The first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has wrapped up, mostly to glowing reviews. People loved getting to know newly minted knight Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his diminutive squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). They loved the back-to-basics storytelling approach and enjoyed the music by composer Dan Romer. This is the first Game of Thrones show not to be scored by Ramin Djawadi, but Romer’s score colored within the lines of Djawadi’s work, giving us big swelling arrangements as well as quieter, softer pieces that fit the smaller scale of the story. And when we finally heard the classic Game of Thrones theme song during the episode “Seven,” it had fans on their feet.
Then came the season finale, “The Morrow,” which ended with the oddest music choice in the history of the Game of Thrones franchise. Over the credits, we hear the country song “Sixteen Tons,” about a coal miner who works hard every day only to get “another day older and deeper in debt.” The song was written by Merle Travis in the 1940s and famously recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955.
Sometimes, Game of Thrones would employ bands to do over an in-universe song in a modern style, like The Hold Steady covering “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” as a rock song at the end of the episode “Walk of Punishment,” or Florence and the Machine covering “Jenny of Oldstones.” But they never included a popular song that wasn’t set in the world of Game of Thrones. “Sixteen Tons” has references to Catholicism (“St. Peter don’t you call me, cause I can’t go”), which doesn’t exist in Westeros, and is very much rooted in American mining culture in the 20th century, far removed from the medieval milieu of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
And yet, the choice makes a weird kind of sense.
How “Sixteen Tons” Relates to ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’
One of the ways A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms differentiates itself from both Game of Thrones and the prequel series House of the Dragon is that it focuses not on the members of noble families but on a normal working stiff: Ser Duncan worked his way up to being a knight, but before that, he was living as a penniless, homeless orphan. If a Targaryen prince decides to loaf around all day, like Egg’s brother Daeron (Henry Ashton), he can get away with it because he can fall back on the family fortune. But if Dunk doesn’t work, he doesn’t survive. His ordinariness is one of the things that makes him so relatable and likable.
So, in a weird way, Dunk’s story resonates with the one told in “Sixteen Tons,” about a miner who works day in and day out for little reward. Read this first stanza and try not to think of Dunk at least a little bit:
Some people say a man is made out of mud
A poor man’s made out of muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that’s weak and a back that’s strong.
But that still doesn’t explain why A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms would use the song at all, since songs about the 20th and 21st centuries seem to be off-limits for the franchise. But then again, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms isn’t like other shows in the franchise. It doesn’t have a giant sweeping cast with dozens of characters, just two main ones we follow from place to place. It doesn’t jump all over the map from episode to episode, but is set in one location the whole time. It has more humor, lower stakes, and shorter runtimes. It’s a different kind of Game of Thrones series and can get away with doing different things. Using a song like “Sixteen Tons” is a way to underline that fact and to explore some of those boundaries.
‘GoT’ Vet Translates ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Songs
Ser Arlan of Pennytree sang a mysterious song in Dothraki. And we now have an official translation from a ‘Game of Thrones’ veteran.
So far, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has made great choices. It feels different from its sister series in ways that are interesting and refreshing. Hopefully that continues as we go into Season 2, which is set to air sometime in 2027.
- Release Date
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January 18, 2026
- Network
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HBO
- Showrunner
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Ira Parker
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Peter Claffey
Ser Duncan ‘Dunk’ the Tall
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This story originally appeared on Movieweb
