The Season 3 finale of The White Lotus happens on Sunday (Apr. 6), and today it was revealed that the dark-comedy HBO series is parting ways with its composer, Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, due to creative differences.
Ambiance is a big part of what makes The White Lotus so unsettling, and the Chilean and Canadian composer’s music often sets the tone. “Aloha!,” the opening credits song for the first season, was a sensation and has been remixed in DJ sets over the last few years. Tapia de Veer told The New York Times that since the first season, conversations with producers could be “hysterical” and he was repeatedly asked for music that was more upbeat and less experimental. The White Lotus creator and director Mike White apparently didn't even want the Season 1 theme:
He had a temp score, a song that is more like something you would listen to in Ibiza, in some clubby place with a chill, sexy vibe. And there’s literally no edge to it. It’s a good song; it’s nice music. There’s just absolutely no — whatever you find in the White Lotus music, the relationships with the characters — there’s none of that. It’s just nice background music.
I just stuck to what I was doing. And when I was giving versions, it was still the same thing: There were still crazy people and screaming and stuff like that. From there, it became this weird relationship of, How do I pass all this weird music into the show?
“Aloha!” was reworked as “Renaissance” for the second season’s Italian setting, then replaced entirely with Tapia de Veer’s “Enlightenment” for the current Thailand season. Talking to the ‘Times,’ the composer addressed the backlash to the change:
When that came out, I had TMZ calling me, even people from England and from France, because they wanted some kind of statement about the theme. People are furious about the change of the theme, and I thought that was interesting.
I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give them the longer version with the ooh-loo-loo-loos, because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway. He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that — he wasn’t happy about that.
I mean, at that point, we already had our last fight forever, I think. So he was just saying no to anything. So I just uploaded that to my YouTube.
Tapia de Veer, who has won three Emmys for his work on The White Lotus, says he’s happy about the “struggle,” though: “it was worth all the tension and almost forcing the music into the show, in a way, because I didn’t have that many allies in there.”
As for the season three finale "people are going to hate Mike White," says Charlotte Le Bon, who plays Chloe.
Incidentally Este Haim was a musical consultant on Season 2, and Haim have another new single "Everybody’s Trying To Figure Me Out" coming Friday.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q-xTYfAjQEU
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BONUS BEATS: Here's Tayme Thapthimthong (Gaitok) and Blackpink's Lisa (Mook) of the current season singing Blackstreet's "No Diggity."
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