Picture: Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson (composers of Cobra Kai) at the 75th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
In February 2025, we say goodbye to Cobra Kai on Netflix after six great seasons. Also saying goodbye to Cobra Kai are Emmy-Award-winning composers Zach Robinson and Leo Birenberg, who have spent the last seven years working hard on the incredible and fun music of Cobra Kai. With one more round to go, we spoke to Zach and Leo about the score of the final season, bittersweet goodbyes, and their time working on the series.
Working as co-composers or individually, Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson worked on Netflix projects such as Obliterated, Florida Man, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, and Wrestlers. Most notably, at the 75th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, the duo won the Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited or Anthology Series, Movie or Special (Original Dramatic Score) for their work on Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
Jacob: How did you first become involved in Cobra Kai?
Leo: So we read about Cobra Kai in a trade magazine back in what would have been early 2017 and that it was a YouTube show. We already liked the Karate Kid and had just done another YouTube show, so we thought this would be a good gig for us. So, we made a demo reel and sent it to our agent, and we asked if they could find a way to get in touch with the guys making the show and see if they’d listen to this reel. Then, through the energy of the universe, which never happens, somehow, the reel got into the hands of the guys making the show, John, Josh, and Hayden.
They called us in for a meeting, and they sent us the scripts for the first episode, so we read the script, and it was just super clear immediately from that this was a very special project that was being treated the right way. I remember texting Zach while we were reading that first episodes, it was so clear that this was different, and it was special compared to a lot of scripts you read. So, we went into that meeting, and we had a great time bonding with John, Josh, and Hayden. They hired us right after the meeting. No gig has ever been that easy to get since.
Picture: Zach Robinson and Leo Birenberg
Jacob: How would you describe your score for the final season of Cobra Kai?
Zach: Loud. It’s pretty big and loud. We had a lot to get out of our system since this was the last time we would do this. With every season of Cobra Kai, we go as hard as possible. We’re pretty maximalist. We have a really big score, we use a full orchestra, and we use guitar, bass, drums, choir, synths, keys, and literally everything.
I think the stakes are the highest this year, as have the Sekai Taikai. So every year at the end of the year, at the end of our finale, we’re always like, what will we do next season? Once we’re in it and have the show in front of us, it’s always incredibly inspiring to both of us. And we are fans of the show, so we are just incredibly jacked when we’re watching for the first time. We’re always trying to put that energy into our score. So, I think our directive for the both of us, at least, was, like, let’s, you know, no pun intended, let’s leave everything on the mat. Who knows when we can do this kind of thing again? So, that meant working with musicians we hadn’t worked with before.
The action sequences are a lot more intense this year. They’re a lot longer, and not as many are point-based. Many karate fights in the show are point-based, where it starts and stops. There’s some of that, but there’s just a bunch of different genres. We had the world of the Sekai Takai and the other countries being represented. We had much of that, and you haven’t seen the last five episodes.
Jacob: Despite only being five episodes long, we were introduced to many new dojos and themes, particularly Dublin Thunder, which I thought had some inspiration from Dropkick Murphys.
Leo: We love some Celtic metal. Celtic folk metal. We busted out our enthusiasm for that.
Jacob: And was that a hammer and anvil that I could hear in the Tiger Strike theme?
Zach: Yes, definitely. I think that was actually a Josh suggestion, right? Leo?
Leo: I feel like I remember him saying that! Yeah, we had a ton of fun. We aren’t often introduced to new dojos on this show, and there’s a global syndicate of karate out there, each with its own traditions. All of these dojos have their own story and legacies, so we needed music for all of them. It felt as fun as everything we do back at home in the Valley.
Zach: I laugh, like Leo describes, saying stuff like karate syndicate, and I just laugh because that’s how much fun we have with the show. It’s so over the top, and the music, we’ve been saying this for years, the music needs to be on par with how over the top the show is. The music gives you permission to laugh at what’s going on in the universe there.
I remember the first time we saw the Iron Dragons at the end of episode six. That reveal is amazing. The reveal of the big fight is over. You think the episode’s over, Tori has won with the new Cobra Kai, and there’s a whole nother dojo left. Like Leo and I lost our shit when we first watched that. So our enthusiasm for the new dojos, the new characters, the new style of action was, really, I hope, evident in our score.
Jacob: Throughout the entire show, you can tell you are both having a whale of a time. The score is undoubtedly fun. With it being the penultimate part of Cobra Kai, it felt grander as the stakes were higher, but yeah, you can tell you guys were having a lot of fun.
Zach: Thank you.
Leo: We’re the fun guys!
Zach: We say that all the time. We’re the fun guys!
Jacob: Even though Cobra Kai is the continuation of Daniel and Johnny’s rivalry, it feels very much from Johnny’s perspective, and I think the score reflects Johnny’s character.
Zach: It definitely started out that way.
Leo: I think the first season influenced the core sound for sure. The show is called Cobra-Kai, and it’s not Miyagi-Do. So everything is going to have a bit of that badass 80s influence to it.
