How Only Murders in the Building Theme Song Was Created Using Home Depot Buckets

Composer Siddhartha Khosla landed three Emmy nominations, this year, including one for original main title theme for “Only Murders in the Building.”

The catchy earworm, Khosla says, happened with ease. “I got on my piano, and just sang it over.”

The quirky, emotional tune is backed by Khosla’s humming and upside-down buckets, which are used as drums. Says Khosla, “That begins the piece, and they’re the driving momentum.”

The drummer is James McAlister, who plays with Sufjan Stevens and the National. “I called James and asked if it would be weird to put Home Depot buckets on this piece of music,” Khosla adds. “He went out and bought five buckets to create a drum set. He put microphones on top and it looked like he was a street musician.” The theme music was the perfect love letter to New York City. Barely running at under a minute, the theme music encapsulated the collaborative process among departments. “What would the costumes look like? Our production designer, Curt Beech, had ideas. I played this piece of music, and you learn that New York is this very socioeconomically, diverse place and shouldn’t the music reflect that?”

With Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez leading the cast in the murder mystery, Khosla says, “There’s this dichotomy of rich and poor and people who are grandfathered into the building; if the music reflected that, it would make it more New York, so we tried to honor that.”

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Larita Shotwell

Update: 2024-09-23

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