Remembering Mark Snow: A brief oral history of ‘The X-Files Theme,’ from the strange real title to the surprising connection to a Smiths song to the missing lyrics

When you think about The X-Files, a few things instantly come to mind. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s paranormal-investigating FBI agents shining their flashlights into a void. The glow of the Cigarette Smoking Man’s cancer stick. The “I Want to Believe” UFO poster. “The Truth Is Out There” tagline. And the theme music.

Composed by the prolific Mark Snow, the theme was first played in the second episode and would gone to appear in all subsequent episodes of the original series, the two feature films, and the 2016-18 revival.

Snow, who died July 4 at his Connecticut home at age 78, leaves behind a stunning array of classic TV music. His career launched with the 1976 John Travolta telefilm The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (memorably skewered years later on Seinfeld) and included music for Starsky & Hutch, Dynasty, The Love Boat, Cagney & Lacey, Hart to Hart, T.J. Hooker, Millennium, Smallville, The Ghost Whisperer, Blue Bloods, and The X-Files spinoff series, The Lone Gunmen. His work earned 15 Emmy nominations and 34 ASCAP Awards, and in 2014 he received the Career Achievement Award from the Television Academy’s Music Peer Group.

To celebrate his legacy, we’ve assembled a brief oral history of his most memorable song, "The X-Files Theme," which is actually titled “Materia Primoris” — Latin for “first matter” and referring to the primordial substance from which all things are created.

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Chris Carter (creator of The X-Files): The theme music is done by Mark Snow. I sent him to the drawing board with lots of direction. He was working on that during the summer when we were first producing the show. I think that he probably worked on the main title for several months.

Mark Snow (composer): He sent me all kinds of CDs of different groups and music, and he said, “On this one I like the sax here. I like the singing here. I like the drums here. I like the keyboard here. I like this piece of music.” … He said, “I'm not saying copy any of it, I'm just saying that’s where my head's at musically.” OK, so I listen. I come up with something that was what you’d think a sci-fi show theme would sound like. Fast. Loud. And he says, “That’s good, that’s really very good, but it’s just a little overproduced. Let’s try again.” But he was so nice. He was really decent and respectful. Comes back again. Same thing happens. … Third time, exact same thing.

Carter: He came back to me with things that I rejected a number of times.

Snow: I wasn't upset or impatient or anything, I just said, “I have an idea: why don't you” — I didn't say, “Why don't you get lost, and I'll take it from here,” which I implied — [but I said,] “I have an idea. Why don’t you go about your business and I’ll go about mine. We’ll start right from scratch. We’ll throw all this away.” So he said, “OK, good Idea.” And he leaves. And I turn and I put my hand, actually my elbow [and] forearm on the keyboard. And there was this sound effect. This delay echo effect. … I said, “Oh, that’s pretty good.”

Snow began playing with different sounds and effects on his synthesizer and piano, adding them to the four A-note echo until he had nearly a complete tune. “I just really wanted honest and simple,” he explained. But there was still something missing.

Carter: I had given him a Smiths song called “How Soon Is Now?” It has a really interesting guitar, sort of mournful guitar in it. And I thought that's what he was going to take from that song, because that's what I love so much about that song. And what he took in the end was the whistling — Morrissey, he is whistling at the end of that song. And [Snow] turned it into that theme song.

Snow: I just kept experimenting with all kinds of sounds in my library, and here comes the whistle sound. There was this thing called “Whistling Joe No. 126” on the Proteus synthesizer, but [it] sounded pretty good. And my wife, she's hearing this, she walks in and says, “What the hell is that? That's really good, that's really interesting.” … I said, “Hey, you can whistle, too, right? How about humming along with it, or whistling along.” [She said,] “Oh, no. Blah!” Anyway, I got her to do it, and combined it in there.

Snow finally had a completed track. Now it was time to get Carter’s opinion.

Snow: He comes over and he hears it. And in typical Chris Carter fashion, he's listening, he's sitting there, and I'm watching him. I'm watching for any kind of reaction. And not much. And then he finally says, “I like that. That's good. All right, let's go with it.” So I thought, “Boy, that was easy. You know we should have started with that from the beginning.” So that was how the theme came to be.

The track wasn’t completed in time to be included on the pilot episode. But it debuted with the second, “Deep Throat.” The theme became integral to the show and was even released as a single, topping the charts in France and hitting No. 2 in Britain.

And whether he was being serious or just having a lark, Duchovny once claimed that Snow had secretly written lyrics to the instrumental.

David Duchovny (Agent Fox Mulder): I was told to put words to the theme by the composer of "The X-Files Theme." And he said the words were this: "The X-Files is a show/With music by Mark Snow…" That’s it. That’s what Mark Snow, the composer of the song, says the lyrics to the song are.

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Interviews sourced from the TV Academy's Archive of American Television.