There are a lot of reasons why we’re obsessed with Netflix’s addicting dramatization of the ‘80s cocaine trade. However, there’s one aspect of Narcos that has us obsessively clicking on the next episode —the show’s hypnotic theme song. Last year, we gave you a primer on Narcos’ opening song, but this year we wanted to dive even deeper with the mastermind behind “Tuyo,” Rodrigo Amarante.
Amarante is an accomplished Brazilian singer and songwriter who is known for his multi-instrumental songs as well as his beautifully detailed lyrics and accompaniments. The creator and performer, who is currently on tour, has been part of the bands Los Hermanos, Orquestra Imperial, and Little Joy. However, he’s likely best known stateside for his role in creating arguably the most addicting part of Narcos, its opening song. Decider had the opportunity to speak to Amarante about how he came to be involved in Narcos, the research that went into creating “Tuyo,” and what the complicatedsong means. This gorgeous opening number has a lot more narrative weight than your originally thought.
Amarante originally received the invitation to compose Narcos’ theme song from director José Padilha. “It was very nice, and I learned later, unusual in the way the work flowed because I was invited in and given total freedom,” he said. “It was wonderful. I mean, I’m not used to writing music for TV or film.”
The only experience Amarante had with creating music for a productionwas as a composer and music director for a big-budget Brazilian stageversionof Hamlet. Incidentally, this production was the first time Amarante worked on a project with Wagner Moura, who starred as Hamlet in the play (Here’s a clip if you’re interested). “It was a different experience because I was writing music to Shakespeare’s verses. For the parts, they were supposed to be sung, and I directed the actors,” he said.
However, the challenge of Narcos’ theme song was one that aligned with his creative aesthetic. “I’m kind of a film buff,” Amarante said. “I still feel like I write songs as a frustrated filmmaker, so I was thrilled. I was like ‘Oh, give me all the scripts, I want to read everything,’ and they really threw it on my lap like, ‘You figure it out.’ I loved that.”
Narcos’ unusual focus on its theme song is likely a big reason why the opening songhas been so highly praised. As Amarante explained, most series don’t focus on a show’s opening music until the last stages, and often, the temporary song that’s used as a placeholder gets adopted as the show’s permanenttheme song. That wasn’t the case with Narcos, which invested in both Amarante and the show’s opening song long before the series was even finished. “I went there, explained what I was doing, why I was doing it, [and] they got really excited,” he said. “I feel like that kind of helped the song bleed into the actual writing of the show.”
Being given the project before the series was ready actually helped Amarante. “That was great because on one hand, I could have time to think,” he explained. “They actually incorporated the song into the episodes. Like Pablo sings the song in the first episode.” There’s even an inside joke in the first episode when Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura) actually calls a mariachi singer singing “Tuyo” by Amarante’s first name.
The show’s early focus on “Tuyo” also allowed Amarante to create a much richer song. “My process was first, why are these people telling this story? What’s the reason for it?” he said. “Not a commercial reason or whatever. Not for the thrills of seeing car chases or bullets flying, blood splattering —that’s not a real reason.”
“I understood [Narcos] was the story of a monster, you know. You’re supposed to follow someone who was known to be monstrous and have no principles, but you follow that monster closely. I figured the only reason to do that was to reflect the monstrosities that we have ourselves: Greed and individualism and extreme narcissism,” he explained. “So what’s my role here? And I thought, well, maybe I have to give this monster a heart. And I think that would be a good idea, right before you go into the episode.”
To find Pablo Escobar’s heart, Amarante dove into the drug lord’s childhood. The composer wanted to find the moment in Escobar’s life when he decided to be what he later becomes. “I’ve half imagined, half invented —I say that, you know, because I am allowed to, just as [Narcos‘ creators] were —to complete gaps in his story without perverting the actual facts,” he said. “I imagined Pablo as a kid, you know, maybe seven years old. His dad is absent, his mom is in the house and frustrated with the state of things at that time in Medellin, and, so that would be the late ‘50s.”
