three ain't bad. Yeah, right, right. Dan and I are not friends with him anymore. Yeah.

Chris ended up becoming assistant U.S. attorney for New York. So pretty much the highest level of lawyer you could be. Right. Okay, so it was not... But Dan was always like, he had this feeling about all of us that we were going to pursue these careers. Yeah. And it was just the thing that we'd fantasize about when we'd be after a bunch of drinks and just hang out. And so that was always...

So it's interesting, from a very early age, Dan saw me performing. He saw me writing music, he saw me singing. So he knows me. I mean, at this point, we've known each other longer than we haven't. We met when we were 17. So he knew what I could do musically, even from a young age. So fast forward several years later, I was in a band,

We would tour. - Called? - A band is called Gold Spot. - Okay. - And we played in LA and Dan would be like one of five people coming to the shows, you know? Like it was like, that was a support always. But he always knew and recognized what I did. Like he heard, he knew my, he knew, you know, where the music came from. And so when it came time to eventually hire me on something, he called me.

is on another show. - What was the first thing you guys did together? - Yeah, what was the first collaboration? - So I had just come back from tour and my record came out in London and it totally flopped. And I came back and I was just trying to figure out what my next steps were. Like, I was like, I'm gonna be in a band. I was like, I'm gonna make records.

And Dan called me and I never called him about it. He just, 'cause I was like, I didn't wanna like feel like I needed a gig or something. - Had he already been doing TV? Like where was he in his career vis-a-vis where you were at that time? - Okay, so I went off, I had been in my band. Dan at this point had written Cars. - Oh wow. - He wrote Cars when he was 25? - Yeah, he'd written Cars when he was like in his mid, late twenties. - Golly. - What a gig.

And he crushed that one, huh? And so Cars, and then he wrote Crazy Stupid Love that was directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who did our pilot and several other episodes.

So he was a really established screenwriter at this point. Got it. Tangled came in somewhere? Tangled came in there too, yeah. Tangled was in there by that point. Yep. So many. Fred Claus. I mean, he'd done so many films and TV. He loves Fred Claus. Yeah, he'd be so psyched that you mentioned it. Fred Claus, yeah. I did that on purpose. Yeah.

The pinnacle, Fred Claus. Fred Claus. Okay, so he's doing well. He's doing well. He's doing great. And Dan had this show called The Neighbors on ABC. Yes. And they were looking for a new composer for their second season. And he called me. Interesting enough, I had just gone to like a pen reunion and I was on a train leaving Philly. Okay. And I get a call from Dan and he's like, will you come in and score season two of my show?

and i was like nah dude i was like i don't know how to score for tv and film i can't do this so i said to him and he was like he's like i really want you to do it and i was like here's my guitar player's number because he this is what he wants to do okay and he's been trying to break into this and the band is sort of like i don't know what we're doing next just call him and dan's like i really want you to think about it and he goes i really believe that you can do this and he goes i know your melodies

from band world and they connect to me. I feel the emotionality in them. And he's like, I think you can bring that skill here. And I'd never written anything for TV or film. I didn't go to school for any of it. I was in a band. So all, my only experience was acapella group and band, right? That was really it. And then, you know, arranging for my acapella group, like writing for the voice part. So I never really had

I didn't have the confidence I could do this, honestly. And Dan was like, "I really want you to do this." So I get off the phone with him and I'm on the phone with my manager. And I'm like, "Dan Fogelman called me, friend of mine from college, and he wants me to score season two of his show." And I was like, I told him, I was like, "I wanna make records, I can't do this." And he goes, "Pick up the phone. This is Dan Fogelman who called you." He goes, "Do you know who that is?" I was like, "Yeah." I was like, "We used to get drunk together."

piss on walls when we were freshmen in college okay um and and can i can say that on this yeah okay sorry if anything feels like you know please we were like yeah we were 17 um it's gonna get me and dan canceled um yeah that was us hold on we've all pissed on the wall yeah it really is that that was us mandy come on

This will really become the That Was Us podcast. We're good. It's fine. He's like, "Dan Fogelman called you to do something." He's like, "That guy is a beast." He's like, "You should be open to maybe having your career go in a different direction." I think at that point I was just pretty green. I was like, "No, I'm going to make another record. This is what I'm going to do."

not thinking about i don't know the fact that i was that i was getting about to get married yeah future family like what did it mean for me to really be in a band how could i really do that with all of it too and so that called damn back and i was like okay i'll do it and he was so psyched and then we ended up doing that show together and then the show got canceled the year i worked on it okay wait hold on okay halfway through that year yeah i want to go like through the steps of this because like we were speaking the other day about

Fear standing in the way of taking advantage of opportunity and that sort of thing. You stepped in because you had a buddy who reached out and said, I think you can do it. You had a manager that said, don't be a dumbass. Your buddy's actually got some real heat.

So then you step into a new job, something that you've never done before. What are the steps of faking it till you make it? How do you figure this crap out? I think what it was, and it's funny because some of the things I learned in that process I still do to this day, and it all comes from fear of...

like being fired off the job, not being good enough for the job. And I remember why. That's how I approached my acting. I watched season one of that show, The Neighbors. And I just went and did what I could. The only thing I knew how to do was write music.

And I just wrote, not to any picture. I just wrote wild pieces that were like six, seven minutes long. And I'm riffing on like melodies and themes that felt like this show made me feel something. And I just recorded all this stuff. It was also orchestral.

And I'd never really dabbled in orchestra before. And so we have software that allows us to like find a violin or in the most lay way to say, you know, the MIDI software that I can play an orchestra with my hands basically. Right. And I would send these pieces into Dan and the director of that show, main director of that show was Chris Koch. And Chris Koch was also the composer of the show season one. What? Yes. Isn't that crazy?

Chris Koch composed the score for The Neighbors season one. Wow. Chris Koch, for anyone that doesn't know, directed some of the seminal This Is Us episodes. Yes, he did. Probably behind Ken Owen directed the most number of episodes. I did not know that he was a composer. Yeah, he's a great musician too. So you're like sort of stepping into his job as he's supervising you. Yeah. And it was me sending music to Koch and to Dan for approval.

