HBO shows often share a number of characteristics – award season sweeps, morally ambiguous characters, and iconic opening themes, to name just a few. The Sopranos, the network’s flagship series, is no exception. In fact, the show pioneered many of the elements which have come to define HBO.
The Sopranos set into motion a new wave of exceptional television, most recently illustrated by Jesse Armstrong’s Succession. The influence of the crime drama on HBO and on the wider television industry is still palpable over 15 years after the airing of the final episode. Its impact can even be felt in its iconic opening credits.
Following the HBO hum, which precedes all of their shows, The Sopranos opened with a montage which follows the show’s main character, Tony Soprano, on a drive through New Jersey. The end of the lengthy intro finds Soprano arriving at his home, accompanied by the show’s iconic logo, which features the “r” in Sopranos as a gun.
HBO didn’t commission original music for the series theme song. Instead, the footage was accompanied by a remixed version of ‘Woke Up This Morning’ by Alabama 3, a track that sounds as cool as the characters it soundtracks. The trip-hop-influenced crime track is the perfect sonic introduction to The Sopranos. Vocalist Rob Spragg, also known as Larry Love, sings, “Well, you woke up this morning, got yourself a gun”. It sounds like the perfect soundtrack for the Italian-American mobster.
Though the ominous mystery of the lyrics matches the mafia family of The Sopranos, the song was actually inspired by a real murder. During an interview, Spragg explained that it was inspired by the case of Sarah Thornton, who stabbed her violent, alcoholic husband in 1989 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. After an appeal argued for Thornton’s struggles with dissociation, she was convicted of manslaughter.
The vocalist explained how the case inspired the band to write the track: “She stabbed him to death. After years of abuse, she just had enough. So she woke up one morning and decided to go and get herself a knife. That would have been the lyric, but it didn’t sound quite right, so we changed it to gun. The rest is history.”
The song has now become far more widely associated with the critically acclaimed HBO show than the murder case that inspired it. The Sopranos introduction has become as iconic and influential as the show itself, garnering Alabama 3 around £300,000 of royalties throughout the years.
The show, and its introduction, has influenced nearly every HBO show since – Game of Thrones featured a similarly long opening, Succession used a montage format, and the opening to Big Little Lies even included point-of-view driving shots accompanied by a contemporary musician.
Alabama 3’s true crime track was the perfect accompaniment for the show’s introduction, setting the scene for the show while also bringing attention back to an important case.
