True Detective gave us some pretty iconic opening themes over the years, and the one for Season 4 is no exception. HBO’s acclaimed crime drama made an epic comeback on Sunday night, with Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend” serving as its opening song.
Released as the third single from Eilish’s debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, “Bury a Friend” made quite a splash with its spooky lyrics and horror-themed music video. It peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and grew into one of the biggest hits from this album, eventually receiving a triple platinum certification with over three million copies sold in the U.S.
True Detective Season 4 showrunner Issa López described “Bury a Friend” as a “dark, moody, fun, sinister little song” in an interview with IndieWire, and said she picked it as an opening theme because it “informed a lot of what was happening in the series.”
“I started writing it during the lockdown, and I was listening day and night to Billie Eilish… As I was writing, I started to pay attention to the lyrics, and I was like, ‘That’s insane. That’s insane that one by one, all the elements of the series are in the song,’” she explained.
The Handsome Family’s “Far from Any Road”, Leonard Cohen’s “Nevermind”, and Cassandra Wilson’s “Death Letter” served as opening songs of the previous three seasons.
