• The Stranger Things theme song was composed by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of the synth band S U R V I V E.
  • The duo also created the show's score and soundtracks.
  • The theme song and score later won an Emmy.

Some shows have title sequences that are easily skippable, but other shows—like Stranger Things—have theme songs that are as good as the show itself. The haunting, synth-heavy song just fits so perfectly with the series, and one Twitter user even said that the song was their ringtone for "two years straight."

However, a lot of fans don't know much about how the song came to be. Here's what you need to know about the Stranger Things theme song.

What's the story behind the Stranger Things theme song?

The Stranger Things theme song was composed by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of the synth band S U R V I V E. The duo also created the show's score and soundtrack for seasons one and two.

The theme song is referred to as "Stranger Things" on the show's soundtrack, but Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer told EW that the theme song was created from a sketch called "Prophecy." The song features analog bass synthesizers (making it so addictive) and it's built around a C major arpeggio.

When asked by Billboard how the song came together, Dixon said that it was created from an old piece of music that they had lying around:

It's an old demo Michael had, but it's nothing like what you hear... nowhere near as much of a piece of music as it is now. That was just some random thing that ended up in the library they had and when they found it they were like, 'what if this was the main title?' We thought it could be good, so we built it out. We've been wanting to get into music for TV and film for a long time, but we had no idea how. We've been passively creating libraries, weird droney noises... so we had this collection of songs that we were trying to figure out how to present to people in film.

Stein also told Indiewire why they made different versions of the theme song:

One of their recommendations was to make it bigger, bolder and kind of build to a climax. It was kind of open-ended because they were shuffling around the length. So we made a 30-second version, a 45-second version and a 1-minute version. It ended up being the 1-minute version.

On the Stranger Things, Vol. 1 soundtrack, the theme song is 1 minute long, but the Stranger Things, Vol. 2 version features a longer, 5-minute version. A year later, in 2017, the song won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music.