25 Songs That Inspired ‘The Vampire Lestat’ Soundtrack: Chappell Roan, David Bowie & More

In the new season of AMC’s cult horror series Interview With the Vampire (now rechristened The Vampire Lestat), the eponymous vamp is setting the record straight — or, at least, attempting to.

After his ex-lover Louis (Jacob Anderson) publishes a book exposing the ups and downs of their century-long romance, Lestat (Sam Reid) responds in kind by commandeering his neighborhood garage band and hitting the road with a catalog of all-new rock songs erratically chronicling his side of the story.

Composer Daniel Hart, who evocatively scored the first two seasons of the show, was tapped to write 20-plus original songs this go-around — a task that mined his experience touring alongside musicians like David Bowie, Radiohead and more. He also took on an active role in the writers’ room. In fall of 2024, to get everyone on the same page about the character’s musical reference points, Hart curated an inspiration playlist for Reid and showrunner Rolin Jones, a truncated version of which he is exclusively sharing with Billboard.

“The original playlist was longer than this one,” he recalls. “But going back through it now — on the other side of making The Vampire Lestat — provided some clarity as to which songs from the original playlist were most important to our creative process.”

Himself (canonically) a composer born in the 18th century, Lestat’s witnessed many eras of music come and go — so his influences prove just as motley. “There is a fair amount of genre-jumping at play here,” Hart says. “That was intentional. We needed Lestat’s music to evolve stylistically throughout the season, as he went on his odyssey.” Because while glam rock serves as an aesthetic bedrock for our preening immortal, the resurfacing of past trauma ultimately leads Lestat’s sound down a rawer and more introspective path as season 3 unfolds.

EPs featuring the songs from new episodes will be rolling out weekly — so, until the complete soundtrack is available to stream, Hart is giving a taste of what’s to come below.

“It’s not necessarily a one-for-one playlist,” he adds. “If you put these songs and Lestat’s songs side by side, you won’t always hear direct correlations. But I tried to pick songs for Rolin and Sam — and now for you — that would show both the breadth of Lestat’s compositional abilities, and songs that were imbued with the kind of structure or showmanship I was chasing after in my own writing.”

In the list that follows, Hart unpacks a few of these inspirations in his own words. Listen to the full playlist here.

Sam, Rolin and I have all spoken at length in interviews about how David Bowie was one of our first and biggest touchstones for Lestat. His incomparable musicianship, revolutionary performing and perpetual examination and reinvention of self via alter egos all felt like the Lestat we knew, and the kind of rock star we wanted our Lestat to be.

I was lucky enough to be in a band (The Polyphonic Spree) that opened for David Bowie in 2002 on his Reality Tour. I watched the show every night. He still performed songs from Hunky Dory on that tour, especially during encores. His ability to use esoteric subject matter as a foundation for writing hit songs always blew me away. And he was clever and ultra sexual, snarky, and somehow both self-aggrandizing and self-ridiculing at the same time — i.e., pure Lestat.

The historical and literary references throughout his lyrics always felt like earnest exploration to me, rather than showing off how smart and well-read he was. And, of course, he put on a better live performance than just about anyone I’ve ever seen — completely unafraid, raw, vulnerable, prancing, preening, thrusting, screaming… absolutely meant for the stage. Again, everything we envisioned for our vampire rock star.

I think this song usually gets lumped in with other glam rock because it’s early ’70s T. Rex. But it feels much more universal to me. The blues are in there; it’s anthemic; it’s more primal than “Get It On” or “Jeepster.” Those guitars! I wanted guitar tones like that for several of the Lestat songs this season. Both “Long Face” and our title track, “All Fall Down,” are perfect examples of me and co-producer Danny Reisch looking for that Marc Bolan sound.

I’ve spoken in other interviews about my adolescent music tastes. I listened almost exclusively to 92.5 KZPS, the main classic rock station at the time in Dallas, Texas. And KZPS played a lot of Heart. The pure and unrelenting intensity of this song is what I wanted to carry over into at least some of my writing for Lestat. And the harmonies between the Wilson sisters? Untouchable. I wish I could sing like that.

That’s right, this makes three back-to-back songs in E! The E chord is the bottom of the guitar. It’s the most rock ‘n’ roll you can get. It’s one of the first chords I learned to play. I remember listening to “Fell On Black Days” on the radio, right before making out with my junior high girlfriend, sitting on the floor in her room, with the lights off, surrounded by all of my friends sitting on the floor, making out with their junior high girlfriends. Afterwards, we probably all watched Stone Temple Pilots on MTV Unplugged.

Kurt Cobain was one of the other biggest influences that we talked about for our Lestat. I know Sam Reid watched Montage of Heck as research while we were in the writer’s room working on scripts. Kurt’s rejection of stardom and his desire to unlearn in order to get to a more honest creative place are aspects of his identity that we tried to inject into our anti-hero this season.

Weezer’s second album Pinkerton was considered a flop at the time. Middling chart success, compared to their debut album. It got mixed reviews from critics. Rivers Cuomo disavowed it for years after its release. But the unpolished approach to recording (trying to capture their live sound), self-producing, and lyrics exploring disillusionment with fame and success in an open and vulnerable way have made these Weezer songs the most influential of their career, and the ones I still listen to the most.

We wanted the same darkness and rawness for Lestat, and the guitar feedback you hear on our song “Big Bad Wolf” was an homage to the guitar feedback on “Tired Of Sex.” It all feels dangerous and reckless to me, like the song could fall apart at any moment. When the drums go into half-time at the end for a few seconds? Ugh, it’s just. So. Damn. Good.

Loose Lips Sink Ships is one of my favorite albums of all time. Most of you won’t have ever heard Des Ark’s music before now. I got to see the original guitar/drums duo version of Des Ark (heard on this song) perform at a tiny, tiny bookstore and nightclub in Chapel Hill, N.C. in 2005, not long before they split up, and Des Ark became a mostly solo project of Aimee Argote. It is still one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. It had an immediacy and a sadness to it that loosely reminds me of Pinkerton. I wish Des Ark was still around, but I’m so grateful for the music Aimee put out into the world. 

We discussed possible songs for Lestat to cover for quite a while. While we ended up going with [Billy Idol’s] “Dancing With Myself,” I was really pushing for “Wolf Like Me” at the same time. They have very similar tempos, similar backbeats, 3-chord structures… Of course, “Wolf Like Me” is darker, and lyrically more involved than “DWM,” and I guess I’d written enough darker, more lyrically involved songs by the time we needed to choose a cover.

I could never quite get Rolin Jones on board with thinking of Arctic Monkeys as another big influence for Lestat’s music. But for me, their style, especially on songs like this one, gets closest to what I was thinking of when we were initially crafting Lestat’s musical persona and looking for current artists as references. I heard an interview once with Alex Turner, where he carried on and on about the nap he had just taken. And he was lightly sardonic, and endlessly clever, and he answered the superficial questions he was being asked with the kind of caustic humor we see Lestat serving up to Daniel Molloy in our show.

A song from one of our Vampire Lestat co-stars! The way I anticipated græ in 2020 — I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about an album coming out. And the music video for this song! Moses [who plays Louis’ lawyer/partner, Lemuel, this season] is a genius. And maybe a real vampire? I don’t think he’s aged in the last 10 years. Or maybe he’s Benjamin Buttoning? What a voice…