It’s testament to The White Lotus’s cultural impact that even the theme tune of the smash hit HBO show has become a major talking point.
When the third season began airing in February, many fans were disappointed to discover that the intro music they knew and loved from season two had been replaced. Gabe Hilfer, the show’s music supervisor, explained that this was because “the song changes every season, and it reflects the tone, mood, and the themes of the season,” but it now seems that there may have been a little bit more going on behind the scenes than we were previously aware of.
The intro themes for all three series so far were composed by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, but he’s now confirmed to The New York Times that he’s informed the producers that he won’t be returning for season four. And it seems that this is due in part to some creative differences he had with the White Lotus’s creator, writer and director, Mike White.
In fact, according to Tapia de Veer, he’s been in creative disagreement with the White Lotus producers right from the start. “I feel like this was, you know, a rock ’n’ roll band story,” he explains. “I was like, OK, this is like a rock band I’ve been in before where the guitar player doesn’t understand the singer at all.”
Getting down to specifics, Tapia de Veer recalls the lively discussions that happened when he was working on season one. “He [White] had a temp score, a song that is more like something you would listen to in Ibiza, in some clubby place with a chill, sexy vibe,” he says. “And there’s literally no edge to it. It’s a good song; it’s nice music. There’s just absolutely no - whatever you find in the “White Lotus” music, the relationships with the characters - there’s none of that. It’s just nice background music.”
Undeterred, Tapia de Veer says: “I just stuck to what I was doing. And when I was giving versions, it was still the same thing: There were still crazy people and screaming and stuff like that. From there, it became this weird relationship of, ‘how do I pass all this weird music into the show?’”
The composer goes on to claim that he had “no direction” for the season three theme, but that he came up with “over 20 versions” of it, some of which included the signature ‘ooh-loo-loo-loos’ and some of which didn’t.
Ultimately, he says, “in the 1:45 titles that’s allowed, there’s nothing from the other ones. That was kind of a risk, but we never talked about that. I don’t think everybody was really aware of how attached people were to the ooh-loo-loo-loos.”
Tapia de Veer’s full, uncut theme for season 3 does contain some of the musical elements from the previous theme that fans complained were omitted, but he claims that when the backlash began and he suggested to White and the producers that this also be released, the idea was rejected. This led him to upload said theme - which includes The White Lotus’s signature ‘ooh-loo-loo-loos’ towards the end - to his own YouTube channel.
Despite the apparent breakdown of his working relationship with White (when The New York Times asked HBO to comment on Tapia de Veer’s claims, it declined) the composer appears to be proud of his work on the show, and feels like fans have now warmed to the broadcast version of the season 3 theme.
“It was worth all the tension and almost forcing the music into the show, in a way, because I didn’t have that many allies in there,” he says, before describing his time on The White Lotus as “a good struggle”.
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