And Koch had set a palette already and had some themes and I was just integrating them into the show because they were good. I'll do my own thing in places, but that's how that all started. Then I had so much fear that I couldn't score the picture. I had never done it before. Yeah. Dan was always like, he would like the melodies I would write and he would say,

bring that melody back here bring that melody back here and you point to the areas to do it and he taught me to them that to write thematically dan in that process dan was like it's okay to have a singular theme right a singular melody that you just go back to over and over and over again it's okay i mean that's the john williams approach that's spielberg that's how they work they're just right they didn't write did they play anything no no no no

He does a lot of things. That's one thing he's not good at. But he has an understanding of the recurrent... Yeah, okay, got it. He has feel. What Dan offers and what he's done, what he did phenomenally well on this show and others, but this one particularly, this is us, is that he's got great feel, great emotional feel. He knows if something moves him in a certain spot, it's going to move...

of other people too. He has that thing in him. That's the magic. Okay. Which is why when you're watching End of the Pilot, This Is Us or anything, your hair raises and you're like, holy shit, what just happened? Because he's, we see him, he experiences these things himself when he's watching and working in the edit bay. And when something hits him, he knows it's going to hit other people. It's a very cool thing. And so it's like, he's got great feel. But even back then,

He had great feel. Okay. Always had it. Okay. So we worked on that show together. So you do that. And then it gets canceled. Okay. Continue. And then I'm like, all right, see, I'm not supposed to be doing this. That was your takeaway. What year was that? 13, 14, 2013, 2014. That sounds right. And so I went back and started making another record.

called Aerogram, which is about my family. That's about my whole family journey, my parents' journey from India to the United States in the late 70s, their experience as immigrants. I wrote an entire concept album about that. And that was my band Goldspot. So I went back to doing a little bit of that. And then in that time,

I started getting offers to score other people's things. Okay. Probably because they're like, you worked with Dan Fogelman, you must know what you're doing. That's kind of what would happen. Interesting. It was like even though I had done the show, and it was his first show, The Neighbors, and it got canceled, there was some cred that was earned by just being in the world that someone of his caliber had decided to hire me, not knowing that it was really nepotism that brought us together. Yeah.

So what else did you do in between? I just did some indie films. I ended up doing this show called The Royals with Elizabeth Hurley on E. It's like a soapy drama. Did you feel like you had a groove at this point in time or are you still sort of honing a groove? Honing a groove. Honing a groove. Because I still didn't know, even to this day, I still don't know what I'm doing when I get on a project. I always feel like I'm...

just flying by the seat of my pants. It always feels that way to me. It did on this show a lot. And I think that's sort of the

You know, I don't feel like I'm ever at that point where I know exactly what I'm doing until I'm multiple seasons into something. But I had these gigs and I was doing these other shows and then Dan would call me to do his pilots and new shows that would come up. Got it. Got it. Yeah, I was going to ask. And we kept on working together in that capacity. How did This Is Us like come to you?

at this point now i'd started doing some more tv film i had my record going on um dan calls me one day and he's like i have a this is like maybe 2016. yes it is like early 16. yeah yep when did you guys start filming 2016. yeah beginning of like in february yeah yeah january february yeah i think it was probably february or march he called me and he goes i have this new show um it's called the untitled fogelman project or whatever he's like i'm just gonna send you the script

And he's like, "Let me know what you think of it." And he's like, "We have my directors from Crazy Stupid Love, Glenn and John, are coming on board." And Dan's like, "They have people that they've worked with before in terms of composers, and they've worked with people that I love too." And Dan's like, "Just see what you think. Read it." And I read the script and

Blown away. I just remember being like, you know, this is mad. There's some magic to this. This is really special. So at that time, and I've told this story before, my wife and I were living with our daughter, Nevi. We were living in Jersey City in Jersey.

And I was composing everything at that point. People thought, like I had a friend of mine who lived in Brooklyn, like another music composer that sometimes I'd go to his studio to work out of. I started telling people that I worked from Brooklyn because it just sounded cooler. And so anyone I talked to here, like, oh, yeah, Sid's in Brooklyn. Hey, that sounds cooler than saying like your home city, Jersey City, right? And it sounds way cooler than where I really was working was my parents' basement in Jersey. Yeah.

So my parents live in New Jersey and I needed to find some, this place a little bit more space. So I'd go into their basement and I set up a little desk. It was just like, it was this wooden table and I had a laptop on it and I set it up in the corner of the basement and I would just work from there. And I never told anybody that I worked from my parents' basement. And when I got the pilot, when I got that pilot episode, I was blown away by that script. Dan told me,

this is not your gig basically right now. Like you can't just give it to you basically. You just have to talk to Glen and John, see how they feel about you because they're doing the pilot. And you know, the directors of pilots are huge. Yeah, they have a lot of influence. They set the tone, as you know. And the tone of our show really was established in that pilot in a beautiful way.

Obviously it evolved. Ken took it in a whole other place. That was gorgeous in its own way. But it started with Glenn and John in the pilot. I was coming out to LA for a meeting or something, and I wrote this piece of music. I didn't want to show it to Dan. I was like, "I wrote this six-minute piece of score off the pilot."

and this is how i would think and how i still think to this day i'd start writing and i came to la and i extended my trip for a few days and i spent three days in a recording studio here in l.a like a real recording studio with a friend of mine and we recorded this piece of music

And that's what I turned into Glenn and John and Dan. Like after I spent like so much time on it. And Glenn and John and Dan were like, that's it right there. That's the sound. Was it the germination of like what eventually became the score that we know, the sound that we know? It became, I turned this piece of music into them and it was like, it became...

You'll hear for the first time in like the first couple episodes when Chrissy is in that Weight Watchers class. Oh, yeah. That's the theme that plays there. That's the very first thing I ever wrote for the show. Okay. In my mind, I was like, this is a dramatic piece. This could end an episode. I was like, this has this sort of weight to it's got a melody. I was like, and Glenn and John were like, no, we're going to use it. And Dan was like, we're going to use it over a comedic sequence. Yeah.

you know how some of those Weight Watchers scenes early on were like, they were funny. They were like, there was so much banter there between you, Chrissy, the meetings, all that. And in my mind, this is a funny comedic scene. I would get picture back and they would drop that theme over there. And I remember being like, why are we, this is a dramatic piece of score. Why are we putting over something funny? Wow.

And that's when Glenn and John and Dan hit on something in the pilot. And they were like, we're never going to touch the comedy in the show. You're not scoring comedy ever, which would be also be kind of hokey in some ways to do it because it's already grounded and real. It's funny. But we're going to score the subtext of why these people are here. Wow. And that's what they would do. And then it became like, okay, now we're starting to understand comedy.

That was the language of the show in terms of why we use music, when we use music, what it sounds like. The other piece of it too was Dan told me when he gave me the script, he's like, "We're thinking of using Sufjan Stevens."

His music, his song to play in the first, in the opening of the whole season, series. So I heard, and I love Sufjan. And so I heard it and I was like, okay, this is organic, acoustic based. This is what they're already responding to. And so then that piece that I wrote felt like it could have been maybe like a B-side of like a Sufjan. But it had that feeling a little bit. Yeah.

And so anyway, but that was a huge moment because that got me the job for the show. And it also taught me that moment that like,

I can bring in my own artistry from like my band world just by reading a script. I don't have to pay attention to the picture right now. I can read a script and feel the emotion in it and write something to it and turn it in and it can become something, you know? And I can feel free to mess around with sounds and ideas and not feel confined to anything. Is that how you approach the job still? Still.

