Legendary songwriting duos in Hollywood are few and far between these days. Especially a pair that includes an EGOT winner in the family. Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (the EGOT in question) have already won an Emmy together. And two Grammy Awards. And two Academy Awards. The Emmy, however, was one of three Emmy Awards for the now landmark series, “WandaVision.” That showstopping song, “Agatha All Along,” became the title of the follow-up series. Now the duo is back with Emmy recognition for “Ballad of the Witches’ Road” from the critically acclaimed “Agatha.”
The collaborators jumped on a Zoom last week to discuss their decidedly different composition that is unlike much of their oeuvre. Did they reveal whether they are working on the new “Frozen” sequel? No. But, they did discuss their work with “WandaVision” and “Agatha” creative force Jac Schaeffer, pumping up Patti LuPone in the final mixes and, perhaps, a curse that has been put on their houses?
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The Playlist: Do you remember how many years ago you started working on this project?
Robert Lopez: Actually, I think it was 2022. It was a long time ago.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Well, “WandaVision” goes all the way back to 2019, and then “Agatha” might be 2022. All I know is that we spent the bulk of last year, every week, mixing a version of “The Witches’ Road.” It was almost like Groundhog Day. We’d look at our calendar and be like, “Oh, we’re mixing ‘The Witches’ Road'” because there are nine different versions of the song. And then you have to also mix for the other things. What were the really extraordinary ones that we had to go in for?
Robert Lopez: It was like a 360 sound version for Surround Sound. There was a vinyl version, and so for each one of these we needed to do eight mixes and masters of the same song in different guises.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Obviously, it became a joke with us and our engineers like, “Hey guys, it’s Tuesday. We must be mixing and mastering ‘The Witches’ Road.'”
The Playlist: I didn’t double-check it, but it is Disney that goes above and beyond for global audiences. I’m assuming there are also Spanish or Italian versions that was recorded?
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: I’m sure they did.
Robert Lopez: They definitely did.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: That’s where we say “God bless, “and it gets handed off to another team.
The Playlist: Understood. So when Jac came to you, do you remember what the brief was, what she said she was looking for?
Robert Lopez: Well, we knew, obviously we knew about Agatha and we knew about the project. It was announced in the press before we really knew it was happening, and so after a few weeks, we were like, “Maybe they don’t know that we’re interested in doing something for it.” Kristen and I crafted a little text message saying, Hey, if you need a song…”
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: “…you know where we live,” and Jac was like, “Don’t worry.” By the time she came to us, we realized that she had crafted the entire series around a song that we were going to write, that it was going to be the spine of the [show]. I mean, talk about a collaborator handing you a gift because she had thought about everything. When you work with somebody who knows how songs work and trusts you, it just became the best possible puzzle for us because we had to figure out…there were a couple of pages of things that had to be in each song. And then she was like, “Go wild.” So, we knew that each song needed to have the elements of the witches. Each witch sort of represents an element. We knew that it needed to be kind of a map for the whole series and needed to talk about how there’s glory at the end, a big prize at the end. We knew that there had to be a lyric that was misunderstood over time, and there were all these components that we kind of had to put into everything, and then we had to just figure out where do we lift a layer and reveal something? Where do we put another layer on? It was really, really fun.
The Playlist: In that context, the characters know the song from this legendary Fleetwood Mac-esque track that was released in their world in the late ’60s or early ’70s. Was that your starting point because of what their reference was, or did you go broader first and decide to retool it for other eras?
Robert Lopez: We knew on some level the big reveal that it’s her son and her made it up as they walked along the road and that it was about this mother son relationship and that we got. So we did start writing the Fleetwood Mac style one first. It had the most parts to it. It had to accomplish the most things, and it had to be believably a hit in the ’70s. So that was the biggest challenge, and we figured we could always strip it down, especially because we gave it that sort of nursery rhyme DNA at the heart of the chorus. It is a singsong thing. So, we knew we could simplify it and that would pose no problem.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: But when Bobby came up with the “Down, down, down the road” idea and that DNA, and then when I went to go kind of craft the lyric, I had the last episode open and I was going back and forth between trying to bake a ’70s song with all of these elements about witches and glory at the end, and also constantly checking in with the origin scene of how it got created. So, it really was a little bit like a Sudoku. You’re like, “Well, I have to make sure it tracks horizontally, bends vertically.” It was really fun.
The Playlist: You knew from the beginning that Kathryn Hahn was going to be involved, but you didn’t really know the rest of the witches and their singing ability or let alone that Patti LuPone would be part of the cast.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: We sure did not know that yet.
Did you feel when the cast was revealed that you needed to tweak anything? Was there any part of the songs that changed once you found out who the actors were going to be?
