Breaking Bad‘s musical supervisor has hailed Badfinger’s ‘Baby Blue’ as the “perfect” song to end the hit TV series with.
The 1971 track by the British band was played over the final scene of the hit show’s final episode, which aired this week. The show’s finale was watched by a record 10.3 million viewers in the USA. UK viewers were able to watch the show on Netflix after it aired in the US.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Breaking Bad’s music supervisor Thomas Golubi? talks about how showrunner Vince Gilligan initially devised the idea of using ‘Baby Blue’ and how he eventually came round to the idea of using the song, after it was previously used in 2006 film The Departed. “When he said, ‘I think this is the right song for the closing of the finale,’ I didn’t really hear it,” Golubi said. “I thought it was an odd little love song.”
Continuing, Golubi adds: “But in came the dailies, with that wonderful crane shot moving over Walter White, and once we played the song, [we thought], ‘Oh, I get it now’. This is a love-affair story of Walt and his love of science, and this was his greatest product – his greatest triumph as a chemist. It wasn’t about Walter White as a criminal or a murderer or an awful person. It was him ending on his own terms. It felt creatively right.”
He added: “I thought, ‘Oh dear God,’ this song was in The Departed soundtrack. If someone uses a song in an incredibly iconic and wonderful way, the last thing I want to do is utilise it again. It seemed like the perfect song to end Walt’s last ride into town.”
Following its use in the finale of Breaking Bad, global streams of Badfinger’s ‘Baby Blue’ have increased by 9000 per cent. According to Spotify, plays of the 1971 track – which features on their album ‘Straight Up’ – have rocketed.