Jacob: I recently went back and watching watched the first Karate Kid, and the scores are naturally incredibly different. Decades separate the two scores; there’s the East Asian theme behind Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel, and then with Cobra Kai, the theme punchy strikes first, even with the score.
Zach: It’s exactly what you said. Since season one, Cobra Kai has been the more aggressive. We’ve represented that through metal, and we’ve had synth wave elements for the newer generation. Then, for Daniel, since season one, we’ve always had orchestral-like Conti-esque music.
I think our biggest throwback to the Karate Kid type sound, this part in this season, is probably the Daniel versus young Miyagi fight, like Daniel’s nightmare, which was very clearly like an ode, not even just to Bill Conti, but I think like older scores than that. I love the aesthetic of the fight. They opened the episode up like a grainy film. It’s like you’re about to watch a grindhouse karate flick.
That was very inspiring to us, but yeah, I mean like we, now it’s kind of like, everything’s just smashed together. So there are many times when it’s Daniel, and sometimes you’ll have the kind of Cobra Kai instrumentation, but honestly, everything is so big now that it’s all smashed together. We’ve got bass drums, guitar keys, and the metal rock ensemble with orchestra on basically every single track on the album. There’s still plenty of stuff you haven’t seen yet that takes us back to the roots of season one in that way, too.
Jacob: I think my favorite name for one of the pieces you wrote was Mortal Kwon-Bat
Zach: We are proud of that, too. I think Leo came up with that one!
Leo: Sometimes the track name comes to you when you’re in the, while you’re working on something, and like, it’s just so clear that it was born to be that way.
Zach: Leo also came up with my other favorite one from last season, which is Ghosts of Kreesemas Past, which is literally when Kreese is talking to the ghosts of his past in season five in the, in prison, and I can’t believe that Leo thought of that.
Leo: Shakespeare thought that pun was the highest form of humor!
Jacob: What can fans expect from the score in the final part of Cobra Kai?
Leo: It’s still loud!
Zach: It’s still really loud. However, there are going to be some quiet parts, too. I think for everyone involved in this show, it’s closing the chapter on a massive chapter of everybody’s lives. And I think nothing was left on the mat for everyone. Everything is led out of our system. We’re incredibly proud of the music in the final five, and yeah, it’s different. t’s different than, I think, the five that we just heard. Cause there’s just a lot of stuff still to happen.
Jacob: I look forward to hearing it! That being said, you’ve been working on the show for seven or eight years? How does it feel that the show is coming to an end?
Leo: It’s definitely bittersweet. It’s nice to see a story to its conclusion. That’s a very satisfying thing that you don’t often have to do-
Zach: And rare!
Leo: Yeah, in television, that’s not that coming, but I think that’s wonderful. We’re going to miss it because it’s such fun. It’s insanely fun. John, Josh, and Hayden are unbelievable collaborators. They let us get away with a level of creativity and enthusiasm that you don’t get everywhere, and it’s sad because we’re saying goodbye to something that was just a huge part of our lives. I would say we’ve found our sound and ourselves as people over seven years. We’re pretty young guys and Cobra Kai is always going to be a major part of our lives.
Picture: Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg the creators of Cobra Kai
Zach: Very well said. I think when people hear the stuff that we write for this show, their first reactions have two responses. One is “How did you get away with that?” because there are some big swings that we take on this show, and again, as Leo said, we’ve worked with amazing collaborators with John, Josh, and Hayden, who are amazing.
Then, for me personally, people have known me for a long time, since I was a teenager and started getting into composing and stuff. They hear this, and they say, “Wow, you are legitimately living your dream.” I’ve been a fan of metal. I’ve been a fan of eighties music, and obviously Leo has, too. Of course, we’re in film music and just like to combine all of that into the show. I even watched the most recent five with my wife, and she was just like, “This is so insane. You guys must have had such a blast.” And we did, like writing the Celtic metal and writing the final fight, a 20-minute battle. It’s like a Final Fantasy action RPG soundtrack. I think it’s given us a lot of creative opportunities, and who knows when we will get that again? That’s what’s most bittersweet to me, leaving that behind. I’m always looking towards the future, and I’m sure there will be amazing opportunities. But man, waking up every day and getting to work on Cobra Kai, as hard as it was, it was incredibly rewarding.
Jacob: So, what’s your next challenge after Cobra Kai? What are you working on next?
Zach: We have got your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, which is coming out on Disney+ at the end of January, which we are super stoked about. We’ve been working on that for a long time. So we’re excited about that, and we just started up Twisted Metal season two. So we’re literally getting back into that arena. That’s a really fun one, too. Michael Jonathan Smith is from the Cobra Kai family as he was a writer on the show for all the seasons. He’s a fun collaborator, too, and he lets us be creative and has crazy, wild ideas. And the show is just like batshit crazy. So we love all that kind of stuff whenever we get to go crazy musically, that’s our favorite. That’s our brand, honestly, at this point.
Will you be watching the Cobra Kai finale in February 2025? Let us know in the comments below!
