"Hanging by your fingernails": How The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger found the perfect intro song for Slow Horses 

Strange Game, the Slow Horses opening theme song, becomes a perfect match for Jackson Lamb's unique world portrayed in the show. Director James Hawes and music supervisor Catherine Grieves always wanted Slow Horses to have a theme song that was not just music to introduce the credits. They wanted it to help build the required world.

The show has a British tone, and the director for this song needed someone who embodies grit and swagger at the same time. Mick Jagger's name came to his mind. While initially it seemed like he might not be creating for them, they ended up getting lucky. Read on to know more.

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This is how Mick Jagger found the perfect intro song for Slow Horses

The song titled Strange Game becomes the opening theme track and helps viewers enter into the quirky world of Jackson Lamb smoothly. The lyrics of the song go like:

“Surrounded by losers, misfits and boozers,

Hanging by your fingernails,

You made one mistake,

You got burned at the stake,

You’re finished, you’re foolish, you failed.”

The lyrics suggest the marginalized and flawed characters of the show and call them "misfits" within society. It hints at how, if you fail once, you are considered nothing but a loser.

While speaking with Variety, the composer Daniel Pemberton reached out to Jagger via email and asked him if he'd be interested in a TV theme song. Jagger, the legendary Rolling Stones singer, was already familiar with the world of Slow Horses because of the book series and liked the vibe.

“It’s quite a popular series of books, so I knew what it was about. I knew the vibe really well, so as soon as [composer Daniel Pemberton] sent the track to me, I just dashed off a few pages of notes of what I thought it was about. It came very, very quickly, which is always a good sign.”

It was during COVID when the crew was mostly working from home. Therefore, all the collaborations took place over Zoom or by sending demos remotely. Without taking much time, Jagger wrote the lyrics, recorded them on his iPhone, and sent them to the composer, whom he loved working with.

Jagger wanted the song to be from Jackson Lamb's lens:

"It's quite irreverent, but the Gary Oldman character is irreverent," continues Jagger. "It's also slightly eerie, so it combines those two things. You don't want to make it too serious."

They landed on the title Strange Game when Jagger sang "it’s a strange game" in a softer, mysterious voice, which then became the central hook in Slow Horses.

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Here is why the song worked the best in Slow Horses

The lyrics directly reflect the main theme of the narrative: how some spies who have screwed up in their past are trying to achieve some respect in this "Strange Game." They are branded as losers because they failed once. They are desperate not to be misfits, are flawed, but are still trying. This merges cynicism, hope, and humour, just like the show's world.

This is why the tone of the song in Slow Horses is slightly eerie, irreverent, and not too serious, but also has an underlying weight suggesting that these misfits will rise or carve an identity sooner or later.

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Mick is a lead musician, singer, and songwriter and one of the founding members of the legendary rock band The Rolling Stones. Slow Horses Season 4’s climax is about to drop on October 9, 2025. Catch the show only on Apple TV.