You already know that Matt Berninger loves helping out any prestige TV show. You want him to sing a Game Of Thrones song? You want him to guest on Bob’s Burgers? He is down. So if a new Will Forte show needs someone to cover the Velvet Underground for its theme song, Matt Berninger is willing to step up.
In this case, the Will Forte show is Sunny Nights, an Australian crime-caper situation that’s about to arrive on Hulu. (It’s been on an Australian streaming service called Stan since December.) Forte and Darcy Carden play American siblings who move to Sydney to start a spray-tan business and get mixed up with shady characters. The show’s theme music is a version of “Who Loves The Sun,” the opener from the Velvet Underground’s 1970 album Loaded, that Matt Berninger recorded with alt-country legend Rosanne Cash. In a press release, Berninger says that he got involved through Sunny Nights director and exec producer Trent O’Donnell:
I’ve been a Trent O’Donnell fan for a long time. We became good friends when he cast my brother Tom in an episode of his show No Activity, and we’ve had a close, creative bond ever since. When he asked me to cover the Velvet Underground for Sunny Nights, I immediately thought of it as a duet with Rose and John [Leventhal] . We recorded it in their Chelsea brownstone last summer. John did most of the work, while Rose and I drank chardonnay in the garden in the sun.”
Below, check out the Berninger/Cash version, the Velvets original, and the trailer for Sunny Nights.
Sunny Nights arrives on Hulu 3/11.
