Posted in: CBS, Netflix, TV | Tagged: cobra kai, matlock, your friendly neighborhood spider-man

Cobra Kai Composer Robinson on Favorite Callbacks, "Matlock" & More

Composer Zach Robinson (Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man) on his favorite Cobra Kai callbacks, working on CBS's Matlock, and much more.

In his over a decade of work, composer Zach Robinson has accomplished so much in his career, some have been in partnership with fellow composer Leo Birenberg. Together, the two worked on Netflix's Cobra Kai and Obliterated, Roku's Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022,) and Die Hart franchise, Peacock's Twisted Metal, among others. While promoting their work on Disney+'s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Robinson spoke with Bleeding Cool about his favorite Cobra Kai callbacks and growing up with Birenberg on the Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald, and Hayden Schlossberg series, and his work on the CBS reimaging of Matlock.

Zach Robinson on How He and Leo Birenberg Grew Up as Composers on 'Cobra Kai'

Bleeding Cool: There were many callbacks in 'Cobra Kai' to the original songs used in the original 'Karate Kid' films, and I was wondering if you had a personal favorite from the selections from the showrunners Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg.

To the original?

And 'Part II' and 'Part III' in the current and final season.

I can't recall specific types of things, but anything with Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), I am obsessed with and I really like. Terry Silver showing up in a hot tub is maybe my favorite callback because it always happens to be in a hot tub [scene] in 'The Karate Kid 3', pure cinema. I love it. I would take an entire show of that. I really like also the character de Guzman (William Christopher Ford), Terry Silver's henchman. who makes an appearance in Cobra Kai season six. I also love how they retcon these characters and put them back into the series. It's so fun. We have so much fun scoring it, too.

I remember like when they did the Daniel and Johnny sequence, and they were just doing the whole 'Rocky III' sequence with playing 'You're the Best Around' in the background. I was just thinking, "They're really hitting hard with those themes. In retrospect, what do you feel is your crowning achievement on that show?

We finished it, we made it out alive with something, and we are so incredibly proud of it. We both get very emotional talking about it. We grew up with the show. We were 27, [Leo] was a little bit older than me, but we were young when we started the show. I learned a lot about myself and my composing abilities. Looking at how we scored the last couple of episodes of that show or the big fight in episode 10 ('Eunjangdo') of season six.

If you showed the "Zach from seven years ago" that he was going to score that stuff, I'd be like, "You probably have the wrong person for this job." I look back at the whole body of work, and I proudly say, "This is all mine!" It's something that we can be proud of, and on top of that, people love the show. What a blessing that is in our lives to have that and be able to write something we feel so passionate about, and that people also love.

I mean, that's what we're doing. If anything, I'm scared we're going to peak, and now, it's the now, it's the comedown. Luckily, we have 'Spider-Man,' but now, we have a lot of great projects we're looking forward to in the future and like everything we do, we're proud of. 'Cobra Kai' is going to hold a special place in our hearts, and it opened a lot of doors for us.

You're working on another retro show now, which is a new spin, obviously, with 'Matlock.' How did it feel working on that from the 80s field to do a modern take on a classic?

Quite different. 'Cobra Kai' to 'Spider-Man' to 'Matlock' is a very different experience. With 'Matlock,' I do on my own without Leo. I've worked with the showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman before on a previous project, and she brought me into this. I'm so glad she did, and it is such a different muscle for me to write music like that. That's another big IP I'm writing music for now where we want to have our own identity, the theme to 'Matlock,' the original (1986) theme is great, I love that one, but we needed to have our own theme our own identity for the show.

All six seasons of Cobra Kai is available on Netflix. Matlock airs Thursdays on CBS and is available to stream on Peacock. Season one of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is available on Disney+.

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