Emmys 2017: This is Us composer Siddhartha Khosla on season 2 and making us cry

This is Us composer Siddhartha Khosla chats with Culturess about scoring season 2 of the hit NBC drama, his stylistic influences, and how he sees music as its own character on the show.

There are moments during the first season of This is Us where it seems like things couldn’t get any more emotional. And then the twangs of Siddhartha Khosla’s ethereal, understated score drift in and mix with the powerful performances—and even the toughest of viewers find themselves in need of a tissue.

The heart-wrenching NBC series about the trials and tribulations of the Pearson family has definitely made an impact on critics and TV audiences: season 1 scored an impressive 11 Emmy nominations (that number was later dropped to 10 due to a technicality in the costume category). That includes one for Outstanding Drama Series, making it the first network show nominated in the category since The Good Wife in 2011.

Singer-songwriter Khosla’s been crafting the original soundtrack for the series since its debut, and ahead of the Sept. 17 Emmys ceremony and the Sept. 26 premiere of the drama’s second season, the talented composer took a few minutes to talk with Culturess about his musical influences, his friendship with show creator Dan Fogelman, and getting teary-eyed watching the show himself:

This is Us season 2 is coming out in a few weeks (Sept. 26) and you’ve been there since the beginning. How would you say the season 2 music will compare to season 1?

I think this season might even be a little weightier, potentially. We’re delving into some pretty complex issues with some of the characters and so there’s a different level of depth. Season 1 was an introduction to all these characters and there were all these pivotal moments that were these emotional heartbreaking scenes. And that’s kind of part of the fabric of This is Us.

Now as we’re into another season we’re starting to explore characters on a different level. There’s just a different level of depth, I feel like I’m going deeper into the soul of the show now. And it’s subtle differences. The sound of the show is still that same definitive This is Us sound that you feel and hear when you’re watching the show so those will remain, but I feel like I’m tapping into something deeper in part because we’re learning more about these characters.

So it will still have what you call the This is Us sound and feel. How would you describe that?

There is so much raw emotion in the show and I mean raw. There’s an emotional honesty about the show and the score is very similar to that. The score is like another character in the show in a way because it also carries that same emotional honesty to it.

It’s a very organically-made score. I record basically everything within five feet of my chair, there’s really oddly-tuned acoustic guitars. This season I’m using two different guitars, one is a guitar I bought for $25 at a thrift store in Vermont and it’s a very broken-sounding guitar. The guitar already feels heartbroken, you know? It’s a guitar that was barely salvaged and it’s making its way into the score and so there’s a rawness to the sound and it’s all organic instrumentation from guitars to vocal singing of the score as well. I make a lot of the percussion sounds you hear by using the wooden desk that I record on, stuff like that.

And it’s classic and timeless, too, where it feels like it could have come out in the ’60s and it feels like it come out today.

The show is so emotionally dense. Is that ever overwhelming? Are you actively trying to make us cry?

The score has to play balance as well. And I think that’s why the score is so simple but complex in its simplicity as well. It’s not overwrought with emotion, the score. I could have opted for a more orchestral approach to this, a more sweeping score, in the traditional sense, but I think that would have been too much. It would have been forcing too much emotion.

I could have opted for a more orchestral approach to this, a more sweeping score, in the traditional sense, but I think that would have been too much. It would have been forcing too much emotion.

Right now there’s a tenderness with which I approach the score. I get an epsiode with no music generally so I get to see it without anything, and even before I begin writing music for certain areas I’m already teary-eyed. There were scenes last season where it was emotional just working on it. So that’s always my litmus test, too. I know the writing and the actors’ performances are already there. They’re so good, I don’t want to overdo it. There’s a balance. Because if I’m already feeling emotion without any music sometimes, that means the actors and the performances and the writing can stand alone and I don’t need to do much. Not to say that everytime we have a big musical scene it’s because something isn’t there. It’s that I have to gracefully weave in and out of the dialogue so it almost feels like another character in the scene that happened to be there on set.

Your band Goldspot became popular and you started scoring TV and movies right around that time. How did that transition come about?

I had just finished an album and I had done some touring and I kind of spent the beginning part of my career as a singer songwriter. And that was my first foray into music, just writing songs and singing them and Dan actually had called me after and said, “Hey I’m working on this TV show called The Neighbors, it’s a sitcom for ABC and we’re looking for a composer to come in and help us.”

And that was the first time anyone had approached me about scoring for anything, I’d never done it before. That was maybe five or six years ago. I’d always kind of thought I’d continue making records but I said, “Well, let me try it,” and I did and it was the best decision I’ve made. So I worked on that show and then I got hired on other movies and shows and then eventually Dan called me last year and asked me to read the script for This is Us. He said, “Will you read the script and tell me what you think?”

