Songfacts®:

• The Americans, which ran on FX from 2013 to 2018, starred Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as a pair of KGB agents who pose as an American married couple during the Cold War. Like the rest of his music for the Soviet spy drama, composer Nathan Barr was careful not to be too heavy-handed with the taut title theme. "We definitely wanted a Russian flavor without going as over the top as writing a Red Army Russian choir," Barr told The Hollywood Reporter. "I use a hammer dulcimer. And for one reason or another, that sound - when a theme is played on that or played with mallets inside a piano like a prepared piano - that's a sound that sounds Russian to people. I think it gives a flavor of that part of the world."
• The theme song's melody was also woven into the fabric of the show's score throughout the series. Said Barr: "I was really happy when I came up with that melody and it became the main title of the whole show, and had a real role throughout."
• Prior to The Americans, Barr was a composer for the HBO series True Blood. He also scored a number of Eli Roth's horror movies, including Cabin Fever (2002), Hostel (2005), and Hostel: Part II (2007).
• This was nominated for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music at the 2013 Primetime Emmy Awards but lost to Da Vinci's Demons by Bear McCreary.
• Barr used an upright piano that he sawed in half and plucked with his fingernails to create The Americans theme.
• Throughout its run, The Americans also made excellent use of late '70s and '80s music to reflect the show's time period, including Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" and Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" in the pilot episode and U2's "With Or Without You" in the finale.