Where to Stream: The Witcher

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There are a lot of reasons to love Netflix’s new fantasy thriller series, The Witcher. From it’s incredible action scenes to its badass leading women, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich’s take on the beloved franchise is a fun-filled good time. But there’s one thing The Witcher has that the rest of television can’t hold a candle to: the song “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.”

In Episode 2, “Four Marks,” Jaskier the bard (Joey Batey) tags along with our brooding hero Geralt (Henry Cavill) on one of his many adventures. And what he creates from their time together is one of the catchiest earworms of 2019. To find out what went into creating this musical televised masterpiece, Decider spoke to The Witcher’s composers Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli as well as series star Joey Batey. And it turns out composing a medieval rock anthem is a lot more complicated than you might think.

Composers Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli, who also composed the music for The Romanoffs, started working on “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” around October/November of 2018. Before working on it, or any music for Netflix’s The Witcher, both composers deliberately avoided the Witcher saga’s books and video game adaptations. “We want to start completely fresh. Otherwise if we go back and do all this research we feel like we’re developing on other material rather than creating something new and unique,” Belousova explained.

First came the lyrics to the song, which were written by the writer of “Four Marks,” Jenny Klein. “We took these lyrics and we kind of adapted them in a musical shape and form and worked closely with Jenny to work the lyrics and make them more tied to a song,” Belousova said. The duo created at least five or six rough versions of “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” on their first pass, which musically ranged from being very medieval to more modern. “I think we almost at some point wrote a rap version of this song,” Belousova recalled.

“Yes, we did,” Ostinelli confirmed, laughing.

Though series creator Lauren Schmidt Hissrich declared that rap version to be a bit too contemporary for the overall tone of the series, they ultimately settled on a more modern-sounding take on this ballad. After the lyrics were written, the musical direction was decided, and the song was in its rough form, the team brought in the man who would be singing it: Joey Batey, who plays the bard, Jaskier.

“We had to work with Joey to kind of coach him and work him through the song to make sure that musically, vocally he would be prepared for the shoot,” Belousova explained. The recording session with Batey happened in the UK around July of 2019. Afterwards, Belousova and Ostinelli finished up production of the song in their recording studio in Los Angeles. But recording with Batey came with an unexpected challenge.

“Imagine, when we went to record he was unfortunately sick,” Ostinelli said. “But despite that he was super, super great. He came to the session with lots of honey and tea. And he did his best, which was super awesome.”

“I was sick as a dog,” Batey confirmed. “They basically spent most of day bringing lemon and honey and ginger into the studio and just trying to keep me upright and barely making some kind of noise that was acceptable. I feel sorry for them that they had to put up with me in my decrepit state. But hopefully it doesn’t sound too bad.”

Batey also contributed to the distinct melody of “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.” While they were creating the song, Belousova and Ostinelli would bounce ideas off of Batey and ask him which version he preferred. Though some of Batey’s ideas were “quite rightly” rejected, Batey came to influence a bit of the musical timing of the song.

“It was the tiniest things that only really composers and actors would really care about. Moments of rubato, which is a sort of musical term,” Batey noted, “and me saying, ‘oh wouldn’t it be wonderful if we slowed this down to give myself a bit more room to play within the scene?'”

As effortless as his singing appears when Jaskier is first introduced in Episode 2, matching his on-screen performance with what he recorded in the studio was another challenge. “We have to record the scene and then we will often do the lyrics and my vocals in post,” Batey said. “I’m singing on the day but unfortunately — if an airplane flies over, then that’s a vocal take ruined. So there was no room to move there at all. I had to sing what I did six months earlier.”

All of the hard work put into “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” didn’t just lead to creating one of the catchiest earworms of 2019. It also helped Batey develop the character of Jaskier the traveling bard.

“Lauren from the beginning was like, ‘I want to keep the whole medieval and renaissance aspect of (the series).’ But at the same time this is a very contemporary direction,” Belousova explained. “This is exactly what we were trying to achieve because, to us, Joey and his character Jaskier, he’s like Freddy Mercury of the Continent, basically. We’re trying to make him the rockstar of the Continent.”

