Byrne and Pemberton Wrote Musk's End-Credits Anthem About a Master Salesman

Alex Gibney spends four hours pulling Elon Musk apart in his documentary Musk. David Byrne and Daniel Pemberton squeezed the mogul into a single song for the closing credits, and they walked through how it happened at a virtual Q&A during Deadline's Sound & Screen Film event.

The title came out of a brainstorming session the two held outside a London coffee shop. Byrne said he knew the hook the moment he heard it, and Pemberton built the track around the idea that Musk is, above all, a pitchman: a salesman pushing visions that may not match reality.

Pemberton scored the entire film, and he needed a jolt of energy for the finale. Byrne recalled that a dreamy Flaming Lips song was in the mix, so the pair wanted something hard-hitting instead — Gibney put Byrne's name forward, Pemberton liked the fit given Byrne's run with Talking Heads and his own filmmaking work, and the two traded ideas remotely after that first studio session.

It's not Byrne's first lap around Hollywood. He earned an Oscar nomination for the song with Ryan Lott and Mitski on Everything Everywhere All at Once, and he said he'd take more calls if they come in.