There’s something about Track 17 on the majority of the soundtracks. Season 2’s Track 17 is Prepared to do Anything, heard first in Belgravia when Sherlock comes back from Battersea and realises that his Mrs Hudson has been abducted, and also in Reichenbach when Jim shoots himself on the roof of Bart’s and then when Sherlock goes over the edge; Season 3 is Redbeard, the second half of which still blows my mind every time I hear it (it’s the bit where Sherlock drags himself up the stairs and back to life); and Season 4 is You Look Different, the scene where Sherlock meets the real Faith in the morgue at the hospital.
If someone told me that I was being sent away to an island for the rest of my life and could only take certain items with me and I could never have anything new after that, and if they said that I could take just one episode (or even just three episodes) of Sherlock with me, I would negotiate with them. I would say, “If I don’t take any of the episodes, can I instead take the soundtrack to Season 3?” And if they agreed, I would consider that a good deal.
Obviously I would miss the episodes immensely, but the S3 soundtrack is truly phenomenal. There are so many good tracks – to the extent that I couldn’t even chose a favourite top ten – but the ones that move me the most are the five consecutive tracks towards the end, starting with The Lie in Leinster Gardens through to and including The East Wind. Even after listening to them a zillion times, I still cry during the run of those tracks. And when I say cry, I don’t mean that my eyes get a little teary. I mean that tears are streaming down my face and at least at one point, usually either during The Problems of your Future or The East Wind (and sometimes both), I can’t help but let out a sob. It’s not because I’m remembering what happened onscreen: it’s the music itself. The arrangements are so very emotive and they just tear at my heart.
There’s one track that I can never only listen to once, and that’s Lazarus. I loved Prepared to do Anything to bits; it’s my favourite track for Season 2 and I played it to death between Seasons 2 and 3. So when it started to be reprised as Lazarus in Season 3 while Sherlock was telling Anderson his version of the Fall, I actually growled out loud and startled the people I was watching the episode with. Internally I was snarling, “Oh, no! They’re going to change it and bugger it up!” But they didn’t. They kept the absolute core of Prepared and didn’t change it at all, but what they did do was make it bigger. More instruments, lots of little new riffs around the core, but the core itself was unchanged. And there’s a chord near the beginning, before the main theme even starts, that ... well, to be delicate I’ll just say that there is writhing on my seat. And then the final chord before the main theme starts ... well, that finishes me off. Ahem. That’s not the reason why I always listen to it more than once (honestly!) but I always have to play it at least twice simply because it’s so magnificent. But despite that, I still love Prepared to bits, and it doesn’t feel lessened by the lack of extra bits.
