How The Traitors' music plays with your emotions

By

Music correspondent

Suspicion, intrigue, treachery, Claudia Winkleman. The Traitors has it all.

But the shadowiest of the show's shadowy secrets is its music.

Have you ever noticed how the soundtrack manipulates your perception? A sinister orchestral flourish hints at a double cross. A cheeky chord injects humour into a kitchen conflab.

As ever, though, you shouldn't trust what happens in the castle. The music can provide emphasis or act as misdirection, all at the producers' behest.

Duplicity was baked into the music from the beginning.

"I remember the BBC was quite reluctant to even think about a show with murder as a main feature, so I knew I didn't want the music to go really dark," says Sam Watts, who composed the opening theme and much of the incidental score (but is not responsible for the show's haunting cover versions of well-known pop songs... more on those later).

Watts, who had previously worked on Planet Earth and The Sarah Jane Adventures, pitched to work on the programme with only a basic idea of the set-up. It was only when he learned Winkleman was the host that he settled on his approach.

"They sent me a little shot they'd done of the opening with Claudia and the castle. That's when I knew it was going to be a bit camp and high drama and all the glorious things that Claudia brings to the show. So I just went with that - dark but fun."

For the title sequence, the 44-year-old wanted something memorable. As a kid, his favourite song was Bernard Hoffer's gloriously over-the-top Thundercats theme, external, so that's the level he aspired to.

"I was trying to write something that signified the show was starting, so that people would run in from making their cup of tea in the kitchen to watch it.

"And I wanted a memorable melody that people could hum, because it helps with the identity of the show."

The Traitors theme is "one of the biggest pieces of music I've ever written", he says, recorded with a full orchestra and overdubbed with dozens of electronic elements to create a heightened, hyperreal atmosphere.

That bled into the 20 or so other pieces Watts wrote, which also appear in dozens of international spin-offs.

The idea, he says, is that the whole hour feels like a film trailer, with viewers permanently waiting for the psychological pressure chamber to explode.

To achieve that, he employed several techniques of trailer music - most notably the "Braam", a klaxon-like punctuation mark invented for Christopher Nolan's Inception (see video for a fuller exploration).

Show producer Sarah Fay took that concept and amplified it. "We wanted to just supersize it and make it feel like a drama, not like your usual reality [show]," she said in a rare interview with Metro, external when the first civilian series aired in 2022.

"We wanted to make it feel like that edge-of-your-seat cinematic drama with, you know, elements of Succession, and we wanted it to feel like Knives Out when you get into the castle!"

To achieve that, she commissioned additional music from film trailer composers, including Hans Zimmer's company Bleeding Fingers. But she also sprinkled in a handful of creepy cover versions.

Some became instant classics - such as a sinister spin on Britney Spears' Toxic, external, or a version of Tears For Fears' Mad World, external seemingly broadcast on a tannoy from Hades.

They're so integral to The Traitors' aesthetic that it might surprise you to learn they weren't recorded specifically for the show.

Both examples were created by German writer-producers 2wei.

Based in Hamburg, they had no idea their music had appeared in The Traitors until friends in the UK messaged them in excitement.

"We were just flipping out," says 2wei's Simon Heeger. "It's completely different to how we ever thought it would be used."

Heeger founded 2wei, pronounced "zwei", in 2016 with his old college friend Christian Vorländer.

They had both spent time in LA working on advertisements and (stop me if you're sensing a theme here) film trailers, before moving home to build a music production empire.

"Christian worked on the Mad Max soundtrack, which is really known for the big drums and the orchestral scale – and that was really the starting point of our sound," says Heeger.

"Whenever you hear big epic drums with an orchestral sound and maybe a female vocal on top of it, it's usually something we had our fingers in."

Their big break came with a stormy reworking of Destiny's Child's Survivor, which featured in the trailer to Alicia Vikander's Tomb Raider, external.

Since then, their music has appeared in films like Wonder Woman and video games such as League of Legends. In The Traitors, original 2wei songs like Blindside, external now feature alongside their covers (other producers, including SYML and Damned Anthem also contribute songs to the show).

Heeger says their background in commercials makes the music perfectly suited to the show's slippery skullduggery.

"In adverts, you only have a few seconds to convey a certain emotion and, especially in Traitors, where there are cliffhangers and moments that you don't expect, you need music that comes to the point right away but still has a boldness to it.

"It's a sweet spot, and it's not easy to convey, but every now and then it works quite well."

Fans agree.

On Spotify, there are hundreds of playlists dedicated to the programme's background music. Some are tailored to murder mystery parties and Halloween events. Others compile more sedate moments under labels like "gentle tension" or "chill elder emo watching Traitors".

But never forget: the soundtrack is playing a deceitful game of its own.

"A lot of my music has a wink in it and, for The Traitors, it's a little silly and slightly over the top," says Watts.

"I think it helps the nastier side of things - the murder, the plotting - feel a bit more fun."