The Big Picture
Collider’s Meredith Loftus speaks with the composing duo for
X-Men ’97
, the Newton Brothers — Andy Grush and Taylor Stewart.
Grush and Stewart discuss their initial nerves when signing onto the project, the retro music essential to evoking the ’90s energy, and how they updated the original theme.
The Newton Brothers also share an update on Mike Flanagan’s
The Life of Chuck
and what it was like to collaborate with the director again.
When you think of the X-Men, it’s hard not to think about their theme music, made famous by X-Men: The Animated Series; and for X-Men ‘97, a series that takes place in the ’90s, music is an important scene-setting element that can make or break the concept. It’s something that the composing duo the Newton Brothers — Andy Grush and Taylor Stewart — understood when crafting the musical score for the latest project from Marvel Animation on Disney+. The duo is known for their collaboration with Mike Flanagan on projects such as Doctor Sleep, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
X-Men ’97 picks up one year after the end of X-Men: The Animated Series, as well as the death of Charles Xavier (Ross Marquand). Scott Summers (Ray Chase), Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale), and the rest of the X-Men continue to pick up the pieces while facing new threats, including Magneto (Matthew Waterson) returning to lead the X-Men per Professor X’s will.
During this interview with Collider, the Newton Brothers talked about how fear was a motivating factor when approaching the score for X-Men ‘97, as well as the fun they had revisiting retro sounds to transport audiences back to the ’90s. Not only do they tease surprising moments ahead for the rest of the season, the Newton Brothers also tease what to expect from Mike Flanagan’s latest project, The Life of Chuck, which stars Tom Hiddleston and Mark Hamill.
You can watch the full interview in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.
X-Men ’97
A band of mutants use their uncanny gifts to protect a world that hates and fears them; they’re challenged like never before, forced to face a dangerous and unexpected new future.
Release Date March 20, 2024
Cast Jennifer Hale , Cal Dodd , Chris Potter , Catherine Disher , Adrian Hough , Ray Chase , Lenore Zann
Seasons 2
Number of Episodes 10
Streaming Service(s) Disney+
Franchise(s) X-Men
Read Our ‘X-Men ’97’ Review
The Newton Brothers Admit They Were A Little Afraid After Landing ‘X-Men ‘97’
Image via Disney+
COLLIDER: The two of you are known for composing projects that are more skewed for the horror genre, like Midnight Mass and Five Nights at Freddy’s. What was your approach on taking on X-Men ’97, which is a lot more commercial and obviously has a dedicated fan base behind it?
TAYLOR STEWART: We kind of started off doing lots of drama and action and different genres, but what took off first in our careers was horror. So we kind of became more known for those pieces, but we’ve always done other styles and genres. And I think for X-Men, we were just such huge fans. I remember being a kid watching it, and I was so excited. So, I think just having that incredible love for the property, really, it’s inspiring to come up with ideas and melodies and riffs. So it was really sort of a natural kind of approach for us going from what we’ve done to jumping into X-Men. Everybody on the team was such a down hard, just super nerd, which I feel like you really need to love especially something like this, an IP like this, to really give the fans what they need and deserve.
ANDY GRUSH: To go back to your question, it really allowed us to sort of open up the arsenal. Oftentimes on a project, we’re kind of restricted once we get into a project — not restricted, but it comes down to like a sound. For X-Men, we really wanted to encapsulate everything musically as much as we could. It’s rare that you get to do that. Most of the time you need to pull way back and just sort of dodge dialogue, and that’s fun and the trick of it. In this case, in some cases, not the entire time, but in a lot of cases, “How can we have everything happening at the same time and not make it sound muddy?” It’s a lot of fun to incorporate all of those things.
Okay, you’ve got to be honest. Did you feel any type of trepidation saying yes to X-Men ’97?
