Words by Owen Danoff

In 1997, a small post-nuclear roleplaying game called Fallout was released by Interplay Productions for Windows and MS-DOS.

The game and its sequels existed in two dimensions for a decade until new developer Bethesda Softworks took a gamble, blowing the world (and the game universe’s Washington, D.C.) into glorious 3D with Fallout 3. Not unlike the mushroom clouds that are par for the course in any new Fallout entry, the franchise continues to bloom outwards, this time with a hit adaptation that continues to dominate Prime Video most-watched lists.

Bethesda did everything it could to immerse players into its newly-created three-dimensional nuclear wasteland, and one of the most resonant ways players were welcomed into the world was through music. Game series composer Inon Zur crafted themes that players know by heart, and in-game radio stations provided an unending stream of apocalypse-approved entertainment. Classic tunes like ‘Maybe’ by The Ink Spots (which also appeared in the first Fallout), and Sid Phillips’ ‘Boogie Man’ kept players company through hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Condensing everything fans loved about the music of the video games into an eight-episode TV series would no doubt be a difficult task, but music supervisor Trygge Toven was up for the challenge. Reunited with his Westworld co-workers in Jonathan Nolan and composer Ramin Djawadi, Toven collaborated with the filmmaking team on song selection, music placement, and even ensuring Inon Zur’s game themes could legally be included in the series. Admittedly a relative newcomer to the world of Fallout, Toven dug into the catalogs of artists popular in the ‘40s and ‘50s to find pieces suitable for the universe’s alternative timeline.

When you first jump onto a project like Fallout, what do you want to achieve with the licensed music? 

It’s interesting having video games that have a big impact and a big audience. It’s a little different than I would go about a new film based on a script that no one knows about. It’s like with any project, though—you want to accomplish actually connecting with the audience and furthering the story with the music. That’s my focus: any way I can elevate the connection with the audience, that's always the goal. Music usually helps with that a lot. With Fallout in particular having an audience built in from the games, making sure that they were happy—but making it even more broadly appealing and finding a large audience for it—was a big goal from the beginning, for sure. 

Was there a track that came to you first, or that you had in mind from the beginning?

There are a few iconic songs that everybody knows from the games, but they're not necessarily connected in a narrative way to specific storylines. We’re telling a new story with new characters within the world, but we knew that it would be missed if there weren't a few of these songs. For the Ink Spots and some of those tracks, it was about finding the right spot.

But there was no specific song. I just tried to immerse myself in the music of the era. I was a fan of a lot of these artists, but it's pretty old music. I think most of us know some hits, but these are artists that have tons and tons of songs. It was really fun to go deep into a lot of the music from the era—the ‘40s and ‘50s—and then find those gems that really speak to the Fallout story and the kind of post-war aesthetic. Especially with the Vault people having this cheery outlook on their ideal, not necessarily real, reality. But that was the first thing I did—dive in as much as possible on some of these artists, taking some of the music from the games as a starting place, and going, “How do we go even deeper down the rabbit hole?”

I’m really curious about the lore of the Fallout universe. What are the rules for when a song was released? Was there a cutoff in terms of what years you were allowed to choose songs from?

I was actually looking for that info early on. If I'm on a movie and we're in New York in the ‘70s, you're going for a certain era. A lot of times, music is used as a time stamp, especially for movements in time. “Now that's a flashback.” “Oh, we're in the ‘50s. That's why we're listening to this.”

For Fallout, I didn't really have hard and fast rules from the showrunners, mainly because it's not actually our world at that time. It's a totally different timeline. It’s our world if the Cold War hadn't happened, sort of, where the fifties extend way beyond, so there weren’t very specific rules on that. I think we had a couple of songs from the ‘60s—maybe only one—but in general, the style of the ‘50s and some of the later ‘40s just really spoke to the story. I think it's more about speaking to a certain style and subject matter. There’s a certain feeling that music from that era had where you've got this heartbreak that’s being translated in more of an, “It's the end of the world” sort of way to tell the story. That’s what's so cool about that. I think with a lot of the music that came out of our World War II and post-war eras, that was just the sentiment. You still have to write a love song, but you're devastated by the state of the world.

So, the ‘60s was the latest you picked from.

And that was early—I think it was ’62 or something. And just by chance. I think I was looking for that, like, “Tell me the parameters,” but it was just that whatever worked, worked. It was funny, because the wasteland didn't have as much of that sound. We were like, “How do we get that same vibe from the games and the Vault and keep it in the same world?” That’s where the Johnny Cash and the ‘50s outlaw country vibe came from. I think it spoke to the reality in the wasteland, but it still was tethered back to what we knew as the world of Fallout. In that way, even though the characters were in such different worlds, it created a throughline for the music throughout the season. 

