The first season of HBO’s Westworld had a lot of standout qualities, but one of the coolest style tricks it regularly used was placing unexpected versions of pop songs in key scenes – such as an orchestral version of “Paint it Black” during a shootout, or the player piano plinking out “Black Hole Sun” as Maeve prepared to start her day at the saloon. The new trailer suggests we can expect even more of this in season two.
Image: HBO
If you couldn’t immediately place the lush piano cover that was used to score the new trailer, the Westworld Twitter account solved the mystery with this Spotify link, where you can hear a portion of show composer Ramin Djawadi’s cover of Kanye West’s 2010 piano-heavy song “Runaway” (you’ll need to log in to Spotify to hear the whole song). One could call it Kanye Westworld.
Though the practice of repurposing new, usually slowed-down versions of pop songs in movie trailers has become a cliché, on Westworld it never feels that way. Instead, it’s more like an intriguing way to link the show’s fantasy realm with our own world. Westworld returns April 22.