GRUSH: Oh, yes. I mean, so much. [Laughs] To be honest, when you go after a project like this, Taylor and I have been doing this long enough to sort of temper our expectations. In this case, we would just tell each other, “Let’s do our best.” Because we had to do demos for this project, and in that case, you just do your best, and you hope for the best, but you try not to get too excited about anything, ever, until the time is right. When we found out, I won’t speak for Taylor, but I know I was– On most projects you’re excited about, you’re terrified at first because you don’t want to do the wrong thing.
Like, I remember when Mike Flanagan told us that we were going to be doing Doctor Sleep — you’re so excited, but you’re also like, “We’re supposed to be doing the sequel to The Shining?” It’s terrifying. But I think that those are the things in life that help you better yourself. Because, if left to my own devices, without wanting to become lazy, you become lazy. Because you want to just, “Oh, this is the easier way to do things. Oh, this is the easier way.” In taking on projects like this, the fear of it really drives you to push yourself. So, I am super grateful for projects like this, specifically this project, because it was terrifying to get this project in a very healthy way, I think. What do you think, Taylor?
STEWART: I think, just as David Bowie says: You wanna go out into the water just where your toes can barely touch the ground, and that’s just about where you wanna be. I think, as an artist, you always want to keep expanding, keep growing, and trying, because if you’re just doing the same thing, it becomes boring. This, it was very exciting. Even though we knew we’ve done stuff like this before, commercially, we weren’t known for this. So, it was very exciting.
Artists Who Helped Inspire ‘X-Men ‘97’ Music Include Michael Jackson and Radiohead
Image: Disney+
Andy mentioned that the two of you made demos to submit for this. What kind of sounds were you pulling from in these demos for X-Men ’97?
STEWART: I think we went a little more retro because for the show, we brought out a lot of the late ‘80s, early ‘90s kind of synthesizers. I think for the demos, they were a little more retro, but then it had a giant orchestra. I think that’s kind of what we submitted on. Then we toned down some of that sound in certain places. But it actually landed in a couple of scenes that didn’t… One of the demos we did ended up becoming a piece that’s used throughout the series. So that’s when you know there’s a good fit, a good marriage to that. But yeah, it went really well.
That’s awesome. So more on those musical cues. I’ve got to say, that club scene in the very first episode, it sounded like it was pulled straight out of the late ‘90s. So talk to me about your process about finding those specific retro sounds that were able to really land people back in the ‘90s here.
GRUSH: Yeah, that was kind of fun. We were in the spotting session, and Beau [DeMayo] just turned to us and said, “Cool, you guys want to do some ‘90s dance tracks here?” and we said, “Yes, let’s go!” We kind of just dove in. Even Taylor and I are singing there. It’s the thing that you play around with in the studio but rarely get to use, you know? So, in this case, we got to use it. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of experimentation on that. But then a lot of it just went back to when Taylor and I were in that zone early on, not even in our careers at this point. Just doing music for fun. You’re tinkering with all of those sounds and playing with those sounds, so it was fun. It was a lot of fun.
STEWART: When I first moved to LA, it wasn’t the ‘90s, but it was in the 2000s, and I was DJing for a short period of time. I mean, to me, it was old school. The ‘90s was like old school music, but I would try to sneak it into the vinyl play. Andy and I are both very familiar with that sound in that world, so it was just fun.
It’s clear that we’re seeing a resurgence of the ‘90s and the early 2000s culture cycle its way back into popularity, and I feel like X-Men ’97 is really riding this cultural wave. So from your perspective, what do you think it is about like the ‘90s and even ‘90s music that is so appealing to people today? Why do you think it’s made a comeback?
STEWART: Well, for the people who lived in the ‘90s, there’s this nostalgic feeling, obviously, when you hear those songs, you see those clothes, those movies. Especially for me, more so in the late ‘80s, because I think I was 13 in the ‘90s, or something like that. But the generation that lived in that, they had a lot of moments that they didn’t know were nostalgic because they were living in them, you know what I mean? I think looking back on it, it’s like, you went on your first date, you went to see this movie. Back then, you buy a CD or vinyl, and you might have bought it for a single, but you end up listening to the whole album, then you fall in love with it, and there’s a sort of magic that happens. For the generation that didn’t live in the ‘90s, I think they look at it kind of the way we looked at it in the ‘80s when we were ‘90s kids, as like, “Oh, there’s these nostalgic feelings.” So, I think it brings those sentiments, at least to me. When it comes to shows and movies and things, when you just look at the comments section, even in X-Men, everyone’s like, “Man, this gives me goosebumps when I used to, on Saturday morning, have cereal in my pajamas.” People are sort of looking back at that time, which means, obviously, they were good memories.