Amarante spent a lot of time imagining what Escobar’s mother would tell him during his socially and economically unstable childhood. “I imagine that she is telling him, you know, ‘Trust no one. No one’s gonna give you anything. You have to get it for yourself, don’t trust anyone. Working hard is not enough,’ things like that,” he said. “She is projecting her frustrations with the changes between the ‘30s over there and the ‘50s —or the ‘40s, for that matter.”
However, Amarante dove even deeper into his imagined version of the Escobar past for “Tuyo,” shining a spotlight on Pablo Escobar’s mother, Hermilda Gaviria. “I’m going back to the ‘30s, when [Hermilda Gaviria] was a kid, or a teenage girl, she was in love with a tango singer, an Argentinian tango singer,” he said. “There was a coincidence there because I am imagining that. It makes sense.”
According to Amarante, the most famous Latin singer during the 1930s was Carlos Gardel, an Argentine singer who was killed in a plane accident in Medellin, who was loved by teenage girls. “I imagined that, as a kid, that death really affected her. It turned [Carlos Gardel] into a hero, right, because he died in a tragic way, pursuing his dreams. But it affected her because it made her think that, should that not have happened, she would have met him and her life would have been different,” he explained.
“So, this man became the ideal man for Pablo’s mom. And she listens to this song —which is her favorite song —and projects onto [Pablo] this perfect man who was a hero, who was untouchable,” Amarante said. “Pablo is hearing this song, and he wants to be that man. He wants to be that mysterious man in the coat and in the noir background who is a hero, who is his mother’s hero.”
That’s right. The haunting love ballad you refuse to skip past during every episode of Narcos is actually about Pablo Escobar’s mother projecting her dreams of an ideal man onto her son. This musical aesthetic even bled into “Tuyo’s” musical composition. “That’s why the song sounds like it would be like a standard .. ballad that was written in the ‘30s, re-recorded in the ‘50s, maybe,” Amarante explained. “It’s a song in the fashion of his mother’s childhood recorded somewhat in the fashion of his childhood. It represents who he wanted to be as a kid.”
However, as with all things associated with Pablo Escobar, there’s a darkness lurking right beneath “Tuyo’s” surface. “The lyrics are supposed to sound like a very in-love, strong man talking to a woman,” he said. “But in the end, it gets more and more intense. You realize that it’s someone saying —the ultimate message of the song is whatever you want, all you have to do is look at it and it will be yours. So, on the surface there’s this generosity and ultimate passion, but what’s underneath is an extreme narcissism. Because things will only be yours because I can provide those things to you.” If that’s not a spot-on description of Narcos’ version of Escobar, I don’t know what is.
Amarante devoted three days of intense research toEscobar’s past and the political and social environments of the 1930s and 1950s to get “Tuyo” just right. Even so, the song, much like Narcos itself, relies heavily on the artist’s interpretation of this fascinating figure. However, there is one clue that shows Amarante may not have been too far off in his Escobar speculation. “I got a call from Padilha saying that his research team found a cassette tape —that was Pablo Escobar’s cassette tape —that was supposed to be his favorite songs,” the composer said. “There was a Carlos Gardel song in there. It was supposed to be his favorite song, and it makes sense because it’s a gangster song, like a rare gangster song that Gardel wrote.”
Not only was Amarante able to predict one of Escobar’s favorite singers, but it’s possible that the composer’s interpretation of Pablo Escobar and his mother may have influenced Season Two. Though Amarante saidthat he has not yet seen Season Two, the show’s second season deals heavily with Escobar’s relationship with and loyalty to his mother. This is one longwinded way of saying don’t skip past the opening credits. You could be missingsomething truely brilliant.
RELATED: Everything You Need To Know About ‘Narcos’ Hypnotic Theme Song (Including Its Translated Lyrics)
You can check out Rodrigo Amarante’s other work here.
[Where to watch Narcos]
