When Slow Horses first launched in 2022, no one expected the title sequence to provoke the kind of fury normally reserved for casting changes or finale flops.
But Mick Jagger’s theme song Strange Game, a swaggering, sneering blues number written with composer Daniel Pemberton, did exactly that. Reddit threads lit up. YouTube comments split into camps.
Now, as Season 5 prepares to arrive on 24 September 2025, the theme returns once more.
Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb, profiled in Slow Horses: The Unconventional Espionage Drama on Apple TV+, set the tone that Jagger’s theme amplifies.
It still divides viewers. It still crawls under the skin.
The collaboration between Jagger and Pemberton wasn’t born in a boardroom.
It began with an email. Pemberton had composed the instrumental bed and sent it over.
Jagger, already a fan of Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, replied within days.
He sent back rough vocals recorded on his phone, complete with lines like “you made one mistake, got burned at the stake.” The tone wasn’t accidental. It was the assignment.
There’s nothing safe or soothing about Strange Game. The piano lurches like it’s had a bad night.
The strings drag behind. Jagger, somewhere between narrator and menace, delivers every line with theatrical venom.
“Surrounded by losers, misfits and boozers” doesn’t flatter anyone. It’s Jackson Lamb in musical form.
Pemberton described it as wonky noir cabaret. Jagger said it reminded him of Kurt Weill. Both comparisons land.
The lyrics don’t hide behind metaphor. They spill out like classified reports no one asked for.
Each line mirrors the show’s focus on washed-up agents and second chances that probably shouldn’t be given.
Jagger doesn’t sing Strange Game so much as slur through it, catching on phrases like a match on damp paper. The title doesn’t sound like a chorus. It sounds like an accusation.
Reddit users have not reached a consensus. One called it “utterly jarring.”
Another said it fits “too well for its own good.” Some have asked why it hasn’t changed after all this time.
But others defend it for the same reasons. It’s not background music. It forces attention. That discomfort might be the point.
The official lyric video released in April 2022 doesn’t go for elegance. Text stutters across the screen. The visuals are dim and scratchy. It fits. This is not the glamour of espionage.
It’s the paperwork, the regrets, the lunch-stained desks. The video lets the song sit in that world without cleaning anything up.
Pemberton has since said that the brief called for something ugly.
Most theme songs want to evoke mystery, excitement, or prestige. Slow Horses asked for something with no illusion.
A song that didn’t dress anything up. Jagger delivered exactly that. His voice, instantly recognisable, sounds just out of place enough to be perfect.
For all its grime, the song lingers. It’s not catchy in a sing-along way. It gets stuck like a cigarette smell in an overcoat. No real lift, no payoff, just mood.
Three years later, the debate hasn’t cooled. Some still skip it. Others say it sets the tone better than the first scene ever could.
With Season 5 around the corner and Jackson Lamb still sneering his way through the wreckage of other people’s mistakes, the theme returns.
It hasn’t softened. It hasn’t changed. It still sounds like it knows something you don’t.
Maybe the real question isn’t whether the song is good. It’s whether a cleaner, easier theme could ever survive this show’s world without getting eaten alive.
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Full Lyrics to Mick Jagger Strange Game (From The Apple TV+ Original Series ”Slow Horses”)
Discussed throughout the article above. All rights belong to the original copyright holders. Included here under fair use for commentary and critical analysis.
Verse 1
Surrounded by losers, misfits and boozers
Hanging by your fingernails
You made one mistake, you got burned at the stake
You’re finished, you’re foolish, you failed
There’s always a hope on this slippery slope
Somewhere a ghost of a chance
To get back in that game and burn off your shame
And dance with the big boys again
Chorus
It’s a strange, strange game
Strange, strange game
Such a shame, shame, shame
Yes, a strange game
You got to carry the blame
In this strangе game
You’re out on a limb and you’re trying to gеt in
It’s a strange game
Verse 2
You piled up the corpses, exhausted your sources
Living right under a cloud
The odds are against you, the gods haven’t blessed you
You better get back on the rails
Drill down on the data, keep pushing the paper
The damps dripping down on the walls
It’s a million to one, there’s a place in the sun
To dance with the big boys again
Chorus
It’s a strange, strange game
Strange, oh, so strange
You don’t even know my real name
It’s a strange game
You got to carry the blame
In this strange, strange game
You’re out on a limb, trying hard to get in
It’s a strange game