GRUSH: And I think, I don’t know the exact time this happened, but I feel like it was around the mid-90s that they were figuring out how to download music. I wasn’t quite hip to it that early on, but I know a friend of mine was into downloading music somehow from the Internet that was young in the ‘90s, too.
STEWART: Napster
GRUSH: [Laughs] Yeah, and now it’s so easy. If you want to hear a song, like “What’s that song?” Shazam is like boom, instantly gratified to hear what you just were excited about. In the ‘90s, the ‘80s, prior to that, you’d have to find that song, and sometimes you would be unsuccessful. I think that process of hunting down music, finding music, having live music. With films, you could start renting VHS tapes at a certain point, but going to the theater was a big deal. Things being on TV, you’d have to record it. I think the ‘90s was kind of like the last moment before things became instantaneous. I mean, that’s not exactly correct, but you know what I mean. I feel like somewhere in there is where we transition to it’s easier to get a hold of music and films and TV shows. I think that the process of getting those things made you want it more. I don’t know. I could be completely off-base there.
Image via Disney+
No, I think you’re tapping into something there. I am currently obsessed with growing my vinyl collection, and it’s been really cool for me to rediscover music from the ‘80s and the ‘90s that I really loved, and be able to preserve it in vinyl and be able to experience the album as it came out initially. So I think there is a magic in that.
GRUSH: It’s really fun. We had to test some vinyl that we have coming out in about a month, so this weekend, we had to, for several hours, listen to vinyl. It’s just so peaceful. I haven’t listened to vinyl for that long of a time in a while. Usually, it’s like, I’ll throw on one side, and then listen to it, and I’m off to something else. This was, like, hours, and it’s very peaceful and pleasant. It’s nice.
That’s how I like to kick off my weekend is picking a vinyl, and that is like the peaceful mode I’m going into my weekend.
ANDY GRUSH: Oh, yeah, that’s good. Love that!
Now, as far as coming up with your sound and stuff, were there any musicians from the ‘90s that you were inspired by to kind of mix into the score for X-Men ’97?
ANDY GRUSH: That’s a great question. I don’t think on my end. Taylor, you go ahead.
TAYLOR STEWART: I don’t think so much musicians, I think more artists and albums definitely really sort of landed. I know that in certain episodes, certain artists inspired things, like Michael Jackson’s Thriller inspired Episode 3. There were just different things. Prodigy inspired some stuff a little bit; Radiohead’s OK Computer, in ’97 that came out, and that inspired an episode very much because it’s during that era. It definitely influenced music. Even compositions in a lot of ways, because a lot of composers were getting the new drum machines, getting into synthesizers, and it’s the same synths and drum machines that the bands are using. So Depeche Mode, you’re going to hear Depeche Mode drum machine on Rain Man or something. You know what I mean? It all kind of weaves together. So I think more so artists, I’d probably say. Doesn’t that seem right to you, Andy?
STEWART: Yeah, that seems right. I know I was deep-diving. Taylor’s kind of the mad scientist, so I was deep-diving more. I’ve only recently started acquiring a hefty amount of synths in the last few years. I was kind of deep-diving on finding some interesting sounds and synthesizers, and came across a guy who was gifted a vault of floppy drives that used to go into synthesizers that Genesis used. That spawned like a whole deep dive, like two-and-a-half days of just finding sounds from old synths based on what that was. That was a lot of fun. It didn’t actually end up yielding anything that I could use in the show, but I feel like it all connects and works in a way that inspires.
