Was composer Ramin Djawadi inspired by a popular Israeli song from the ‘70s when he penned the theme to Game of Thrones?
The opening seconds of the theme to the popular HBO series sound strikingly similar to those of “Song of a Mundane Day” by Israeli singer Ilanit.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed in Israel. “The cello strings that characterize the soundtrack should not be unfamiliar to the attentive Israeli listener,” wrote Zachary Keyser in The Jerusalem Post. “In fact it nearly has an almost exact identical opening sequence – one hard to mistake to those who love the show.”
In 2017, Djawadi told NPR spoke about melodies that “stick with you” and said he hummed the GoT theme after watching a rough cut of the show’s opening visuals.
“As I was driving back to the studio, I had the idea to the theme,” he recalled. “That little melody can just come at any time.”
Djawadi was born in Germany to an Iranian father and a German mother but studied music in California. Before composing the GoT theme (for which he won an Emmy last year) he was known for scoring the TV series Prison Break as well as the Toronto-shot movie Pacific Rim and made-in-Toronto series Breakout Kings and The Strain.
Ilanit, whose real name is Hanna Dresner-Tzakh, is a 71-year-old singer who was well known in Israel from the late 1960s to the ‘80s. She has not commented publicly on similiarities between her song and the GoT theme.
“Judge for yourself,” wrote Keyser. “Should Ilanit be credited for having contributed to the GoT Main Theme?”