'Sit Down' artist Tim Booth talks about working with HBO for the Game of Thrones season 7 teaser song

As far as good music goes, Game of Thrones certainly knows what to do. Over the course of its runtime, the show has not only had a good score, thanks to Ramin Djawadi, but also spoke great music accompanying its trailers and teasers. After a long wait, the teaser for Season 7 of was recently released by HBO, and as usual, it had a nice song to carry it, this time a track titled ‘Sit Down‘, by the alt-rock band, James. Tim Booth, the artist behind the song, recently talked about letting HBO use his song, and more. Read on!

In a recent interview with Billboard,  Tim Booth, the frontman of James, discussed how his song ended up with HBO. Before we get into that, check out the Season 7 teaser trailer, below :

…and the original song by James :

If you don’t remember James, you might recall a funny little song from them, titled ‘Laid’, which featured in the American Pie series. Sit Down, on the other hand, wasn’t as well known. James have been much more reserved about Sit Down, however, and Booth explained why, when asked when they were approached by HBO :

“Maybe four months ago, we were told they wanted to use “Sit Down” in the trailer. We had protected that song for years from advertising, because we knew it was dear to a lot of people’s hearts, so we only allowed it to be used in a couple of things. But Game of Thrones… Jimmy [Jim Glennie] — our bass player, who I wrote this with, along with two other guys —  Jimmy’s read all the books, I’ve read all the books, I’ve seen the show a couple of times with my wife, with my kids, and I love it.”

Talking about why they went for HBO, specifically, he said :

“You know, we’ve been doing this for a long time. You get some amazing offers, and a lot of them fall away at the last minute. I kind of assume they probably had six songs, that they told six bands they were going to use [their song]. We totally assumed they would “medieval” the song — they would take it and do something radical with it that fit their style more. We were looking forward to it.”

The final song used in the promo is a bit different than the original, but apparently HBO had sent them another version, at first :

“No. It’s such a great show, you’re very happy to be in their hands at that point. They did do a weird version, that was probably more in keeping with their style. We got sent that probably a month ago, sung by a female singer, and you couldn’t tell it was “Sit Down” until you heard the chorus lyric. It was so different, the chords were different, everything was different about it. It was pure Game of Thrones. We thought, “Great! Bonkers! Fantastically mad!” We were OK with that.

And then about a week ago we got a message saying the producers love James, they’re really attached to the original and want to use the original. And they went back to the original and stripped it down. It took awhile to find the original — they went to a lot of work, because that was about four records companies back [for us]. So they got that, and they effected it and slowed it down a little bit. But it’s pretty much “Sit Down” as we recorded it, and there’s no additions to it, no changes — they’ve just taken a few things out, distorted the guitar a bit, put the vocal back a bit.”

Booth then went on to talk about Game of Thrones predictions which he got right. He said :

“It was the last series, and I got the Jon Snow bit right — coming back and all of that. It’s not predictable; that’s what’s so good about the show.”

Lastly, he was asked if he had any favorites and plotlines he was looking forward to :

“Of course. Tyrion is a big favorite, I think. Definitely Daenerys you want to see on the throne, because she’s the only ruler who seems to be born to it, who seems to have all the qualities that you’d like to follow. If you’re going to follow a leader, Daenerys. Jon Snow is impressive, but he’s a bit stupid. What he did in the battle [against Ramsey Bolton last season] was dumb, so you wouldn’t say he looks like a great leader compared to Daenerys.”

What do you think? Talk to us in the comments, down below!

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