How ‘Agatha All Along’ Embraced ‘70s Rock with ‘The Ballad of the Witches’ Road’

Agatha Harkness has a long history with music. When Kathryn Hahn’s scheming witch made her debut in WandaVision, her earworm theme song “Agatha All Along” became an immediate smash, hitting the charts and going on to win an Emmy Award. Now, Agatha is back with a new memorable melody that plays throughout her Disney+ series Agatha All Along.

Written by composers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” pops up multiple times in the show, playing in early episodes as a true-crime TV theme song and an a cappella summoning spell, performed by the members of Agatha’s coven. But the song reaches new heights in the fourth episode, titled “If I Can’t Reach You / Let My Song Teach You.” While walking the Witches’ Road, Agatha’s coven encounters a mysterious, 1970s-inspired home. Inside, they find themselves set upon by a dangerous curse, as the recording studio around them bursts into flames.

Alice Wu-Gulliver (played by Ali Ahn) realizes that her rock star mother Lorna Wu originally protected her from the curse with her version of “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road,” first recorded in the 1970s. So, Alice and the rest of the coven pick up instruments to perform their own rendition, rocking out as the studio blazes around them. (Both Lorna’s version and the coven’s performance are available to stream now.)

Executive producer Mary Livanos tells Marvel.com that even in the early days of developing Agatha All Along, she and showrunner Jac Schaeffer knew that music had to be a key part of the story. So they once again recruited the Lopezes, who had previously worked on WandaVision.

“We were so lucky to have them, and they brought their magic to the process and really gave the actors even more to hold on to,” Livanos says of the Lopezes. “The song is incredibly catchy, and anyone who ends up watching the show ends up singing it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stopped in the halls of Marvel, with people letting me know that they just can’t get it out of their heads.”

To prepare, each of the actors practiced their instruments in the weeks leading up to the scene. Alice plays the piano and Agatha sings lead, with Sasheer Zamata’s Jennifer Kale on bass, Joe Locke’s Teen on guitar, Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal on drums, and Patti LuPone's Lilia Calderu rocking the triangle.

“I’d come home from shooting long days, like, ‘I gotta practice!’” Ahn recalls. “But it was so fun to get to jam to that song. How many times do you get to have an original song and actually get to perform it?”

“The looks we had in the episode were so cool,” Zamata adds. “And the actual space, too! I was like, ‘I want to take that couch. Ooh, I want to take that lamp!’”

“I loved my outfit,” Plaza says. “The costumes were insane. Cher was a big reference for my look, and the hair and makeup team killed it.”

But even after all that rehearsal and preparation, the actors say the stakes felt high once they actually arrived on set. Locke remembers feeling the nerves as he stood next to Broadway legend LuPone, listening to her hit those high notes. 

“There were a lot of things to juggle at once!” he admits. “I’m not very good at playing the guitar. I learned the chords, but doing it with the singing and with a big shard of glass coming out of my shirt with a horrible scratchy wig was hard. And they actually set the set on fire, which was great, but warm. It was Atlanta in like April or May, so it was muggy. There was no escaping the heat.”

Still, all the actors agree that once they started singing together, the performance felt just as magical as it looks on screen.

“I’m a closet rocker — or a closet rocker groupie, I can’t decide which one,” LuPone says with a laugh. “I have this voice and when I sing rock, I sound like Ethel Merman. So, I can’t really be a rock ‘n’ roller. But it was so cool to be dressed like Liza Minelli or Chita Rivera and play a tambourine like Stevie Nicks.”

Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+.