Jeff Russo, composer, Lucifer
by carol hansson
Jeff Russo, Lucifer’s composer from seasons two through to season five, was responsible for much of the music that we heard throughout the series. Music sets the tone – and Jeff did an excellent job!
So please tell us about your role as a composer.
I collaborated with Ben Decter, who's the co-composer. The main job of a composer is to support the narrative and to help along pace and help along emotional content and intrigue and all kinds of things to move the story along that. That’s what the basic idea of what a composer does is in Lucifer. There's an amount of fun that we were trying to add to it. I mean, it's a really super fun show and Tom Ellis plays that character so well that it wasn't like we had a really tough job. His ability really did bring it home -- definitely made our job a lot easier.
So for the music that you composed, was it just strictly the instrumental or were you part of the arrangements for the actual singing episodes as well?
All the singing episodes were arranged by us, me and Ben, and we recorded and produced all those tracks as well.
Those were amazing, the music, and not even just the singing episodes and the musicals I guess you could say, but the music that went along with the different things that happened in the episodes was amazing. Really, really, really good work. I appreciate it. Are there any plans to release the music from Lucifer on any streaming service?
Well, we have released the songs. I think they're up on Spotify and Apple. We did all that. In terms of the score, we haven't really talked about whether or not we were gonna ever release a score album or not. We might. I think that there's certainly enough material there for us to do that for. As an artist, it's always really important to release music that is listenable as an independent thing.
When I like to release scores is when I'm putting together music that makes it an enjoyable listening experience without picture -- because that's really what that's about. The music is normally tailored for picture, so it's not always as interesting to listen to without picture. In the case of Lucifer, there are a lot of tracks that are like that where it wouldn't really make much sense without picture, but there's a lot of music that we've created that would make sense without picture. So we've been talking about it and it just hasn't materialized yet.
Well, I think it's a very, very good idea. The fans would certainly gobble it up. I know I would.
I [will] put the pedal to the metal on [it].
Sounds good. So what did you enjoy most about working on Lucifer?
The performances, especially, again, Tom Ellis is just such a dynamic performer and I think that for me, seeing how that interacts with music was some of the most fun. But I would say the most fun I've had on the show was recording these cover songs that we've done where Tom would come into the studio and sing and a lot of other actors would come in and do that. And starting from that first season that we were working on in season two, that was a lot of fun. That was probably the most fun I think that Ben and I have doing any show. It is the ability to interact with people as opposed to just me and him sitting in a room by ourselves writing the score.
So what was your favorite song or your favorite episode to write for?
I mean, for me personally, Luck Be a Lady, which was early on. That when we recorded the brass section for that, it was just a lot of fun. That was so much fun. But there's so many great, I mean, getting to work with Debbie Gibson in the last seasons that was also a lot of fun for me too. But I Luck Be a Lady. I think hands down is my favorite piece that we did as a cover.
Yeah, Luck Be a Lady was amazing. You were talking about recording in studio for the different cover songs and stuff like that. Are there any plans or does it even exist of any of the video of cast singing?
Yeah, I mean, we all have our iPhones up and we're all recording that kind of stuff, but that's not really our decision to make as to whether or not we can put that out. That's the studio and the networks. They have very strict privacy guidelines, very strict non-disclosures that we have to operate under. So when we do that, I did that for me. I showed my kids, like they enjoyed it but I'm not sure that we're allowed to put that out. Well, we could probably ask if that's allowable, but it would take a lot more than just like, Hey, can we put out this video of Tom singing in the studio? It's not quite as simple as that. I wish it were.
Do you have any upcoming roles that you're working on that you'd like to share?
Well, I'm always fun. It's always fun working on stuff. I'm working currently on the season five of Fargo and Star Trek Discovery, season five. A lot of other cool stuff that I can't really talk about but those things are currently in the pipeline.
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