In the games you can literally have a radio on, so there’s a reason for the songs to be playing. For you, it was more about finding a way to tie everything together.

Yeah, exactly. You try to speak to the experience of the characters, and they're in such different worlds—like the Vault dwellers, the Brotherhood of Steel, and the Ghoul’s world from the beginning to where he's at.

What's cool is that throughout the season, those worlds converge. We tried to musically do that as well. Ramin (Djawadi) was talking about how he had this very clean version of the theme for Cooper in his past life—I guess it's not a past life. It's just a really long life—but then as the Ghoul, it's the same theme, but totally chopped up and played with crazy instruments.

In the same way, the songs start out very ideal in the Vault, like, “Everything is going to be okay.” As the characters grow, the question was, “How do we keep that sentiment throughout the season as the curtain is pulled?” Especially with Lucy and her growth throughout the season.

Do you temp with songs before you know you can clear them, and does that ever mess with you?

It's a different process depending on the type of project you're in. A lot of times, we'll do kind of a director's cut where everything's thrown in creatively and you're finding exactly what you want. And it’s not just me throwing things in. It's everyone throwing ideas in, and I'm the only one that knows out of the bunch whether we can clear it or afford it or whatever. You don't really want to worry about that as much at the beginning. If I'm doing a very fast-paced TV show or anything like that, it's a different process where you don't want to get down that road too far.

With this, it's more like working on a bigger film where the creative always has to drive the conversation the most. So, yeah, we’re trying things. These songs are so old that there could be random situations that there's no way for me to even foresee until we go to really clear it. Then, something's missing, and you have to really start digging.

I provide a big bucket of stuff that I have a good feeling about early on and that the editors can pick from, and we can go from there, but I think a lot of it is, like, “Here’s the wish list. This works the best. Let's try to make that happen.” Then, hopefully as many of those work out as they can. It’s all about the best possible creative song choice that we can do, and then we hope we can figure it out later in post.

I’m sure you do for other projects, but for Fallout, are you considering what the characters’ musical tastes might be as you’re selecting songs?

On other projects, definitely. On this one, it makes sense, actually. In the first scene with the Brotherhood when they're at the barracks training, you could hear Johnny Cash playing there. It feels like a lot of that is source, even though it's not necessarily played as source. The Vault stuff is definitely music where that's the whole idea. They're still listening to this old music of a world that just froze in time. Specifically to the characters, I think that's what's cool about that first Johnny Cash use, ‘So Doggone Lonesome’. That’s playing up the whole character of the show, but then it's perfect for Maximus as well. It’s speaking to their experience. It definitely makes sense to me that he would be listening to that song, because we listen to stuff that makes us feel heard.

It's like, “What's connecting to what they're dealing with?” I try to keep that in mind. And the editors, the showrunners, the director—everybody's coming up with music ideas. It's a big discussion. Those are the questions I try to ask early on. “What perspective are we getting from the music?”, “Who's telling the story with the songs?”, and “Where's it coming from?” If you can have it connect to the story, it's moving everything along. Especially in the first episode, you're getting all the different worlds. Then, if the character would actually be listening to it as well, it's a cherry on top.

I know Inon Zur’s Fallout music is used a couple of times throughout the series. Did you have anything to do with that? 

I had to deal with the licensing side of it. It was pretty built-in that if we were going to make the game, they’d be okay with us using the score, but we still had to do all that. I had to run down all that paperwork because the game companies aren't used to that music being used. It's a new process, so it took a while. That’s the same idea, though—you’ve got to have a little nod. Even though it's a whole new score by Ramin, it’s like, “Here's a nod to the original themes as well,” which is cool. Then we had the crazy fiddle music (from Fallout 4), used in a comedic way, which was fun. That was the same thing—just trying to figure out, like, “Who actually wrote that, and how are we going to find that?” With that one, we actually used the original recording from the game.

You and Ramin have worked together before on Westworld. How do you two collaborate — is his score in place while you’re placing songs, or does his work come after yours?

With Westworld, it was a different process. He was still coming after me, but we had to work much more closely. On this, it was more like a handoff. I heard early on that the score was going to be focusing on the drama and the songs were going to be focusing a lot on the irony, especially in the Vault. The tone of the show also bounces around, and the music was going to be telling the audience what tone to go with. In this way, it was much more of a handoff. The songs were figured out very early on, before Ramin came in, so he would write in the same key and do those kinds of things to transition. A lot of times he was changing the tone. He was coming in because something dramatic was happening.

