The studio people were really concerned about something with a thriller aspect to it—or mystery or murder—not having a score. People are very used to scoring the tension. And we’re using the iPods to provide that.

Kornhaber: Franz Waxman’s “Dance and Angela” gets reinterpreted as a different genre of music during the title sequence each week. How did that song get picked in the first place?

Jacobs: It came from the collection of Alan Crellin, really. Jean-Marc decided, “Let’s start with the music of Alan, and branch out from there.” Because that’s the voice of the house: Alan’s record player is going 24/7.

Kornhaber Can you tell me about “Cupcake Kitty Curls,” the hip-hop interpretation of “Dance and Angela”?

Jacobs: [laughs] Which is blowing up on Shazam—people are obsessed!

That was created by Mark Batson, a longtime collaborator of mine and a wonderful artist and producer in his own right. When we were thinking about a hip-hop version, I was like, “Oh, I know exactly where I’m going to go.” Mark asked this question on his Facebook: What do these words mean and where did they come from? Have you thought about that yourself?

Kornhaber: Are they things that are written on Camille’s body?

Jacobs: Yeah. We just gave him a bunch of words from her body and he chose those words and put them in a rhythm. He’s actually made an extended version of that using all the words, so we’ll get that out because people just went crazy for it.

Kornhaber: That song is just tonally so different than the rest of the show. How much were you thinking about trying to create a sense of surprise?

Jacobs: Well, everything in the main titles is really a mirror of something already going on tonally. We have hip-hop in the show: Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Eminem. The Acid did one after we featured the band’s “Tumbling Lights.” Everything’s purposeful with Jean-Marc.

The music is really this internal voice of Camille and Alan. They’re both people struggling in relationships with Adora, and they both escape into their music. That’s the whole thing about this iPod that she keeps with her. Alan is in that room playing those records all day long trying to survive that marriage. He’s been marginalized by Adora, and she clearly is more interested in the town sheriff than her own husband.

So the music is all about surviving. And then we do have a theme in there of “Mama” songs [like Steve Miller Band’s “Motherless Children” and Tupac’s “Dear Mama”]. Because everything is about Adora: She’s the person that they’re all trying to work around.

I mean, this show is subtle. It’s something that people, when they go back and they watch it a second and third time, they’re going to see things.

Kornhaber: Tell me about Led Zeppelin. Why is that the voice of Camille?

Jacobs: Led Zeppelin was something that Jean-Marc said to me really early on, This would be my dream if you could make that happen. And “making it happen” is the big part of that equation because Led Zeppelin’s known for being extremely restrictive: one song per movie, and all of those things.