Dear friends, I write this from my bed overstuffed with rice and slightly delirious, hated by my own blood because I simply cannot stop singing Toss a Coin to Your Witcher. Not only did I force distant relatives to watch snippets of Netflix’s The Witcher between festive meals, but I somehow turned the lyrics of Mariah Carey‘s iconic tune All I Want For Christmas Is You into TOSS A COIN TO YOUR WITCHER, O’ VALLEY OF PLENTY, O’ VALLEY OF PLENTY…
It’s a real problem, I tell ya what.
[jwplayer YZBp9XHQ]
Aight, if you have no idea what I’m going on about then allow me to babble on for a couple of hundred words. The Witcher is Netflix’s latest work of art. It’s an eight-part series based on the fantasy books by Andrzej Sapkowski, with – I assume – some visual inspiration from the games. It stars extremely stacked bloke Henry Cavill as monster hunter Geralt of Rivia, and a couple of familiar faces like Lars Mikkelsen (Sherlock, House of Cards) and Shaun Dooley (Broadchurch) but the main cast are relatively made up of newcomers. Anya Chalotra stars as Yennefer and Freya Allan as Ciri.
In episode 2, Four Marks, we meet a character named Jaskier (Joey Batey) otherwise known as Dandelion. He’s a ridiculous bard who you love almost immediately, and who invites himself on Geralt’s adventures so he can get that good content for future songs. One such tune is Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.
So after binging the series, I did what any normal fan would do – I stalked all the actors and consumed a bunch of information to distract myself from the fact that season 2 probably won’t come out until 2021. HahHAHAhah. ANYWAY, it turns out the writers of the delicious song almost put together a rap version. Just imagine what that would sound like. Christ.
Composers Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli said in an interview that they had written around five or six versions of the song, from medieval to more modern.
“I think we almost at some point wrote a rap version of this song,” Belousova told Decider (really good interview, 10/10 recommend reading). Although showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich thought a rap was a bit too “contemporary” for the series, which is a fair shout.
The song, which I thought only featured in the one episode, actually appears throughout the whole series.
“Sometimes in the tavern you hear this soft music and it’s in the background,” Belousova said. “You don’t always register it. But actually what you hear is a modified version of ‘Toss a Coin to Your Witcher’.”
I don’t know about you lot but I love little details like that. Absolutely bloody quality. I must go re-watch the whole series now, a Christmas treat for myself.
Happy Holidays, my dudes. Please find below a FUN FACT and the highly addictive song – it’ll wiggle into your brain like a [redacted] during a [redacted].
FUN FACT: During filming, Cavill’s muscles constantly wore down the leather of his costume to a point where production kept having to make replacements “at an alarming rate”.
I’m not even a little bit surprised.
