Forever Young by Audra Mae (alternate version)

When Kurt asked me to find a lullaby to open episode 112 last year, I thought Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” would be great.

This was a very heavy episode culminating with the murder of Donna. Because the script called for the same song to end the episode, I’d have to come up with a different version that could underscore each characters reaction to the tragedy.

This process of discovery generally takes me through some changes, both musically and psychically. In TV, things move really fast, and It’s hard to figure out what is going to work without seeing the picture. Trying to gauge what the scene will ultimately need is highly intuitive to say the least....

One thing I knew for sure - Audra Mae had the voice to sing the song. Ultimately, the sheer emotion of her voice naked, without any instruments backing her up, was as powerful as anything that would carry the closing montage so we did not use this recorded version. We took the instrumentation out and let her solo voice carry the last 3+ minutes of the episode.

Here's Audra singing Forever Young with a pretty awesome band consisting of Val McCallum, Greg Leisz, Larry Goldings, Davey Faragher, Aaron Sterling and yours truly...

Forever Young by Audra Mae