‘Game of Thrones’: What Was That Song Podrick Sang?

“Game of Thrones” went a little bit “Lord of the Rings” this week as Podrick Payne sang a capella

game of thrones podrick payne sang a song jenny's song
HBO

(Spoilers ahead for the second episode of season 8 of “Game of Thrones”)

The latest “Game of Thrones” episode was a little bit morose, with everyone in Winterfell emotionally preparing for the fact that a huge army of zombies is about to nail them. There are a lot of scenes of people talking about how they’re gonna die in the morning, and the mood is just not very happy since they now know the Lannister army isn’t going to have their back.

Eventually, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), Tormund (Kristofer Hivju), Brienne (Gwendoline Christie), Davos (Liam Cunningham) and Podrick (Daniel Portman) all gather by a fire and have a drink while they wait for the Night King and his army of the dead to arrive.

Tyrion, near the end of the episode, suggests they sing some songs. And so young Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman) starts singing as the episode shifts into a montage showing what all the characters in Winterfell are doing at that moment.

The song is appropriately mournful in tone since everybody really does seem to think they’re gonna be dead come morning, and it leaves you at the end of the episode with a very specific mood as the White Walkers and their army arrive just as the credits roll.

“We knew we wanted a song in this episode,” co-creator David Benioff said in the post-episode recap. “We’ve had a song in several of the seasons. We hadn’t had an original in a while so this felt like the place for it.”

The song, meanwhile, is one that is mentioned a few times in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” books that “Game of Thrones” is based on. It’s called “Jenny of the Oldstones.”

Here are those lyrics, in case you’re wondering:

High in the halls
Of the Kings who are gone
Jenny would dance with her ghosts
The ones she had lost 
And the ones she had found
And the ones who had loved her the most
The ones who’d been gone 
For so very long
She couldn’t remember their names
They spun her around 
On the damp old stones
Spun away all her sorrow and pain
And she never wanted to leave
Never wanted to leave
Never wanted to leave
Never wanted to leave
Never wanted to leave
Never wanted to leave

HBO also commissioned another version of the song from Florence and the Machine that plays over the end credits, like when they got The National to do “The Rains of Castamere” after the Battle of the Blackwater. You can listen to that on YouTube right here.

Benioff noted that the first verse of the song is in George R.R. Martin’s books, but “we added some lyrics” and longtime “Game of Thrones” composer Ramin Djawadi “came up with the music for it.”

Plus, he added, “Daniel’s got a really lovely voice.”

After an episode this apparently preemptively mournful, which ends with a song like that, it’s hard not to imagine that next week’s episode is going to be a bloodbath. I can’t wait.

Comments