How a song that tormented a Walking Dead character was adopted by ICE to torture protestors
Jim Bianco’s life changed thanks to The Walking Dead. A struggling singer-songwriter who flipped houses for a living, Bianco gained fame when his song, “Easy Street”—recorded with the Collapsible Hearts Club—was licensed the show four years after it was written and dumped on the internet. It came with a bit of a caveat, though: “Easy Street” was used not as an emotional episode-closer or a bit of interstitial music, but rather as an instrument of torture. In season 7's “The Cell,” Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon is, along with the viewers, forced to endure the chipper tune’s bug-eyed medley of horns, banjo, and optimism over and over. And over. And over.
The song gained a certain amount of infamy. Austin Amelio, who plays Dwight, said on The Talking Dead that fans have “trolled” him with it. On the same episode, rapper Lil Jon—a TWD fan, apparently!—said he hates it. Reedus himself spoke about it following the episode’s airing: “You know, I didn’t hear that song until the episode came out. We didn’t hear that song while we were filming. We were just imagining a song. Then in the script, it was like a kids song, and that’s what I expected it to be and then that ‘Easy Street’ came on and I was like, ‘God this song sucks.’”
