Explosions In The Sky inspired Friday Night Lights’ emotional score

Listen to EITS’ “Your Hand In Mine” next to Walden’s credit song, and “Friday Night Lights Theme” does sound like a slightly less impressive EITS song. But Walden does a good job imprinting the feeling of “Your Hand In Mine” for the credits, starting soft and melancholy before growing in intensity. Like the show, a few beats quickly turn into something deep and profound, a dry Texas landscape giving way to an abundance of rich stories. Most of that opening sequence doesn’t even show football, rather the town of Dillon and the people in it.

So even though technically EITS didn’t do the opening song, through the misconception and the Internet I still discovered and loved “Your Hand In Mine” and the band that made it. Its stirring drums and cascading guitar crescendos and decrescendos are still the sounds I associate with Dillon, Texas, rolling in waves of teenage heartbreak, complicated family relationships, and high anticipation for Friday’s game. I was in college when I got into Friday Night Lights and subsequently Explosions In The Sky, and other friends who were fans of the band often described it as “good study music.” But I could never get behind that, because despite its lack of of lyrics, there’s too much propulsive intensity for me to focus on anything else than the driving energy of each song.