Amazing. So it's not even like every once in a while it's two picture, but it's like the initial is just from how the script hits your soul. 100%. Wow. Because then also the challenge as a composer is, and I had this conversation with a lot of other composers in this business, is that oftentimes composers don't get involved until later in life.

The edit. So you film the episode, editor gets in, does their cut of the episode. They'll put in what's called temp score. Yeah. They'll find score from other soundtracks, other things that they want their show or film to feel like. Right. And then you're, then as a composer, you come in later on and then you're chasing temp. Ugh. Which is the thing that like, I just can't, it drives me nuts. And it's the one thing that like,

I, to this day, I try to avoid as much as possible, which is why I also write early because it all comes from, it all comes from insecurity of having to chase tempo. If there's going to be temporary music, it might as well be your temporary. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's all that it's, and it's, so it's A, there's a lot of ego there. And B, it's also nerves of having to chase something.

It skips a bunch of emotional steps. But you know what's interesting? Like you guys, you and Dan are very similar in this way because Dan doesn't like do, he just writes the script and then he gives it to people. Yeah. So that like, he doesn't have to like pitch an idea and then have to go follow it because then they may have to, he's like, we want it to look like this show. And he's like, no, no, no, no. I'm just going to show you the show. Dan doesn't want their imagination to come up with anything.

I mean, here's what it is. Right. He has a vision. Similar thing. And also, if we want to create something original and something beautiful in our minds, sometimes you have to sort of allow for...

you know, the artistry to come through. And you have to sort of allow a place for, I mean, had we not done it this way, I don't think the score would have been what it was. It would have been a different thing. It may have been still its own, it could have been great in its own way, but like it would have been a different thing inevitably. So did Dan give you just carte blanche of like, go write what you want? Yes.

right what you want and then i started seeing the pilot episode and i think in the pilot when they were working on the pilot they probably had temp music that i never got to see oh great because they were deep in when i finally got to see the first thing they sent me was a completed

director's cut. Dan was already working in there and Dan was like, Sid, can you just write score for these scenes here? Yeah. And I would start writing score for the scenes. Yeah. And normally an editor always will kind of to present their cut, they will find music from somewhere. Sure. And so on this particular show, they would just send me dry picture and I would just write. Wow. And then that became, and so I think Dan also, which is the strength of Dan, and you probably experienced this

as actors and directors and working on the show is he's so collaborative. He wants you to bring your best version of yourself to these projects. And it's not, and it's honestly, it's so rare that that happens in our industry. Yeah. Very rare. Agreed. We'll be right back with more That Was Us.

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Indian heritage or classical Indian, not classical, but Indian music or Indian musical sounds influenced the score for this show, if at all? Yeah, I mean...

I'm Indian, so. I'm Indian, yeah. That's right. Next question. I'm kidding. No, but I mean like- No, you're right. You're right. Behind you, you have an instrument called a bouzouki, which is not a typical American folk instrument. Right. So a bouzouki is a Greek instrument, but I'm using it and the acoustic guitar. You're right. There's a lot of sort of Indian influence in the music. And-

Back to sort of like my story, when my parents came here in the late 70s, I was born soon after they got here. And at that time, I think they brought like $8 with them to the U.S. Are you sure? That's all they had coming to this country. There was no foreign currency reserve at the time. It's pre-Reagan.

Whole other thing, but no foreign currency reserve. And so there was only like a finite amount of rupees you could exchange for dollars before coming to the US. Wow. So they came here with $8 on scholarships. I was born. They sent me back to India to be raised by my grandparents for the first few years of my life. Oh, wow. A couple years, two, three years. And so I grew up listening to like old Hindi music that like my grandparents would play for me.

And so that's all I listened to. And then my mom would send, and this will move into this other thing later, but my mom would send cassette tapes to

with her voice on it to me in India for me to hear her voice, for her to sing me lullabies, tell me she loved me, she missed me, all that, right? Because it was $24 a minute to make a long distance phone call. $24 a minute? That's what it was. And if you talked, it'd be like, hello, hello, hello, hello. You'd hear like an echo go on forever. The worst phone calls. So I had my mom singing me

These old little lullabies, old Hindi lullabies on these cassette tapes. And I would hear all this stuff. And so my musical DNA was sort of being formulated at that time between old Hindi music and people and my parents who are now in the West. I'm in the East. Yeah. Reversed.

sending their music to me and me learning that way. So in my blood is this, it's there, that Indian music. You start playing in India? You start playing when you get back to the States? When I got back to the States, I started singing when I got back to the States more. But as a kid, I was exposed to all this music. And I don't,

In my band, there's hints of the Indian influence in the music because then I grew up in the US and then I loved REM and The Beatles.

And the police and the cure and the smiths and Depeche Mode. And then I also had this love for Indian music. And I grew up singing Indian music. My mom would be like, every Sunday we'd go to temple. And on the night before, she would write these lyrics out. And she's like, you're going to sing this song in front of 100 aunties and uncles in temple tomorrow. And as a nervous wreck, I would go and sing in front of all these aunties and uncles every Sunday from age seven. So I was an Indian singer.

and singing Indian music and then I also loved all this other Western music. So all that stuff became part of the way I wrote music with my band, somewhere in between, somewhere between. And in my scores, it never entered my scores, ever. It was always like, I kept it very separate. I didn't want to be known to be like, just because I'm Indian, that's all I know. So I never did that. But then on this show,

The first episode was not very Indian. Second episode wasn't very Indian. But it was episode 13. Season one, episode 13. The one that you guys just aired. We were just talking about the three. Three sentences. Yeah, three sentences. Okay. Yeah. In that episode, our editor sent me the sequence of Jack's funeral. And it starts off with Chrissy on the sticks in that weight loss canvas. Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

And she's going, just banging those sticks. And all of a sudden, you cut to this minute and a half, minute and 45 second sequence, back and forth of her playing the sticks. Her as a kid, she's looking at the size of her sweater. Yeah. You see Jack doing like Vogue stuff with her. That's right. You cut back to Chrissy on the sticks. Yep.

And then as that scene is getting more and more sort of like involved, like what's happening, what's happening, what's happening, all of a sudden out of nowhere we flash to Jack's funeral. Right. And what I'm getting also has no sound. It's just silent. Not even dialogue except for, you know, the Vogue stuff. Sure. So we cut to the funeral and it's just nothing. Just like that. And all of a sudden you see the teens at the funeral. You see Jack's picture. You see the urn. Yeah. Yeah.

you're in this silence for like the next minute and you're like holy this is what i just saw this is like this it's haunting it's the most haunting scene of the show yeah and then it comes back to chrissy just screaming her head off yes yeah that guttural screen that guttural scream which was just so beautiful and her performance was unreal in that yeah and kotch calls me and he says i think sid you can do something with chrissy's

beat her percussion like of those sticks that she's hitting in that weight loss camp let that be a guide for you in some way maybe work off that maybe feel find a way to use yeah the rhythms in it or figure something out and in that moment i picked up my guitar i watched the scene and i started playing sterling's our engineer right here i love it i got you

You like that position? Are you good? Yeah, it seems right. Yeah, good. Seems like you approve. And I'm watching the picture and I start playing this loop of... And I start singing... And this is basically like...