The music of Fallout caused a streaming uptick for people like Johnny Cash and Nat King Cole. What is it like to know that you have that kind of power?

It’s crazy. It's only happened a few times in my career. I guess that’s a great indication that the songs are having an impact. Obviously, the show has to be doing pretty well, but it's really fun when it's not just background, and the music's piquing the interest of the audience enough to where they go and look it up. I think the ‘Crawl out Through the Fallout’ song tripled its streams or something crazy like that, so that’s exciting. I think it's fun. It’s not necessarily the point, but what's great about that is that a whole new audience is finding this music. And this is so old that the people that grew up on this music… there aren’t too many around still. New generations are being exposed to this music, so I think that's probably the power of that. They’re really good songs, and the story's connecting enough with them where they're going out and seeking it. That’s really exciting.

How do you plan for the effect something as distinctive as, say, Johnny Cash, might have on an audience? Are you ever worried something may be too obvious and take somebody out of what they’re watching?

I get kind of annoyed by supervision where it's like… we used to call it “see and say” when I was doing trailers. It’s where the lyric is talking about something specific, and then you cut to that. The lyric is, “He's running down the highway,” and there's literally a guy running. I can't stand that. Some people love it. They want it on the nose, telling you exactly what's happening. What's great about working with the Kilter team and Jonah (Nolan) in particular is that he's always looking for a song to work on so many different levels. You want to be subtle with the message you're telling, or you're foreshadowing something deep in the lyrics.

There's definitely an issue of… it’s like a movie where it's a period piece and it's filled with A-list stars—it’s like, “Is it going to take people out?” That doesn't happen as much with music. I think it's more that if the era of the song doesn't make sense, then it might stick out. But if you know the song too well, or you have too much of an attachment to memories of that particular song, it might pull you out. 

I think that's what's cool about getting a voice that's familiar and pulls you in like Johnny Cash, but then it's not ‘Ring of Fire’. It’s not automatically the biggest song that's going to conjure up your own memories. It pulls you in enough to get you into the story, but it doesn't pull you out.

A lot of times we're not looking for the absolute number one hit, but sometimes when we're doing a big action comedy or a big comedy in general, you want a big song like that because it'll help sell the joke. We call it “paying for the joke”, where if you get some big song over this moment, it's going to elevate the emotional response from the audience that much more. They have memories with that song already, and then they're pulled into the joke or the moment even more.

There are interesting ways to play with that, but in this sort of thing where you have a world that is completely on its own, you don't want to do that too much. It might remind them of something else too much, and it'll pull them out of the story we're trying to tell.

I’m sure that your job comes with a lot of compromises and songs you couldn't quite clear. Was there a moment in the show where a licensed song is front and centre, it was exactly what you were hoping for, and everything came together in a memorable way?

Shout out to our music clearance team. Alexa (Collazo) and Christine (Bergren) were incredible on this show. I can say, “We didn't ask for anything that we didn't get,” like everything worked, but it was very hard. Most of it is that the songs are old. It’s like, “There's 10 percent missing. Nobody knows who owns it,” and I have to call someone in Italy to get ahold of it. There's a lot of that kind of stuff, but in general, I think we got what we wanted and it worked out really well, even with the content of the show and everything. We were very lucky.

A big one was ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ in the first episode. That was one of those things where the showrunners, Jonah, Ali (Comperchio) the editor, and everybody had that song in mind for that sequence. That’s when it's like, “Okay. We’ve got to make this happen.” That was a big one because it's such a big, long use and the scene was cut to the song. That’s when you don't want to lose the song for whatever reason, because everyone's relying on it. There was a lot riding on that actually happening.

Do you have any dream songs or artists you would like to include in season two that you can talk about?

I don't think there's anybody that we didn't get. There are plenty of amazing songs we either had to pull out for budgetary reasons at the end, or things that just didn't work out, so I have a big list of stuff that would be amazing to get into season two. The best way to answer it is that we got very lucky and we got a lot of the key, amazing artists from the era that we wanted to get in. We can only go up from there and find even more deep cuts. 

There’s a Bing Crosby song in the show, ‘Don't Fence Me In’, that’s probably the biggest, most well-known song in the whole season. There are still plenty of artists from the era that we weren't able to get in, but we got really lucky in getting a lot of the people that we wanted to.

Fallout is available to watch here.