The Music of ‘The Gentlemen’ Explained

Old money, new criminals and enough bad behaviour to make the family silver nervous: welcome to The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series, where aristocracy collides with the underworld. With the second series currently number one in the UK, what better excuse to dive deeper into its eclectic soundtrack?

Christopher Benstead’s score swings from grand orchestral flourishes and operatic drama to gritty British textures, while the needle drops throw Ella Fitzgerald, Édith Piaf, Kojey Radical, Jamaican dancehall and Italian pop into the mix. It shouldn’t work, and that’s precisely why it does.

The result sounds like the world Ritchie has built: expensive, dangerous, sharply dressed and slightly unhinged. Here’s how The Gentlemen uses music to sharpen its class clash, crank up the action and prove that cinematic doesn’t have to mean stuffy. Please note: this blog contains plot spoilers.

What’s in The Gentlemen Soundtrack?

So, what music is in The Gentlemen? The short answer: quite a lot. The longer answer involves a gloriously unpredictable collision of an orchestral score with big syncs, ranging from vintage jazz and French chanson to contemporary British rap, indie, reggae and classical music.

At the centre is Christopher Benstead, the composer behind Ritchie collaborations including Wrath of Man, The Covenant and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. His score gives the series its cinematic muscle, moving between sweeping orchestration, operatic drama and rougher, distinctly British textures.

Then there’s a host of unpredictable needle drops, selected by music supervisors Iain Cooke and Ian Neil. Ella Fitzgerald’s playful ‘Old McDonald’ accompanies the end of the first episode after Freddy (Daniel Ings) has committed murder, turning a familiar children’s song into something darkly absurd. Later, Édith Piaf’s ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’ plays during a memorial for the father of Eddie (Theo James), a beautifully grand choice for a scene steeped in wealth, grief and family legacy.

The contemporary choices are just as characterful. Kojey Radical’s ‘Woohaa’ soundtracks Eddie and Freddy entering a house in episode seven, while Gabriels’ ‘Innocence’ opens the same episode. Earlier, The Pharcyde’s ‘Oh Shit’ accompanies the action in episode three, and Delilah Bon’s ‘I Wish a Bitch Would’ soundtracks a particularly chaotic fight.

It’s this mixture that makes the soundtrack so distinctive. There’s no attempt to create one consistent musical identity; instead, every track adds another layer to the world.

When Old Money Meets the Underworld

Contradiction is the magic of The Gentlemen music on Netflix. Grand strings and choirs suggest heritage, privilege and country estates. Then a raw hip hop track or rough-edged indie cut crashes into the picture and reminds us of the seedy underbelly beneath all that polished wood and ancestral portraiture.

Take Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Old McDonald’. On paper, it could hardly be further from a violent crime drama but, in context, its innocence becomes both sinister and funny. That tonal dissonance is textbook Guy Ritchie: violence delivered with a raised eyebrow and a perfectly straight face.

Or consider ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’. Piaf’s voice brings a sense of grandeur and emotional weight to Eddie’s father’s memorial, while the title itself – “I regret nothing” – feels perfectly at home in a story populated by people making increasingly questionable decisions.

Then there’s ‘In a Gadda Da Vida’ by Incredible Bongo Band, used during an episode-six confrontation. Its hypnotic, percussive energy brings a very different kind of swagger to the series, proving that the soundtrack doesn’t need a traditionally “cinematic” sound to make a scene feel larger than life.

A Modern Edge

Contemporary tracks give the series its grit. Kojey Radical’s ‘Woohaa’ brings swagger and kinetic energy, while The Pharcyde’s ‘Oh Shit’ adds a loose, irreverent hip hop feel to the action. Gabriels’ ‘Innocence’, meanwhile, brings something darker and more soulful.

There’s also ‘Starting Fires’ by Lazy Habits and ‘Ride or Die (Hard Mix)’ by HI-LO & Eli Brown, pushing the soundtrack towards more contemporary electronic and hip hop territory. And ‘Nothing is Safe’ by Daveed Diggs’ experimental hip hop group clipping. brings the first season to a suitably dark conclusion.

These choices stop the series from becoming a heritage postcard. The estates may be centuries old, but the music keeps dragging the story back into the present.

Season Two Goes Global

Season two expands that musical vocabulary as Eddie and Susie (Kaya Scodelario) take their operation beyond Britain. The soundtrack becomes more international, reflecting the move into Italy and the wider expansion of their criminal empire.