That whole thing is a drone. I'm not changing chords. In Indian music, stuff sits on the tonic, which is sort of like a starting point. And it's what you return to in music. You don't hear big changes in the music, you just hear...

like loops of like a drone. So in my mind, okay, this is like an Indian drone. And I started singing. And then there's a change I made in the melody, which is the most Indian thing you could do. It's like deep and classical. So it's that. And then as I'm just jamming to this funeral, I like in my studio, you didn't hear it on the final recording as much, but I was like, this is so...

Indian. So daisy. So I was like... I started doing stuff like that, like riffing. And I was like, why am I going into this Indian place all of a sudden out of nowhere? And so then the final melody, I started pulling some of the Indian stuff out because this is an NBC show and I was like, this is going to be just too weird on TV. So I went... It became the theme. And I...

save that high sort of part for the moment we see the funeral. Until then, it's just, she's on the sticks. And then I'm like, Koch told me, find a way to get the rhythm of the sticks into it. And I'm like, this is just sticks hitting a wooden floor. I have a wooden table I'm recording on. And I start going, it almost became like tablas. Indian tablas go, like, that's how a tabla player plays.

And I did that, you know, so that became this pulse underneath as if I was a tubla player but playing it on my wooden table. Yeah. Because I didn't want it to get too Indian. I was like, we're not going to use tublas, we're going to use the table. Yeah. And I recorded this thing. I remember that moment. It was like, there's times where you feel like you write something. There's times I've done this with, and I'm sure, Taylor, you have felt that way with your own music. You guys are like...

is that when you write something that you think that you know in your heart is special, like you want to listen to it over and over again sometimes. There's like the ego kicks in a little bit. I remember when I wrote this, I was just like, this is different. I feel really good about this. I sent it to Dan, to the picture, and to our editor, and I was like, what do you think of this? Dan was like, he wrote back and he goes,

That was, what did he say? He goes, that was transcendental or something. And he writes something like that to me. And he goes, that's, he's like, that's, he was like, you just knocked it out of the park. That's it. And I was like, I remember asking, I was like, is this too Indian? Yeah. And he goes, no, it's perfect. And I was like, even though I know this is on NBC playing, you know, like it's like a

We're not as, because this is like, do I have the liberty to explore like this and go there? And Dan's like, don't touch a thing. He goes from, and I remember him saying, he goes, what you did in this episode, from that point on, it changed the sound of the show. It did. Because it was like before then, most of the score was like, I can't remember. It was like, a lot of it was very Joni Mitchell-esque. Yeah. Sure. Also beautiful, but like.

It was that vibe. But then all of a sudden it became, you know...

And it became this other thing. Yeah. And we found the sort of voice. Like I was able to then be the most artistic version of myself in the score. And it was Dan just being like, no, keep, that's it. It became the emotional anchor. Of the show. Of the show. Yeah. That. And then, yeah. You just playing it now, I'm like, I could weep. It's just like, there's something about it that like, you're right. It's like, you feel safe, but you're like, this feels familiar, but yet totally new.

I don't know. It's just brilliant. There's an interesting lesson as I'm listening to you talk about it, Sid, in terms of like, you know what, like, I want something to not be too much. And like, I think artistically, we've all gotten sort of this direction that

you have to make proactive choices, meaning like, what is it that you want to do versus what is it that you don't want to do? Because it's easier to lean into what you want rather than to try to fight against what you don't. And as a person of color,

I have this sort of idea is like, can I really do me? Can I be the fullest version of myself or do I have to sort of like temper who I am so that I can be, you know, more palatable to other people's sort of palates, what have you. And then what you come to realize, like as I'm just listening to it, is that like when you are the fullness of you,

People meet you where you are. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, because it's honest. Like, it's like, it doesn't matter if it's Indian, African, Irish, Italian. Like, when it's honest, everybody feels that shit. Yeah. Yeah.

And on a creative level, you've just talked about this in recent episodes, the breakdown scene. Yeah. Where you had externalized a bunch of this stuff. Yeah. And Ken Olin came to you and said, no, it's here. Right. It's right here. Yep. And there's something that you just did for us with that song where you were externalizing and moving. And there was all this movement in the vocal. And then you brought it here. And you focused it down to these notes.

And there's something about it. The song is still so full, but it leaves room for other notes. For the audience, for the listener. It allows the listener to feel without telling them how to feel. And I appreciate you saying that. I think for me too, when you talked, you said before about

you see things dry in the show when you watch stuff dry and like it's not working, like maybe to you. But I saw that scene dry. And I got to tell you, even with no music, I was already feeling it. It was already there for me. And so it also allowed me to write something that wasn't trying to manufacture emotion. Like I wasn't,

I wasn't like, oh, funeral. It could have come sad music. And I almost feel like this music is almost not even sad. It's almost heroic or something. It's triumphant. Yeah, it is. It is triumphant. And I was trying to figure out what it was. And Dan and I talk about this, about what inspires me on the show. And it goes back to what I learned from Glenn, John, and Dan on the pilot, which is scoring to the subtext of why...

these characters are here. And then this moment made me realize like, well, why is this show even here? And I remember like, you know, Dan lost his mom younger than, he lost his mom much, much younger than he ever should have. And I realized in that moment that I was like, he is trying to pay for

respect to his mother in some way in the show and I'd never felt that before. And for some reason, and I was like, and all of a sudden I was like, am I writing this score for these characters or am I writing the score to also like, to like help my friend heal in some way? It started going in that place for me. And it was like the most meta experience I've ever had working on anything. And that sort of became the sort of vibe of the show for me on all the themes as we move forward. I was like, you know, this is,

This is Dan sort of paying Jack. And in that moment, I was like, Jack is his mom to him. But what you find out later on is the real hero is the mom at the end of all of it, which is brilliance of Dan all along. So for me, this moment made me realize that I could score to why Dan even put these characters here in the first place. Wow.

And so it allowed it to be deep in that way. And it was such a, and I can't tell you, like, I've never worked on anything in my life like this, where I just, I woke up in the morning and I would like live and breathe the show. And I'm like, I miss it so much. But it was like this sort of ability to connect to you guys, to Dan in this way, just magical. It's so meta to be able to like feel that connection. Are there pieces of score that,

that you feel most like connected to that resonate with you or that were hardest to get to, or I'm just curious, like what your journey was like stepping back and looking like from a macro point of view of like, oh gosh, you know, Jack's theme or the theme that was in the painting episode that then comes back around in the finale. Like there are certain pieces of score that like I associate with,

Kevin's like that number one that score like there are certain things that I just remember and are so visceral and I'm curious if you have any of those same kinds of connections or like ways of you know stories about getting to a piece of score that you feel like most proud of or yeah I mean it was it was in the pilot I remember Dan asked me see this is we talked about this before a little bit Dan has these requests sometimes and

and at the time you're like is this a futile thing is this like what am I wasting like why am I doing this right now and he's got a purpose behind some of this stuff like it's it's it's it's like when you would go into the writer's room I'd go in the writer's room you guys obviously must have been in the writer's room multiple times and you would just see I remember going in like I went in once and they interviewed me and they wanted to talk to me about my story and and we just talked and they were like

you know, index cards everywhere or post-its everywhere of like just the map of the whole series. The timeline, yeah. And you're like, oh my gosh, is this a mystery? Like, what is this? It's like there's clues everywhere. And that's what the show in many ways was. Yeah, it is a mystery. It's a mystery, which is the haunting part about the whole show. And I remember in the pilot, Dan asking me to replace the Sufjan Stevens song.