The Newton Brothers Reveal How They Updated the Classic ‘X-Men’ Series’ Theme
Obviously, we need to talk about the iconic theme music. For me, musically it sounds nearly the same as the original theme song from X-Men: The Animated Series. Can you share the subtle differences that you made to the theme?
GRUSH: That theme is perfect as is, you know. I mean, it’s perfect. So, when we went to tackle that, we kept that in mind. It’s written. Everyone loves it. There’s no need to mess with the song. Ron [Wasserman] wrote, in my eyes, a perfect piece of music. We really just came into it by updating some of the production sounds. As time goes by, production quality can increase. I don’t want to say it can increase, the technology just gets better. That doesn’t mean it’s better just because it’s newer. It’s just the sounds are different. So, we use some very old synthesizers. We use plugins that are computer synthesizers, and then we had access to an orchestra and a choir, so we kind of used everything at our disposal. We had Nili Brosh play the lead guitar in it. She just brought a quality to it that’s really cool and fun. All the musicians that we used in Vienna also brought a fun quality to it. There’s something about being in a room with musicians who are experts at what they do and having them just really dial in to what’s happening. We really tried to follow the blueprint of what was there and update it and keep it in the same vein of being fun and not changing too much, if anything at all.
STEWART: For some experiments, we did do more modernized versions of it and some variations of it. I think what the conclusion is, is that some of the sounds that are used that people may say it sounds like, “Oh, that sounds ‘90s or that has a ‘90s sound.” I think if you change that, it just immediately changes the way when you turn on the show, it doesn’t really transport you back to the ‘90s. It makes you feel like you’re more in today. We specifically wanted the intro to not feel like that. So, that’s kind of why we tiptoed in details on that part.
GRUSH: Taylor, you reminded me — I kind of blacked out on this — we did how many versions? We did, like, five, six or seven versions of the main title, right? We produced all of them differently. Like, “Here’s a super modern version of it. Here’s an all-synth version of it. Here’s a quiet version of it.”
STEWART: The quiet version, that was great, too.
GRUSH: They all have a thing, and that’s where it’s really helpful to have the great team that was involved because, really, Taylor and I can do what we do, but I was so grateful to have the team that we had on this. We play stuff for them, and they instantly would say, like, “Oh, this is great, but do this,” or, “Can we do this?” Or, “This is perfect.” It was just really collaborative, which was really great. They really helped us sort of dial this in.
The Newton Brothers Tease Upcoming ‘X-Men ‘97’ Moments They’re Excited For Fans to Watch
Okay, we’re still in the first half of this first season. Obviously, no spoilers, but are there scenes that you’ve scored that you’re excited for fans to watch? And if so, what can you hint about them?
STEWART: There are definitely scenes that I’m excited for fans to watch. Those specific scenes, I can’t get into the details specifically because so, so much is happening, so much changes. What I loved about the original when I was a kid is how much would happen in 30 minutes, how much would change. I feel like the shock and awe of what happens in this season and where it goes also gives that same feeling of, like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this has happened. Oh my gosh.” There are key moments that, especially for me in Episodes 5 and 9, that I was just like, “Whoa,” and my mind was just blown. Musically, they were very, very fun to write, too, because we can really dive into actions and emotions. The writing on the show is so good, and with the way that you don’t expect certain characters to do something, and then all of a sudden they do it. A lot of times, like life, they expand and they change, and so it was really fun. But I definitely wish I could say what happens. There’s one character that does something that’s just so… Yeah, it’d be very fun to talk about. [Laughs]
GRUSH: Episodes 1, 2, and 3 are out now. I mean, the whole end of Episode 2 was really fun to score — that whole Magneto speech. It’s such a powerful speech. Everything that he’s saying when he’s up above Earth, it lands heavy for every single person. That was a lot of fun to sort of be a part of that. And like Taylor said, I wish we could say more about things to come. But actually, something [Taylor] said was so spot-on. Every time we would watch a new episode, it would be a holy cow moment, like, “What? What?” Every episode just keeps stepping up, which is really fun. Yeah, I’ll leave it at that for now [Laughs]
That’s fair enough. But I do want to know, as you’ve been working on this, do you have a favorite X-Men to score scenes for? Do you have a new favorite character now that you have been a part of this?
