The theme song of a television show often sets the tone of the show for subsequent episodes and seasons, hooking viewers in the process. In the case of The sopranos, “Woke Up This Morning” by British band Alabama 3 graces the title sequence that appears in each episode. However, in the 25 years since HBO’s hit mob drama debuted, the theme song has yet to hook one viewer in particular: the song’s co-writer, Rob Spragg, who goes by the name Larry Love.
Despite the series’ critical praise, Love, the band’s leader and co-founder, who is credited as co-writer of the song, revealed to bbc news that he has not yet seen an episode and confesses that “he has been too afraid to watch it”, according to HuffPost.
“Not because of anything about the program itself, more because I hate listening to my own records,” he clarified. “I’m too much of a perfectionist and I always end up thinking, ‘Oh, I should have done that part differently.’”
Similar to how viewers see James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano in the opening credits sequence, Love told the outlet that showrunner David Chase “was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike when [the song] came on his car radio.”
“He thought the lyrics, ‘Woke up this morning, you got a gun / Mom always said you’d be the one,’ were perfect for the dynamic between Tony Soprano and his mother,” he noted. referring to Nancy Marchand’s Livia Soprano.
As the BBC reports, the song is based on a real-life domestic abuse victim. That victim, Sara Thornton, had stabbed her abusive husband, who was also an alcoholic, to death in 1989, according to The independent. According to the outlet, she was initially convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, but she was eventually retried and her sentence was reduced to involuntary manslaughter.
“She stabbed him to death,” Love said in a interview 2019. “After years of abuse, she had had enough. She then woke up one morning and decided to go get a knife. That would have been the lyrics, but it didn’t sound right, so we changed it to gun. The rest is history.”
While speaking to BBC News, Love admitted that regarding the 1997 song, “they took a bit of a risk with the whole ‘Country meets Western meets techno’ vibe, especially during the Britpop era.”
“But it worked and we are still here and I am very proud of that,” he added.
Jake Black, who co-wrote “Woke Up This Morning” and co-founded the band with Love, died in May 2019, according to The Guardian.
While fans still marvel at the fact that 25 years have passed since The sopranos, were also surprised to learn that Robert Iler, the actor who began playing Tony’s son AJ at the age of 12, was 38 years old as of early 2024, which was the age Gandolfini was when the show debuted. According IMDbIler turned 39 on March 2.
The sopranos is transmitting max..