And he was like, we have this Sufjan Stevens song. I told him, he was like, we're going to use Sufjan Stevens. That song, Death With Dignity. Yep. And he's like, can you replace it? Can you write something there? And I wrote like an eight minute piece of music, which is so long. It was like a long, because the song was like doubled up. It was a long sequence. And then Glenn and John were like, oh, we're going to keep, we're going to stick to the song. And I was just like, oh my gosh. Oh man. And I was like, I just spent like two days, three days, whatever I wrote on it. And I was like,

And then that piece of music ended up becoming the Kevin painting theme.

That with the piano. Yeah. Oh, God. Love it. And then that ended up becoming the very final piece of music in series. Yeah. Over the very final sequence and the final episode. Are you serious, man? And it was used just twice in series. It was used in Kevin's painting and then used again at the very end. That was it. The theme.

But I had done the leg work back in the pilot days. That's crazy. And then I remember watching the finale with Julie, our editor. We were working on it. And we both said at that moment, what if we brought the Kevin painting theme about how we're all connected back in for the ending of that. So that was the hardest piece I ever had to write because it was so long. And then it wasn't used. And I was like, oh, man. What am I going to do with this? It was a waste of time.

Yeah, and then Dan had it all mapped out. All mapped out. Same thing with the main theme in the ending credits. Yeah. Well, the main... How did you come to the... Because it's one of my most... Like, how did you... I'm trying to remember the...

price of corn. Yeah, do that. I remember going to Sid's house to work on that. He's like, you have to play these notes. I didn't play the piano at all. So it helped that I played badly or what have you. And then it was just so much fun. I tried to raise it out of my register. Try to go into the foster care. I was like, he's not a good singer. So maybe if he just tries to give his Maxwell version of it, it'll sound pretty

And it was the most delightful experience. And you're so sweet and kind and patient. He's like, no, it's okay. You're just going to put these here. Da, da, da, da. Shows it to me and whatnot. I'm like, I don't know how to do that. And he's like, no, we'll just go through it step by step. At your house, your kids are upstairs with your wife and whatnot, down doing our thing. You're so gentle with it. And you've been doing it your whole life and whatnot. Like, the music is a part of you. Like, it almost feels like it...

I know it doesn't, but it almost feels like you can speak through your instrument as easily, if not more so than with words. Yeah, 100%. This is an interesting-- maybe it's an interesting segue into what seems-- there seems to be three segments for music in our show, right? There's score, there's music direction, which would be the collection of Sufjan Stevens songs and things like that. And then there's original songwriting, which you did quite a bit of on this show. Yeah.

the seed of this theme that we're talking about. And it gets planted. You kind of play it on the piano at some point, right? I do, like early on in that episode that Sterling sings the song in episode six. Right, you're on the upright planet. Sterling sings it and it of course is the end credits scene

for every episode. And then we can... Was it the... Did it come in on the pilot? I don't think it was there at the pilot. It may not have been there on the pilot. It might have been starting episode two. I can't remember how we end. Oh, the pilot had the... Oh my God, that Labi Safri song. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. Watch me, watch me.

Yeah. And so we can talk about that theme as it evolves into what it became, as we talk about some of the other original songs that you wrote. I mean, historic, epic songs that were written for this show specifically, but maybe we can start there with the theme. If we start, I just want to, so Mandy, this is season six. You know, we're not quite sure where Rebecca's sort of,

faculties are at Kate's wedding or whatnot, but she's supposed to sing the song or whatnot. She's having episodes that are happening throughout and we're just wondering, is she okay? She sits down to the piano to sing the song. You played too, didn't you? Did you play? I mean, played. They played. But for most of us, I think you did it in rehearsal and then you did it live.

But for most of us, I don't know if you've heard it before, we're hearing it first at the rehearsal. Camera's not on, everything's just chilling. But Mandy, because she's focused, man. She gets down and she just starts doing it the way that she's going to do it on the day.

Everybody, we all looked at each other like, guys, what just happened? Like, my face was so wet. Makeup was so jacked up. I was like, I'm not supposed to be messing this stuff up yet. But because that kernel had been germinating for six years. I was like, y'all took this, put it in her mouth with limits to it? Yeah. Oh, man.

So we come to find out that the theme is the theme for a reason. Yeah. And it is because it is this song called... The Forever Now. Yeah. But the thing is, I like to think there was a plan all along that one day it would become this. And I don't know what Dan had envisioned, if he knew. I think Dan had a lot of the series mapped out early on. Yeah. Yeah.

But I don't think in that moment when he's writing the pilot script, he's like, okay, Rebecca's going to say the forever now. Right, so this is the beauty of it. The reverse engineering of itself is magic. And that's what's the magic of the show is that we allowed sort of these ideas, whatever they may be, like Dan allows the creativity to sort of like

to blossom in its own sort of way. Do your thing, do your thing, do your thing. And we will find ways to, they will have a purpose later on in some way. They work out in their own sort of way. It's just there's so much trust involved in the whole process. And then it was an organic thing that built over time. So I remember first in how I wrote that theme.

Amy and I, my wife Amy, we'd gone away on a trip. I forgot where we were. Mexico or somewhere. And I brought my guitar with me. This was back in the day when I would actually bring my guitar on vacation with me. Not anymore? Not anymore. With the kids, it just stops. I believe. So much stuff stops.

And this is right when the show got picked up to series. I was sitting on the beach, and I played this thing over and over again. With this guitar? With this guitar. Give the little anecdote about what this guitar is. It's so fascinating. Two people are listening right now. Right before this got picked up to series, I was in Vermont. My wife is from Vermont. And we went into some antique store. Got some syrup. Got some syrup. At the cash register.

Yeah, at the cash register. Keep it all. It's everywhere. Different grade options. Dark, light. Dark, light, yeah, yeah. I always would look for instruments at any of these places because inevitably somebody leaves something that they think is crappy, or it probably is, and it's for sale. And I see this guitar, the one I'm holding right now. It's a silver tone, and it was on sale for like $25. Yeah.

