The theme was composed using piano tunes, layered with strings, brass, beats from the Roland TR-808 drum machine and percussive sounds to blend classical and hip hop music.
[7] According to former film and television composer, and founder of Ample Music, Drew Silverstein, "the score subverts expectations and leaves it up to viewers to determine a scene's mood or subtext.
Unlike sitcoms with clear audio cues or Marvel movies with big, bombastic musical moments, the Succession score refrains from providing a meta-commentary.
[9] Britell further used strings, brass and low-end beats from the Roland TR-808 drum machine, while oddly dissonant percussive sounds were laid and woven through the theme and other cues of the score.
[7] Music theorist and psychologist Stefanie Acevedo said that the piano is played in high and low registers and sometimes out of sync, the melody is in a minor key punctuated by dissonant chords, and the distorted base line rocks "the foundation of the theme".
[7] Rolling Stone listed it in number 25, in one of their "Top 100 television theme songs of all time" and said "the music for Succession nicely drives home the notion of a ruling class that has descended into gangster decadence, of ambition and entitlement collapsing into chaos and nihilism".
It is cyclical in its very nature because every oppressor operates from a space of fearing victimhood, and every victim in the show has a false, egoistic perception of how they have perhaps scored a home run in manipulation.
Pusha met Britell at a recording in Los Angeles, who was pitched the track and said about the series' theme: "We talked about the connection to power and its dynamic, issues writ large: struggle, pain, all of the things we could deal with".