This new season of Hazbin Hotel upped the ante in many ways, from familial relationships to shocking character reveals. The growing pains felt in season one have ultimately been smoothed over, paving the road for a much grander–and more emotional–season three.
A key aspect of Hazbin Hotel is, of course, its music. With its stellar cast of Broadway stars, along with an emo legend making a supporting appearance, it is a given that the show would use music to its advantage. And with a writing/composing team like Sam Haft (who is also part of the band The Living Tombstone) and Andrew Underberg, the music becomes as much of a part of the show as the characters.
I sat down recently with Haft to catch up and chat all things season two, especially the back half of the season. In a conversation earlier in the season we discussed the rankings of the season’s songs, and we revisited it in this one to see if Haft’s predictions were correct.
“The audience shocks me once in a while.”
“‘Vox Dei,’ real sleeper hit,” said Haft as he went through his list. “I thought because it’s so short, I put it much much lower. I put it towards the bottom, not because I didn’t have confidence in it as a song. I was just like, this is so short. You know, the two shortest songs in season one were ‘More Than Anything (Reprise)’ and ‘It Starts With Sorry.’ And those songs weren’t that high in the list because they were so short. So, I thought I thought ‘Vox Dei’ would be lower.”
One of the top 10 songs was “Don’t You Forget (Reprise),” which I also chatted with series star Amir Talai about for the Hazbin Hotel Pod. A surprise upset landing at number 16, though, was “Piss (A Love Song),” which to Haft was one of his own most-played while working on the music.
We also chatted the influence of emo music, and how Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump is able to transcend generations by not only being in a band, but also making music for children’s shows.
“You know, for my kids, Patrick Stump is also the guy who makes the music for Spidey and His Amazing Friends,” said Haft.
“The animation really dictated the way that that worked on screen”
One thing we went into detail about was the subtle changes of the streaming versions of songs versus the show versions. One notable change in season 1 was “Loser Baby.” It was cut off in the show, but finished in the streaming version.
In season two, Abel (Stump) is joined by the ghostly harmonizing voice of his father, Adam (Alex Brightman) in the finale song “Hear My Hope.” What you hear in the show is slightly different.
“So the place that Adam comes in the streaming version is where he was intended to come in. Initially, the idea was as soon as Abel puts on the helmet and kind of decides to uh embody his dad and decides to really kind of step up and try to shut Lute (Jessica Vosk) down. As soon as that happens, we wanted Adam’s voice to come in and sort of be this low octave that complements Patrick’s voice and becomes this it becomes much clearer that he’s that he is embodying that. But what ended up happening was the animation really dictated the way that that worked on screen. So, in the animation version, I believe he doesn’t fully put his helmet on until the very last line. And that’s when we see the hallucination of Adam behind him.”
You can stream all episodes of Hazbin Hotel on Prime Video now.
(featured image: Prime Video)
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