Is it 25 or 50? Somewhere around there. I think it was actually, no sorry, I think it was 50. And it was like beaten up and if you look, if I turn this around, you see there's a crack on the back. - Could I cut it back? - Okay. There's a crack here. - Straight up the back. - And this is not in good shape. And I started playing it and I was like, this has got a vibe and I like the vibe of it. And I was like, okay, I'm just gonna keep this and I get it. It's like a cheap guitar.

And this ended up becoming the guitar for the entire show, for the score. Because it just had these dead strings that had not been changed for 10 years. And I still haven't changed these strings. These strings are the original strings from when I bought the guitar. No way. So now they're probably like 16, 17 years old. And that dead sound of the strings is coming from those same strings. I've not changed these strings once. Wow.

So I brought this with me on a trip to Mexico. Yeah. And I remember as a joke, I was always like, I grew up on those 80s theme songs. Yeah. You know? We all did, right? Hell yeah. And I remember just sitting there as a joke and be like, the first thing that came to me was, da-da-da-da, this is us. Da-da-da-da.

this is us i would do this as a joke and amy would be like shut up and i was like okay as a joke i'm like can you imagine like if this is like we go straight up like you know all of a sudden it's like you see you guys did freeze frame and then can you please just do that one more time but just sing that was us okay so we have the audio that was us

That was us. So it actually started off as a joke. I was just sitting and I was like, this had... Also, I tuned this guitar in a way. This is not standard tuning. This is not your normal sort of...

E-A-D-G, whatever, B-E. But this is in a Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell-ish tuning. Open tuning. So that's why it has this like ring that is like the voicings are different than you would normally hear. And because in my mind, I was also trying to think about Joni Mitchell. I was thinking about Nick Drake supermodel.

Sufjan Stevens, all these artists were- For any musical people listening, what is the tuning? I don't even know. Great. Yeah. So take that, musical people listening. I don't even know. He was tuning the guitar before we got to the episode. He's like, I hope these strings don't break. That's all it was. Here are the notes. If somebody wants to steal them, go. That's it. Beautiful. More That Was Us after this short break.

Back to school shopping as a kid, getting like those photos, like back to school photos, going to two days of football practice. Like September sort of represents the new beginning, even though like it's not the beginning of the year. It's the beginning of school. It also sounds like September historically spells dehydration. Yeah.

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This is when I was on the beach. This is us. So I kept it over and over again for like three days. And I was like, I recorded it on my phone. I remember thinking this was something. And I sent it to Dan.

But not with the, this is a... Sure, sure, sure, sure. You kept that off. I kept that off. Because I was like, he's going to be like, what are you doing? And then, and he's like, that's great. He goes, that's something. I don't know what it is. But he's like, just go finish it. And then I finished it. I added some piano to it. There was a cellist that came and played the... And then that became our ending credits theme. Season one. And then...

I don't know what it is, but Dan, his whole film, the way he is as a filmmaker and music, he's so good with the two. He's so good with the feel of music against picture, always. And so he would sometimes say to me, he's like, hey, that theme for the end credits, what if you tried doing a version of that here when Randall is...

at the driving range playing golf. Didn't that happen with young Randall at one point and with you? - Yep. - And I was like, okay. And I wouldn't question it. I wouldn't be like, well, why? But I was like, okay, well, this is one of the themes that is becoming sort of a central connecting theme for the show, one of them. And so we'd start just folding it in different places. And then year after year, it found its use in another spot and in another spot,

Then the kids are putting, when Jack is putting the car seats in the car, it becomes the music for the montage of that. So it's like this connective theme for the family all of a sudden all the time. And then you're like, oh yeah, this is, and then you do it enough. This is us. If you do it enough, yes. That, it becomes the connective theme for the family over and over again. So then cut all the way to season six, Dan says to me, well,

There's a history of how we got there first before, so let's go back. But your question was on the original songs, and we'll get to season six. So in season one, the Memphis episode comes up. And Dan calls me, Dan, Glenn, and John, direct that episode, one of the best episodes, series. I still think it's just incredible filmmaking to stay in that episode. Yeah.

Dan says, "Can you write or Glen and John actually call me that. Can you write a Stax Records B-side like a soul tune, Otis Redding-esque thing for us?" It was probably because I know there must've been other people they were thinking of because we had not touched original songs after the show. I think at one point there might've been conversation of John Legend,

possibly coming in and writing the song. Okay. Or people like that they were going to reach out to who were probably the right people to write the song. Sure. Because they're incredible songwriters and would understand soul in a different way. And they also went to college with Dan Fogelman. Right, right, yes. And it's all about authenticity, right? Yes. And so I remember the call to me. I was just like, I can't write a Stax Records beat. This is not my wheelhouse.

But I knew that I could find melody. I knew I could write a melody and I knew I could get some ideas across. And I remember just putting myself in that place of like, doors are closed in my studio.

And I'm just like, you know, we can always come back to this. I started doing stuff like that in my studio, just by myself. Yeah. Embarrassingly. Yes. Thinking of this idea of me pretending I was some soul singer and going that place. And it sounded terrible, like it probably just did. And it wasn't right. And then I called my friend Chris Pearce.

who is an incredible singer-songwriter. I mean, the guy sounds like Otis Redding. And did you meet, you must have met Chris in that process. Because I filmed with him. Because Chris filmed. He's in the episode. Yeah. He's one of the musicians. He's on stage. So Chris and I got together and I said, Chris, I have this idea. And the basic idea was like,

mother don't you cry we're gonna be all right when you get there tonight you're not alone i'm always here with you it's just a little line melody and then chris and i sat together and within like an hour we just mapped out the song and chris sang it and when he sang it it was like i mean he sounds like otis redding when he sings i mean like it was just gorgeous

voice and I recorded I filmed Chris singing on guitar and I sent that to Glenn and John and Dan and they were just like oh my gosh and Talk about authenticity too and why it's important in any of the work We do is like just because I was handed the gig to write the song and may I may have written some pieces of it Yeah, it didn't make it right just yet. I

I needed Chris to come in, co-write it with me and make it right. And he was like, he brought the authenticity that he needed. Like he's a soul singer. Like it couldn't, it had to be real because this song took place in Memphis. What year were we probably? 70? Something like that. Yeah, that sounds right. You know, this was something that was being performed on stage by the amazing Brian Tyree. That's right. And that's when the song took off. Because then Brian came in and sang it.

And Brian came in, jammed with me and Chris in our studio, in my home studio. He came over, and we started teaching Brian the song. And Brian just like...

He ignored some of the ideas that we had and he just started singing it the way that he was feeling it. Yeah. And it was like, oh my gosh, he sounded like, I don't know if you listened to like Teddy Pendergrass. Oh yeah. Brian sounds like Teddy Pendergrass. Totally. 100%. And it was like, it became even cooler. It was like, I couldn't, I was like, this is, that's an even more interesting choice than an Otis Redding type of sound. I was like, because it's deeper in that. It's a deeper cut than Teddy Pendergrass. Yeah.

