3 days ago
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When “Agatha All Along” showrunner Jac Schaeffer needed a song that would operate as the show’s plot device, she called on “Frozen” and “Coco” songwriters Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.
That song became “Down the Witches’ Road.”
The songwriting and composing duo liken the task to completing an “eight-sided puzzle” because whatever song they penned, it would need to have certain words such as “fire,” “earth,” “water,” “air” and “down the road,” all of which thematically linked to the story.
The limited series picks up after the events of “WandaVision,” in which Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) was left powerless thanks to the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). In a mission to get her sorceress powers back, Agatha creates a makeshift coven of her own and is joined by characters played by Joe Locke, Patti LuPone, Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn and Debra Jo Rupp.
In the second episode, “Circle Sewn With Fate/Unlock Thy Hidden Gate,” Agatha and Teen (Locke) learn the song is an instruction manual for navigating the Witches’ Road, which puts Agatha’s coven through a series of treacherous trials. Make it to the end, and they will receive what they desire most.
The songwriting duo wound up writing eight different versions, each with important lyrical information.
The first one they cracked was sung by witch Lorna Wu, which oozes Stevie Nicks vibes. “That was the one with the most intricate design and had the most parts to it,” says Lopez. It also needed to have a pop ballad, heartbreak feel to it.
Once they nailed that, they needed to start peeling back the layers of the song. The Chant Version would culminate with all the actors singing the harmonies. Lyrically, it needed to explain that the legendary Witches’ Road is revealed when a coven sings it.
Both Lopez and Anderson-Lopez drew from personal experience to piece this version together. Anderson-Lopez was in her freshman year with a group of singers at William and Mary College and often found herself in 17th and 18th century places, singing chants. “It was a great chance to pull on that inspiration and passion,” she says.
Lopez, too, was singing Gregorian chants during his college years: “It was very old, ritualistic singing. I’ve always had a fondness for it. I love that line between music and magic, music and religion, magic, community, bonding, ritual. That’s all fascinating to me. And I do think that music is magic. I do think there are people who make it who don’t know exactly how and why it works. There’s something powerful about music as a tool to create effects in a group of people.”
As the different versions began to come together, Anderson-Lopez knew “certain words were going to have more mean- ing when it was the Chant version. Remove that, and you start getting into the early American folk song. Then remove that, and you get into the simple chant.”
Lopez adds, “The heart of it had to be this sing-songy mom song that a mom made up with her child as they skipped down the road.” That ultimately informed how the pair set the hook for all the different versions.
The duo was on set as the actors performed the ballad in its different iterations. Lopez recalls being surprised by hearing “powerhouse” Hahn sing. “She just brings this fierceness, this intensity,” he says.
As for Anderson-Lopez, she had a pinch-me moment, as she grew up worshipping LuPone. To hear the Broadway legend sing their lyrics, was, as Anderson-Lopez describes it, an “ecstatic, wonderful life moment.”
And while it was a dream to have LuPone sing her lyrics, she hopes the witchy ballad will inspire one person. She manifests, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if Stevie Nicks could record it?”
English (US) ·