Brandi Carlile Sings the Ted Lasso Theme in the Season 4 Finale

Since the first episode, the Ted Lasso theme has almost always been the same recording: a bright, bouncy song co-written by Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons with the composer Tom Howe, and sung by Mumford. On Wednesday 7 October, the opening titles of the season 4 finale used a different version. Brandi Carlile sang it, and according to Deadline, it is the first time a woman has performed the theme.

The change was small on screen, about 30 seconds of opening titles, but it carried a lot. Here is where the song came from, why the finale needed a new version, how Carlile came to record it, whether it will stay, and how it fits a season in which she has been rebuilding her own songs as well.

The Original Recording and Its One Detour

The theme has two writers. Marcus Mumford co-wrote it with Tom Howe and performed it, and their recording has opened almost every episode since the series began. It is a cheerful, forward-leaning song, built to send viewers into a comedy.

It has been swapped out once before. In the season 2 episode “Beard After Hours”, which followed Coach Beard through a wild evening, the opening used a version by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. Brendan Hunt, who plays Beard and co-created the show, described it to Deadline as a very simple acoustic version.

The show itself has had its own detour. Rolling Stone noted that Ted Lasso originally ended with its third season in 2023, before Apple TV announced a revival in early 2025. The fourth season follows Jason Sudeikis’s coach as he takes charge of a women’s football team, and the finale, “The Departing Lass”, is its tenth and final episode.

Why the Finale Needed a Different Version

Hunt co-wrote the finale with Sudeikis, and he explained the decision plainly to Deadline. The episode opens on a sombre scene, and cutting straight from it into the bouncy original would have felt abrupt. In their first cut, the team dropped in the Jeff Tweedy version instead.

The longer reason goes back further. Hunt told Variety that Sudeikis had talked for a while about the theme eventually reflecting what the show has become. The team on screen had changed from men to women, and Sudeikis felt the song should change too, sung by a woman’s voice. He did not want the switch to arrive suddenly. He wanted the handover to be graceful, and the finale gave him the opportunity.

So the new version had two jobs. It had to fit a quiet, emotional opening, and it had to mark a passing of the song from one voice to another. A quieter, more mournful arrangement, sung by a writer known for carrying a ballad, answered both.

How Carlile Came to Sing It

The connection is a friendship. Sudeikis hosted Saturday Night Live in 2021 with Carlile as the musical guest, and Variety reported that the two have been friends at least since then. Hunt added that Sudeikis has been a fan of hers for years and that he and Sudeikis have seen her perform at several shows.

She had also been heard on the series before. Her cover of “Home” from The Wiz was used in a season 3 episode. When the finale needed a new theme, Hunt told Deadline, the only question was whether she would agree, and she did.

Hunt heard the full recording at Sudeikis’s house, where Sudeikis invited him and his wife over to play it. “I just bawled, absolutely bawled,” he told Variety. He described it as Carlile and her whole band at full strength, and said the 30-second excerpt in the opening titles is only a part of it. He hopes Apple will release the complete recording, and he said the same to Deadline.

Will It Stay the Theme?

That depends on whether the show returns, and on what it needs if it does. Deadline described Carlile’s version as haunting and melancholy, and Hunt was candid about that. He called it a bit funereal, and said he was not sure every episode should begin with that energy. Any decision would come later.

Variety noted that if there is a fifth season, Carlile’s recording could become the show’s theme. For now it belongs to one episode, in the same way that Tweedy’s version belongs to “Beard After Hours”. That is how the tradition of a theme song tends to work on television. The original stays the standard, and other singers carry it for a night when the story calls for a different mood.

What has changed for good is the record of who has sung it. A song first carried by Mumford, and once by Tweedy, has now been recorded by a woman for the first time, on the season that put a women’s team at the centre of the story.

Another Set of New Versions This Autumn

The theme arrived in the middle of a season of reworking for Carlile. On 25 September she released Returning To Myself (Sad Gay Version) digitally through Interscope Records and Lost Highway, according to Consequence. The original album came out on 24 October 2025, so the new edition lands close to its first anniversary.

The edition carries intimate, reimagined versions of all ten songs. Carlile returned to Long Pond Studio to co-produce four of them with Aaron Dessner. “Human” was reworked with the composer and electronic musician Jon Hopkins, who has worked with Brian Eno and Coldplay, and Consequence described the result as an originally electric song turned into a tender piano ballad that keeps building.

There is also a new version of Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes”, available only on the digital edition. According to Grateful Web, a version of it also appears on the soundtrack for Practical Magic 2. A signed rainbow vinyl edition, a one-time pressing sold through her website, was available to pre-order until 1 October and is due to ship on 11 December.

The Records Behind the Sad Gay Idea

The title has a history, and Carlile explained it when the edition was announced. As a teenager, she said, she liked to toy with her own emotions by seeking out songs in a genre she calls “Sad Gay”. She named R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts”, the Indigo Girls’ “Language or the Kiss” and Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” among its standards, along with the soundtracks to Philadelphia and City of Angels.

“You don’t have to actually be gay to let it break your heart into a thousand pieces, it will do that against your will,” she said in the announcement. She added that she rebuilt the album for herself and for her listeners, so that it could take them back to the edge of the bed with her.

That list is the provenance of the project. These are the records she grew up on for that feeling, and the edition applies the same idea to her own songs. It also makes her version of the Ted Lasso theme less of a surprise. Turning a familiar song towards a sadder register is the same idea the album is built on.

Where Carlile Goes Next

The new versions have already been on television. Grateful Web reported that she played four songs on TODAY‘s Citi Concert Series, “Human”, “You Without Me”, “The Mother” and “The Story”, and performed “Church & State” on Jimmy Kimmel Live! the same week.

On the road, she wrapped the autumn leg of The Human Tour in late September. It included three sold-out shows at Red Rocks with Stephen Wilson Jr. opening and surprise appearances from Alanis Morissette and Nathaniel Rateliff, and a filmed concert in Minneapolis, “Be Human”, which has raised more than $750,000 for The Advocates for Human Rights through her Looking Out Foundation. The tour returns next year with dates in the UK and Europe, and the title song of Returning To Myself won Song of the Year at this year’s Americana Awards.

Old television themes have turned up in roots music elsewhere this autumn too. MusicRoots.News recently covered how five guests and a He-Man theme shape the Billy Strings Halloween show. Carlile’s turn is quieter, and it may last longer. If Apple releases the full recording, the Ted Lasso theme will have a second complete version on record, and it will be hers.