When Andy Grush and Taylor Stewart, better known as The Newton Brothers, took on the job of scoring Disney+’s “X-Men ‘97,” they knew they would have a mighty task ahead of them – they’d have to find a way to put their stamp on the iconic synth-heavy theme song from the original 1992 animated series, while still keeping the familiar melody.
As fans of composer Ron Wasserman’s original theme, they first asked themselves what they would want to see and hear. They knew they didn’t want to do something super modern. “That would ruin the nostalgic vibes,” explains Stewart.
There needed to be sincerity in any version they put together. And that wasn’t easy. Grush says, “The original is sincere, perfect and does everything it should do. We wanted to ensure that we were not involved in staining the track, but bolstering it.”
They opted for an approach that featured orchestral music, modern synths and a choir which was all woven in on a subtle level.
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Once they had clearer ideas about direction and how it would sound, Stewart and Grush went away and came up with their compositions. “We ended up with eight different versions, and Andy and I gave one another notes, we went back and forth, and then we presented it to the team,” says Stewart.
Narrowing down the choices was not an easy task.
Each version differed.
Says Grush, “We had an all-orchestra version, an all-analog synth. And it came down to two versions. Those versions meandered down the paths they went down, and we landed where we did. But there’s a lot of trial and error in that because a lot of the stuff that we were doing in the version that now exists obliterated some of the sonic landscapes that are in there.”
In the end, after putting those ideas in front of the show’s creators, the final theme came together. “A few things are happening that are important. We had a theme being played with synth, playing the lead melody,” says Grush. “Once that was in place, Nili Brosh came in and she’s a rad guitar player. You can hear that, she’s playing along with the synths we’re playing, and there are rhythm guitars under that.”
Grush describes the “motor-like sound” that starts the theme off as being the trickiest element to make work. “It’s very specific. If you start too big in the beginning, it makes the track feel small. And it’s five tracks of synths happening in rhythm with synth arpeggiators happening all at the same time.” He adds, “That plays throughout the piece, and was the backbone of the theme.”