STEWART: For me, my favorite character is probably Magneto and then Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith). Interestingly enough, when we started the show, we both kind of had preconceived ideas of who our favorite characters were based off the original series, the comic books, movies, and just all kinds of things. I don’t speak for Andy, but when we started, all of a sudden, our characters were changing, like who we liked, who we kind of fell in love with. So for me, Magneto, where he comes from in terms of his family and them dying, and just the hardships he’s had, his brothership with Xavier and that sort of connection, to then now where he is and what he’s doing with the X-Men. I think it’s just very captivating that character and how strong and powerful he is. Also Storm. I mean, Storm’s amazing. So, I think those characters for me. I didn’t start out with those characters, but that’s kind of where I landed.
GRUSH: Similarly, I kind of started with Magneto. That was my character. Throughout the season, I came to really enjoy — this sounds so boring — Beast (George Buza), just because of the calm and pragmatic sense that he brings to situations. Maybe that’s just a reflection in my own life, but I really appreciate how he tackles things. So it’s a strange one. Also he’s blue, and I love the color blue. I’m so boring, but there it is.
Image via Disney+
I don’t think there is anything boring about the steady presence of Beast, okay? More love for Beast! I’m here for it.
GRUSH: What about you? Do you have a favorite character at this moment?
Obviously, I really love Storm. I think seeing her again has just been so awesome. I hated the end of Episode 3. Seeing her again, it’s like, “Yes, let’s bring her back into the fold.” I love Storm, but also I really love Scott Summers. He has really come back to reminding people he’s not just this milk toast guy. [Andy Grush and Taylor Stewart chuckle] There’s so much going on with him as Cyclops, and I love his relationship with Jean Grey. So seeing him back again and really struggling with his place with the X-Men right now has just been really fascinating for me.
GRUSH: That’s great. Oh, that’s awesome.
STEWART: That’s a great answer.
I can’t wait to see the rest of the season and see how that just evolves and changes. Because, you know, one week it could be Scott, and then the next week it could be Jean Grey again. Or it could be Wolverine, or another new character that comes around.
ANDY GRUSH: That’s great.
You’ll Be Needing Kleenex for Mike Flanagan’s ‘The Life of Chuck’
Image via Netflix
I’m almost wrapped up for time, but I do have one more question for y’all. Because you are frequent collaborators with Mike Flanagan, and Collider, we love Mike Flanagan, with The Fall of the House of Usher and coming up soon, The Life of Chuck. I’d love to know if you can tease anything about what you’re working on for Life of Chuck? And since you’ve worked with Mike Flanagan before, has your process changed from project-to-project with him, or have you seen it be a bit more consistent? Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?
STEWART: What a good question.
GRUSH: That’s a great question. I mean, to answer in reverse order, the process is a similar process, but it’s different every time. Is that right, Taylor? Just in that we don’t want to bore Mike. We want to keep it different, but we know the things that we need to do. And in doing that, it’s a lot of exploration. Especially early on, we have to sort of come to the table with some interesting ideas. Sometimes they’re horrible, and sometimes they land just right. Life of Chuck was no exception. It’s very different from anything we’ve done for Mike and Trevor [Macy], isn’t it, Taylor? Is that right to say?
STEWART: First of all, it’s a drama. It’s not a horror. For me, personally, the first screening we had of it and I watched it, I was just a wreck after watching it. It was so emotional. He has that quality about his writing, Mike does, and the way he directs, and capturing these characters he’s created. But that particular film, it’s definitely a Kleenex situation. [Laughs]
GRUSH: It’s a good film, and we’re actually done with it. We finished it. We wrapped it, like, two weeks ago.
STEWART: I’m not sure when it’s being released just yet, but yeah, it’s a real treat. It’s a very, very special film. Very special project. And the acting is superb. Mike and Trevor and everyone else… You definitely don’t want to miss it.
X-Men ‘97 is available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.
WATCH ON DISNEY+