Fuck Yourself Up With the Amazing Music From Last Night's Game of Thrones

I watch Game of Thrones. There, I said it. I watch that dumb, awful show every single stupid Sunday night because I’ve invested so many hours of my life that—at this point—I can’t very well back out now. I generally watch the first few minutes focused on my meal (I don’t take my first bite until the credits have finished), and spend the remaining 45 minutes staring at the TV with a look on my face that is somewhere between profound repulsion and indifferent confusion.

But even though David Benioff and D.B. Weiss haven’t quite figured out how to create a story I find satisfying on a weekly basis, every once in a while—perhaps twice a season—an episode reminds me of why I’m there in the first place. The opening of Sunday night’s season finale was a rapturous 20 minutes of television—an unnerving ballet of characters gliding into place until, with a blinding flash of unnatural green, Cersei calls, “Checkmate.”

“Light of the Seven,” the track (by GoT’s longtime composer Ramin Djawadi) used for that opening act was perfect, if atypical, piece of music for the show. Though Julianne and I are’t quite certain whether or not the first time a piano had been used in Djawadi’s past GoT arrangements, it was at least the first time one had ever been used it to such thrilling effect. And the cellos? It’s like they’re whispering, “You are going to die.”

Listen to it all day, and give your life a soundtrack that screams, “Valar morghulis, kweens!”