Robert Lopez: I mean, we trusted that they’d find people who could sing. They always have. They did in “WandaVision.” They found us, Kathryn, and they want the song to sound good just as much as we do. So, when they told us, I mean, we had never worked with any of the others, but Patti LuPone, obviously, is on every Broadway writer’s radar or bucket list of who they would want to write for. And actually there was sort of an unofficial competition with our agent, and he was kind of like “the first person to write a song for Patti LuPone wins the prize” because he’s such a Patti fan and we’re such Patti fans. So, we won that contest with this song. [Laughs.] Obviously, we hadn’t thought of her. We hadn’t factored her in, but they told us when they informed us of her that she had said, “I don’t want them to change a thing. I just want them to put me in it. I don’t want a song. I don’t want an extra thing.” Patti LuPone! So that was the challenge of how do we feature her without writing anything new for her when all she is is a background vocal.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: But luckily she was also like, “I only sing soprano. I don’t sing backup.” And that worked out perfectly because there was this thing that the Sopranos had to do, and because I thought, “If I were Evita,” I lived for her “Evita” cast album when I was in seventh and eighth grade. I knew her voice so well, and I knew what she could do. I was like, “Oh, we’re going to put her on ‘Down, down, down'” and every time, every Tuesday when we mixed and mastered, what did we say?
Robert Lopez: Give us more Patti!
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: More Patti, push Patti, push Patti, push Patti! Because she gave it this power, she gave it this extra epic nature. It was much more ethereal before we got all of these witches on it. I have to also say, Sasheer [Zamata] has this deep, beautiful…
Robert Lopez: Alto
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: A cherry oak kind of voice that is the glue of the piece holding down with this warm resonant tone on the low. So, it just got so much more beefed up. Once we got these amazing performers on it.
Robert Lopez: They brought all this passion. We kind of looked at it as a liturgical version of the song, but it really was much more than that once they sank their teeth into it, and it was exciting that day. It transformed what we had conceived right before our eyes and we did it. The other thing about that day was that they sang it one at a time, and it was their very first performance. They hadn’t shot any scenes yet. They hadn’t really done a read through. I’m not sure if they had fully met yet. So, it was just us and Jac in this recording studio on a couch watching, and the ladies would show up for each other. They were encouraging each other on, they were praising, snapping for each other. They were whooping it up, and it was like the coven was starting to form that day.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Yeah, I should also say Ali Ahn is a classical pianist and an extraordinary musician herself. So, she was also right on. She was super easy and pretty confident in the room, and that was also a really nice solid foundation to build on.
The Playlist: Was this also similar to a process of making a musical movie? Were you consulting with Christophe Beck and Michael Paraskevas, who had joint credit as composers?
Robert Lopez: Yes, we worked together.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Now we go way back with Christophe. First of all, Bobby and Chris were in the same acapella group at Yale in different years. But Bobby sang all of Christophe’s amazing [original songs] like they did this TV medley that was amazing, that had all these [moments] from “Mighty Mouse” and “Batman.” So, Bobby had been singing Chris’s work and it was really at a key time. And then when they paired us up, I think the first thing they paired us up for was “Frozen.” And Chris, one of his superpowers of many superpowers, is that he has no ego about incorporating our melodies and drawing them out and using them to great effect in the storytelling in the underscore. And it’s this wonderful symbiosis that we’ve developed over 20 years now of using our melodies, also letting him augment our melodies.
Robert Lopez: Yeah, we love the way we look in Chris’ mirror.
The Playlist: I just realized, speaking of “Frozen,” they announced there’s another installment is coming. Can you say whether you’ve even been working on it or if it’s a project you’re part of?
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: We can’t speak to that at this moment, but maybe in the future.
The Playlist: This particular Marvel show, just like “WandaVision,” has such a very dedicated fan base that is super passionate about it. Arguably more so. And speaking of “Frozen,” you both crafted an almost 1 billion-streamed song. You have experienced a truly massive response before. Can you just talk about what you’ve seen for the reaction to this song and what it’s meant to you?
Robert Lopez: There’s a very passionate and vocal Marvel fan base, and what I love the most about them is that they analyze everything that they get, especially the stuff that seems to excite their theories. And it’s really the first time that the fans have gone into the themes and the music and the DNA and the music theory of what we write and analyze it. And I really appreciate that because we do hide little Easter egg messages in there and we always do for all of our work. And it’s nice when it gets noticed, even if it’s just to see if Mephisto is hiding in there.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: I would add that the tiktoks that people do, the creativity that people show, and they showed it around “WandaVision” and then they showed it again around each episode, the way that they were interacting with the music. ”It’s such a gift. And we also found out that some practicing witches have incorporated this chant into their practice, which might be why some crows showed up in our chimney. I don’t know.
Robert Lopez: We had a dead crow in our chimney. We had a plague of flies. Mice ate our pool heater.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: And our car and our fuel injector.
Robert Lopez: We’ve had sort of a bit of a witchy summer.
The Playlist: You gave the witches a gift. They should be protecting you. What’s going on?
Kristen Anderson-Lopez: We’re going to have to contact a witch to just any witches out there that we could use a little protective spell from the pestilence.
“Agatha All Along” is available on Disney+
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