It's like not an artist that we may have heard of him, but not many people have the same appreciation. And that became its own beautiful thing because we went into a recording studio then to record the song. Because when you're performing this stuff in the scene, sometimes you have to sort of play the track. Like there's another band that's not actually playing in the scene. Brian may not actually be singing. That was sort of the thought when we went in.

But Dan and I talked about it and we said, let's have Brian really sing it live on set because there's just something visceral about his voice and the guy is such an incredible artist. Let his artistry shine. We went into the recording studio to pre-record it and we recorded it to keep it pure. We recorded it to tape. We didn't record it to computer. We recorded it to actual old reel. Mixed it to an old half-inch tape. Just so it had that stamp of an old tune. And at that point,

I was like, this is awesome. The studio's giving us the, like, because the studio was like, Sid, you can just record this at home on your, and I was like, no, we're going to make a Stax record B-side. Let's do it to tape, live in the room, band in the room. Like, let's not do, let's record it like they would have recorded. And that started this whole trend in sort of like in the original songs for the show. Because then that episode was fantastic.

Such a great episode. Brian was incredible in that episode. You were incredible in that episode. I mean, it was just magic. Ron, oh my gosh. And at the season one party for This Is Us, my band was performing some of these songs. And Chris, I think, may have gone up and performed that song. And afterwards, I see Mandy by the bar next to Taylor Goldsmith.

And I went up to him and I was like, "Hey, I'm your biggest fan." Because Dawes is honestly one of my favorite bands of the last, I don't know, 15 years. Easily. Like I was listening to Dawes when we were in Jersey City. My parents' base. Brooklyn. Sorry, sorry, Brooklyn. Yeah. And so I was just such a fan.

And then he said something to me. He goes, hey, man, if you ever want to collaborate on anything at some point, let me know. And I couldn't believe that he... I couldn't believe that this guy asked me that. Because I think Taylor is one of the best songwriters of our generation. And I don't say that easily. It's like he's a lyrically gifted musician. His playing, his writing, everything is just incredible. It connects on a very cool... For me, it hits me in a place. And then...

As we got into the future seasons, what was the next one? No, it was Invisible Ink. Invisible Ink in season three. Yeah. So Mandy's character...

Rebecca was going to... Why don't you set up what your character was doing? Yeah. Rebecca obviously always wanted to be a singer in the vein of Joni Mitchell. And she comes out to Los Angeles with Jack to kind of... It's the road trip. The road trip to drop off her demo tape, have a meeting, perform in front of this A&R person. Obviously, it doesn't go her way. But she has this beautiful...

And he asks you to sing the song in the car. He does afterwards. After the meeting doesn't go well and I have to face rejection, he asked me to sing it in the car. And it's kind of like the first time you see... Jack break down. Yeah. Jack have any sort of like real emotion. I mean, his emotion as an older man, but as a young person, I think it like...

crack something open in him and for their relationship specifically. Ken Olin episode too. Yeah, Ken Olin episode. Yeah. That was a great one. It was such a beautiful song too. I love that song. All of the original songs that you wrote. Because then for season four, the opening of season four, you wrote Mesmerized. Oh, Memorized. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With Taylor again. So Taylor and I wrote that song together.

And it just started this beautiful collaboration between me and Taylor. How many songs did you guys do together for the show? I think three, right? We did three. We did that. We did Memorized. Yeah. Which was Future Jack.

Right? Young Jack, your son Jack. Young Jack, your son Jack. Yeah. His song, he was a pop star. That's right. And we needed to write a song that he performs on stage. Oh my God. Which they recorded at the Greek? We recorded at the Greek Theater in the middle of a Chicago show. That's right. Chicago gave us a break for 15 minutes. And we got up there and we pumped the song after we recorded it into the speakers in front of whatever, 5,000, 6,000 people. How many people did that hold? A lot of people. You didn't know that, Sterling? No! Yes. Yeah, yeah, live. Live.

And they were instructed to treat it like a hit song. And they didn't have to try too hard because the song was- So great. And everybody was just like jamming. Yeah. By the second chorus, they were singing along with it. No way! Never heard it before. I mean, they were like, you know, lighters lit. Yeah, yeah. Everything. It was like, it was- And so we actually recorded that song at a massive concert and got that footage. So what you're seeing is actually-

- A proper concert. - A proper concert. - Wow. - At the Greek. - The making of a hit song in front of an audience of people, like a debut. - Right. And going back to Taylor for a second too, on the very first song we wrote together, I remember I got Dan called and said, "Can you write this song, Joni Mitchell-y type of song?" And I was like, okay, then I can just get on. I sort of had some melodic ideas, some general idea of what it could be, but just very, very nothing. - For anybody who doesn't know, Taylor is Mandy's husband.

Just want to make sure. Oh, yeah. Sorry, we should have said that. Just make sure. So right away, knowing what the story was and this was going to be Rebecca and her journey, I remember thinking, in my head, I was like, Taylor Goldsmith said he wants to work with me at some point. And I called Taylor. And I was like, can we do this? Because also in my mind, too, I thought he's also seen –

At home with you, the progression of your character. Oh, yeah. You working on the character. Yeah. And seeing the life of the character. So he knows not just you, but he also knows Rebecca Pearson in an interesting way. Yes. Through you. And I think that perspective, lyrically, would have been pretty powerful.

Because you used to force him to watch all the episodes over and over and over again. He would read lines. He would be Jack and you would be Rebecca. And you would say, that's not how Jack would do it. Be more like Jack. Right. Close your mouth. See you again. Do you see what Jack said there? Do you see? Yeah. Try that next time. Taylor's voguing at home. Oh, God.

But that became this start of this very special relationship between me and Taylor. And then we wrote, memorized together. And then for season six, when we bring the This Is Us song into Rebecca Pearson's performance, Dan then said to me, Dan's like, can you take that end title theme and make that into a song now? And I was like, you want me to put words to it? In my head, the only words were, This Is Us. This Is Us.

Which is technically temp music. And now you're chasing that temp music. I gotta get that lyric out of my head. It's so true. Was it hard to lose that thing? Or would the collaboration with Taylor sort of help to introduce a new way in? Well, the easy thing was there was that...

Taylor wrote those words. And so it was like, he just took the theme. I had sort of, I started sketching out on piano, just what like the form of this thing would melodically, what it could be.

and then he's like let me just let me just write some stuff lyrically and because it also took the pressure off me because i had been living in this theme for so long yeah it's a very weird thing as a songwriter too and you've probably experienced this too right like if you have a melody i always write lyrics last when my band always wrote lyrics last unless i had something meaningful i thought i had to say which was very rare and so i would come i always think melodically first yeah and then i'm trying to like

you know, put a square peg in a circular hole and trying to get the right lyric to match that melody. And it's frustrating. But here I was like, Taylor, you handle it. Like you can, I don't want to deal with the frustration of like, and also the guy's a lyrical genius. So he, he went, he's like, let me just come up with some ideas. And then he gave those lyrics back to me and we sat together and then we amended the melody where it made sense to sing it in the way that his words were. And then, and then obviously Mandy then.