“He needed a very good, medieval rock, modern ballad,” Ostinelli added.

Jaskier’s transition from random traveling bard to the rock-star he will later become appears in how the song is constructed. “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” begins with Jaskier playing it on his flute before transforming into an epic, multi-instrument montage. But what the song eventually becomes is far more than just a catchy melody.

“When we were creating it there was a steady conversation about who Jaskier was as a character. Aside form being the bard, the troubadour, the storyteller, if we were to translate it to a modern day context he could be very quickly clumped into an Instagram influencer kind of role,” Batey said.

“His job is to wander around the Continent and tell stories and entertain people and also give them the news. This is how people would find out what’s happening in the world around them. Having that aspect as well in the back of my head was always resonating, which is why I think the song is leaning at times toward almost pop,” Batey continued. “This is the way Jaskier would get his message across to the people, the actual people, as opposed to the kings and queens of the world.”

To create the series’ distinct score Belousova and Ostinelli learned to play over 60 new instruments, most of which were custom-made medieval instruments from all over the world, from Russia and Hungary to China and Malaysia. The goal of the score was to reimagine these ancient instruments in a contemporary way. But there’s a reason why “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” is stuck in your head, while the rest of this show’s incredible music may not be. The melodies and musical themes of the song are woven throughout Episode 2.

“We wrote the song first but then we starting scoring the episode a couple of months later. We knew right away that we wanted to introduce the material of the song early on. So basically what we did is we have elements and themes of that song getting introduced in the score portion,” Belousova explained. “When Jaskier and Geralt are walking up the mountain and they have a full conversation, this is the first scene that, in the score, is based on the elements of ‘Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.'”

To truly cement “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” as Jaskier and this series’ anthem, the duo intentionally made the songs Jaskier sings before meeting Geralt clunky. “It’s the song that’s going to propel Jaskier to be the rock star that he’s going to become. So musically we had to show the other songs, they’re not as good as the one that comes out when he’s following Geralt,” Ostinelli said.

“By the time the audience gets to the end of the episode and hears the song, it’s brand new for them. But at the same time it’s something that they’ve already heard before,” Belousova added.

The prevalence of this one song goes even deeper than this one episode build up. Arrangements and versions of “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” appear all throughout the series, “especially when Geralt and Jaskier are in taverns,” Belousova explained. “Sometimes in the tavern you hear this soft music and it’s in the background. You don’t always register it. But actually what hear is a modified version of ‘Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.'”

That level of care has been incorporated into all of The Witcher‘s characters. For example, the three main characters of this series, Geralt (Henry Cavill), Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), and Ciri (Freya Allan) all have their own specific instruments. The violin acts as the voice of Ciri; Yennefer is characterized by the oboe; and Geralt is the hurdy-gurdy.

“It’s a very complex score. We tried to give every scene its designated instruments,” Belousova said. Those designated instruments will often switch melodies to unconsciously alert viewers about who’s important to who. For example, when Geralt is having a conversation he doesn’t realize is about Ciri in Episode 3, a violin, Ciri’s instrument, can be heard. And when Geralt and his true love Yennefer first meet in a bathtub in Episode 5, the music echoes just how emotionally charged and complicated this interaction is.

“What’s happening musically in that scene is that we have the tune that is Geralt’s theme but it’s being played by an oboe, which is Yennefer’s instrument,” Belousova explained. “In this case even though our characters just met musically, we’re already uniting them.”

At the moment, the only way you can listen to The Witcher‘s truly excellent music is by watching the series or by checking out select clips that have been posted on YouTube and Soundcloud. But Belousova and Ostinelli are hoping that Season 1’s soundtrack will become more widely available soon. “We’re working on it right now, actually,” Belousova said. “It’s completely up to Netflix whether or not the soundtrack is going to be released and, if it’s going to be released, when.”

When that soundtrack is finally released, we fully expect “Toss A Coin To your Witcher [Club Remix ft. Pitbull]” to be the song of the summer.

Watch The Witcher on Netflix