" I'm very much a composer that will let the screen dictate to me and the sound design dictate to me how much I should be doing," composer Dominic Lewis says about approaching the score for Your Friends and Neighbors. But, as he explains in Gold Derby's Meet the Experts: TV Composers panel, "I'm also, when there's space, I'm like, 'OK, let's go. Let me at it!'" (Watch our full interview above.)

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Your Friends and Neighbors stars Mad Men Emmy winner as a wealthy hedge-fund manager named Andrew “Coop” Cooper, whose idyllic life is thrown asunder after his wife, Mel (Amanda Peet), leaves him for a former professional basketball player, and he loses his job. The dark comedy crime drama was created by , whose sharp social satire delves into themes of suburban excess, moral decay and personal unraveling as Coop turns to robbing his affluent neighbors to maintain his lifestyle and keep his family living to the standard to which they have become accustomed.

Lewis was tasked with complementing the show's exploration of moral ambiguity and suburban disillusionment, while also matching the series' tonal shifts from dark humor to dramatic moments, which presented unique opportunities for the composer. "Initially my first suite, when I went over to do the spot in New York, it was all the same themes that everyone had signed off on, and it was all good, but I'd used a quartet," he explains, "to accent elements and give it that sense of grandeur and pomp and snobbishness. And everyone was like, 'we like it, but we need it to be a bit cooler.' So obviously I went through all that process of making the score cooler and doing different things, and doing the things I normally do; more reversing, morphing, and just getting into my production world," he says.

Perhaps the coolest part of the whole score is Jones' standout main title theme, "The Joneses," a collaboration between the composer and lead singer. The song, a play on the adage "keeping up with the Joneses," aims to be a catchy blend of nineties-infused pop-rock melancholy and upbeat rhythm that would be right at home in a suburban dive bar. "Jonathan Tropper, the showrunner, is a massive fan of Hamilton, so it was green lit pretty much straight away. Hamilton was excited to do it," Lewis recalls. "I flew to New York, we got in a studio, we hashed it out, we were throwing lyrics back and forth," he says of the song that ultimately ended up as the series' theme song and musical focal point that features in motifs and cues throughout Lewis' score.

This article and video are presented by Apple TV+.

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