Crushed it. Didn't that song hit on streaming? It was number one on iTunes or something crazy like that. How crazy is it? This is fucking awesome. No, it's crazy. It was crazy. I mean, that's just a testament to the power of the show. It's obviously a beautiful song, but I think people were just so...

moved by the show sort of reaching its conclusion and the genius of bringing this theme song that everybody knew so well and like now is this fully fleshed out like version of a song. Yeah. Like I think it had that sort of same feeling at the end of the pilot when that Lobby Safri song comes on and like you feel like

the rug has been pulled from under you a little bit and the surprises of the show. Even that's like, this is like more of like a meta surprise, but when you're on piano and you, in the break of the song, in the instrumental section, your character's playing, I remember people reaching out on social media or like,

fans of the show afterwards saying when that came in that we people like oh my gosh we've been hearing this for six seasons at the end of every episode oh my god like that had it had that impact which is cool like you know yeah

As long as you don't think about it enough, it makes sense. That's right. No, it makes total sense. Why would that be in there? But it's to suspend a little disbelief. No, but you had introduced it earlier. Like you said, in the episode for Career Day, she's playing it on the piano at the beginning. And so you have Randall saying, I might not be musical, but I have this one tune that I remember that he sort of puts into that thing. So it makes sense.

It's tied to that piano, tied to the childhood piano. It's a melody. And in some ways, it's like...

And then I think about my relationship to the show, my family story. I felt like my story in the show in terms of what I was able to bring to it, I feel like I could bring my family story and my own past into the show in such a fun, interesting way. And even that idea of like melodies being passed down generation to generation, my mom singing me things on the cassette tape, those melodies remaining in my head and I teach them to my kids or whatever that is.

that happened kind of with that melody. - Yeah. - This is a perfect transition because you not only scored the show, you not only wrote original songs for the show, but original songs of yours. - But you also have a makeup line coming out. - You also have a makeup line. Right now, if you go to thatwasus.com,

Can you imagine? Segway. For 20% off the Coastla lip balm. Coastla cards. We have like the 12 cards. We got the Coastla cards. Amazing. You also, I want to say in like the first three or four episodes had one of your original songs featured as part of the musical direction of the show. What episode was that? 12th. Oh, it was in 12th? It was the end of 12th.

Oh, wow. I thought it was earlier than that. I think it was 12. Was that the episode where we see the footage from Jack's camera? The Super 8 footage? Yes. You're right. It plays over that. Yeah. And so this is from the record that you mentioned earlier, Aerogram. Yeah. And it is a concept album, you said. And this song is about those cassettes that your mom used to send you. Yes.

Would you play that song for us? Let me get the other guitar out. Sterling's your engineer today. Sterling's our roadie engineer. This is so special. This record, everyone should go out and listen to this record. This is one of my favorite records. And I've told Sid this before, and he's eschewed the compliment. But this record, it sounds like...

a long lost Beatles record. It sounds like if the Beatles had made it to the 90s-- This is what it would have been? This is what they would have sounded like. The record is epic and I play it for my kids and this song is on Bear's playlist. And he listens to it all the time and I love this song. I love this. I love this song too. That's very sweet. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, I'll do it. Go for it. So the context of the use of where we use this song

Was in that episode, Rebecca's, she's coming to terms with her being about to be a mom. And she doesn't think she'll be a great mom. Remember there's that moment, you're like, am I going to be a good mom? And then the end of the episode, we start seeing this footage, Super 8 footage from Jack's camera. I think you have like the slightly older versions of the kids and you're seeing...

him filming you when you were pregnant. All around that time you were having these issues, this conflict of like, am I going to be a good mom? And so then in the edit, I think Julia Grove, one of our amazing editors, we decided to just put this song in just to see what it did. Because this was also the song, this was that cassette, that song about the cassette tape that my mom sent to me when I was a kid with her voice on it. And it was always like, my parents always felt like

My mom, especially, even to this day, regrets sending me back to India because she's like, we came to this country to sort of build a life for ourselves. And in that process, sent our newborn child back to India. And when you came back from India, you didn't even recognize us. You didn't want to be around. I was mad with my mom when I came back. And so this song was also me telling my mom it's okay. Thank you. All right.

If I mistook the sun for a mango I'd fly up there and reach for it too It's the story of something older

And bigger than me and you And you told it in a letter In the form of an evergreen cassette And I played it in the morning 'Til after the sun would set See, mother, I believe That half of everything I hear is true

Between you and me, I believe the anecdotes too. In the veranda, in the midnight heat, cousins and I would wait for the rains, singing songs about America. And then the first drops came, so don't worry.

Even though you were oceans and continents away I heard evergreen hair, lullaby And everything you had to say See mother I believe that half of everything I hear is true Between you and me the anecdotes too

If they get you through If time, time could be bent with the drop of a tear You'd see it rained in our house for a year This is the sound of the beating you'd hear

On the tapes, you've taped over all of our hopes and our fears. The open veranda's been flooding for years. I always hoped that I'd see you here. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,

But time, time can't be bent with the drop of a tear And though you say you missed out all of those years Your voice on the tapes always kept us near See mother I believe that half of everything I hear is true Between you and me I believe in everything

♪ You do ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, Sid Khosla, the composer for "This Is Us." - Sid, your voice. - Thank you. - Just takes me there every time. My goodness. - It's beyond the voice, it's your soul. - Yeah, for sure. - Your soul comes through your artistry

You're just a dope-ass dude, bro. Thank you. I appreciate it. You know that. This is true. It means a lot coming from you guys. Thank you. What else is there to say? Before we let you go, you working on anything right now, whether on your own music or on another show? I know one show you're working on. Yeah. Tweet, tweet, tweet. That you want to talk about? I'm scoring a show with an Academy-nominated actor named Sterling K. Brown. Wow.

Wow. Look out for that show. Called Paradise. Wow. It's phenomenal. It's a cool show. Yeah. Another Dan Fogelman project. Yeah.

It's sterling in a way you've never seen him before. It's pretty... Fully nude from the back. Fully nude. It is a... It's true. Listen, streaming, all bets are off. Yeah, we did it on This Is Us. Yeah, right. We had full back. Right. Full back. Yeah. It's a political thriller. I'm really proud of the work on it. I'm proud of what this guy is doing. I'm proud of the show. Yeah.

Yeah, that only emerges in the building also. Oh, just that? Season four just came out. Just a couple of hit songs. Just a couple of hit shows. And that's it. Sid, would you look at that camera over there and just say, That Was Us? That Was Us. That Was Us is filmed at The Crow and produced by Rabbit Grin Productions and Sarah Warehunt. Music by Taylor Goldsmith and Griffin Goldsmith. That was us.