I read the script and I wrote this six-minute piece of score and I sent it to Dan and the other producers and they really loved it and I’ve been working on the show since then.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – AUGUST 03: (Top L-R) Actors Chris Sullivan, Susan Kelechi Watson, Ron Cephas Jones, (bottom L-R) Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, executive producer/showrunner Dan Fogelman, and actors Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, and Justin Hartley of ‘This Is Us’ speak onstage during the NBCUniversal portion of the 2017 Summer Television Critics Association Press Tour at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on August 3, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

At least one song featured in the show, “Evergreen Cassette,” directly related to your own personal background and your connection to your family growing up. Have there been other times when you’ve tapped into your own personal connections to the show and what it represents?

There are moments. I have a tight relationship with Dan Fogelman, who’s the creator of the show. Dan and I were actually college roommates at UPenn in Philadelphia, so we went to University of Pennsylvania together and we became really close then and we’re still very good friends to this day.

When I’m working on the show, and I was actually telling him this the other day, his soul is all over this show. This is his artistic expression of himself on some level. Because I know him so well and I know that some of his life experiences have inspired some of this show, I understand that side of it too. So, I bring my kind of personal relationship with him and understanding him into the way I write music for the show.

That’s a perfect moment where I saw two things: I saw Chrissy Metz’s incredibly moving performance in that scene that inspired me to kind of write this piece, but I was also writing about why that scene was even in the show. So that’s the type of depth that I feel like I can reach on the show because I know why those characters are there sometimes.

There are emotional scenes, like Kate in Pound class in episode 13 of last year when she has a flashback to her dad’s funeral. That’s a perfect moment where I saw two things: I saw Chrissy Metz’s incredibly moving performance in that scene that inspired me to kind of write this piece, but I was also writing about why that scene was even in the show. So that’s the type of depth that I feel like I can reach on the show because I know why those characters are there sometimes.

What else are you working on when you’re not working on making us all cry on This is Us?

I work on another show called Runaways, it’s a new Marvel series for Hulu, that’s coming out later this fall, it comes out in November. That’s more of a thriller, it’s got the feeling of a new wave record from the ‘80s or something, almost like a Depeche Mode. Stylistically, it’s almost the exact opposite of This is Us, it’s like all analog synthesizers

And then I’m working on Me, Myself and I, the new CBS comedy and that’s with Bobby Moynihan from Saturday Night Live and John Larroquette. It’s so good and that’s got a very kind of Beach Boys, Pet Sounds very kind of ’60s-ish sound as well. It’s just quirky. It’s got that sensibility to it. That’s also something that’s very natural to me because there’s a guy named Jeff Peters who produced all of my Goldspot albums throughout my band career and Jeff worked with the Beach Boys for like 30 years. So there’s a sensibility that’s from all that and I can bring that into this as well, and then we’re also going into season 4 of The Royals, which is my first drama I ever got and that’s still chugging along nicely.  

So how do you mentally shift from working on This is Us to working on something like that that’s so different?

It’s great because it’s almost like everytime I switch from one show to the other it’s like a palate cleanser. It’s good that I can walk away from something and come back later with some different perspective. And both styles of music are very much a part of the kind of music I grew up listening to and loving. I think my This is Us score, if there are any influences it comes from my songwriting, it comes from The Beatles and Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell, and those types of artists, artists that I love, and my natural songwriting is inspired by some of those artists.

The This is Us palatte is created from that knowledge, and then Runaways, I grew up loving Depeche Mode and The Smiths and The Cure, and all these new wave and alternative bands in the ’80s. My band would cover those songs. My high school band. I know that world very well, too. And we have some of those original synthesizers that they used back in the ‘80s just sitting around all dusted up in my studio for 20 years, so it’s like okay I can just pull that out. It’s stuff I haven’t used since we were in our parents’ basements, just keyboards that were sitting around.

The soundtrack is coming out before season 2 launches (Sept. 15). If you separate the show from the music, if somebody buys the album and they don’t watch the show, will that change the experience of listening to it?

I think at the core the songs are just great, classic, timeless songs. By themselves they’re great. Of course, in the context of the show, they mean something else. There are a lot of wonderful songs, the Sufjan Stevens song that begins the series, or “Watch Me,” that’s at the end of the pilot episode.

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For me, I will forever associate those songs with This is Us. So, yes, this soundtrack is for fans of the show, it really is, first and foremost. But even if you don’t watch the show, these are great songs. It’s still worth having and listening to, but it’s something extra special for our fans.