Italian opera is particularly prominent, with Luciano Pavarotti’s ‘Quanto è bella’ and Maria Callas’ ‘Casta Diva’ bringing operatic grandeur to the series, while Handel’s ‘Concerto Grosso in B Minor’ provides another classical counterpoint. These choices aren’t simply decorative: they amplify the wealth, spectacle and old-world glamour of the new setting.

Naturally, the series refuses to stay classy for too long. Sad Night Dynamite’s ‘Krunk’ brings a contemporary British edge to a party sequence in Milan, while Delinquent Habits’ ‘Return of the Tres’ soundtracks Susie’s trip into the Peruvian valleys. Elsewhere, the season takes in reggae, French house, Italian pop and vintage soul.

There’s even room for Johnny Mathis’ ‘It’s Not for Me to Say’, Ornella Vanoni’s ‘L’appuntamento’ and Louis Prima’s ‘Oh, Marie’. The result is a soundtrack that feels increasingly international without losing the eccentric, genre-hopping character established in season one.

Christopher Benstead’s Score: Aristocracy Meets the Underworld

Christopher Benstead’s The Gentlemen score is where the show’s two worlds really collide.

For the aristocratic side of the story, orchestral arrangements, strings and choral textures create a sense of scale and heritage. There’s grandeur, ceremony and the suggestion that generations of wealth are baked into the walls.

But beneath all that polish is something much rougher. Gritty instrumentation and darker textures bring us back to the criminal machinery operating underneath the surface. The effect is almost architectural: the music builds the estate above ground, then reveals the murky world beneath it.

Season two pushes this in a moodier direction, with Benstead’s score sitting further back in the mix. Its darker atmosphere works particularly well as the story expands into Italy and the stakes become more international.

A Soundtrack That Does the Character Work

One of the smartest things about the soundtrack is how much it tells us without saying anything at all. The distinction between the estate and the underworld isn’t simply visual, it’s musical. Strings, choir and orchestral grandeur suggest status, tradition and old money; rawer sounds suggest risk, violence and the people operating outside polite society.

And the boundaries aren’t fixed. Characters move between these worlds, alliances shift and appearances prove unreliable. The music can follow suit, changing the emotional temperature of a scene in an instant.

That makes the soundtrack more than decoration. It becomes part of the storytelling – giving characters, locations and situations their own musical identities.

What Brands Can Learn From The Gentlemen

There’s a useful lesson here for anyone making branded content. The Gentlemen’s approach shows that cinematic music doesn’t have to mean sweeping strings from beginning to end. In fact, the tension between different musical worlds can be far more interesting.

For luxury, fashion, automotive or hospitality brands, pairing sophisticated orchestration with something rougher and more contemporary can create a sense of tension and attitude. It gives polish a little danger. That’s particularly useful when you want to create luxury brand music that feels contemporary rather than corporate. The trick is to give the audience both sides of the story: elegance and edge, refinement and rebellion, heritage and something that feels unmistakably now.

The same principle applies to film, TV and advertising. If you’re looking for cinematic crime music for brands, don’t just reach for something that sounds dark. Look for music that creates contrast – something that can make a beautiful image feel slightly dangerous or turn an apparently glamorous moment into something more unpredictable.

Finding Music Like The Gentlemen

There’s no single genre that defines the sound of the series, which is good news if you’re trying to recreate its energy. Instead, think in terms of ingredients: orchestral grandeur, British character, vintage influences, gritty instrumentation and a touch of the unexpected.

For anyone searching for music like The Gentlemen, the sweet spot is somewhere between polished and rough-edged. You want tracks with enough scale to feel cinematic, but enough personality to avoid sounding generic.

Our playlist hub brings together cinematic, orchestral and British-flavoured tracks that can deliver that same sense of sophistication with an edge – all fully licensed and cleared for global use.

The Final Word

The Gentlemen’s soundtrack works because it never settles for one mood. Like Guy Ritchie’s storytelling itself, it keeps putting opposites in the same room and seeing what happens.

Grand orchestration meets gritty British textures. Old money meets organised crime. Ella Fitzgerald can sit comfortably alongside Kojey Radical, while Pavarotti can share the bill with Sad Night Dynamite. It’s elegant, dangerous and just a little bit unpredictable which, frankly, is exactly how a soundtrack for The Gentlemen should sound.

Discover More

So now you know all about music in The Gentleman, why not read more of our expert soundtrack deep-dives including How to Find Music Like the Odyssey Soundtrack for Your Content and Why the Music in Outer Banks works. And don’t miss Audio Network’s guides to selecting music for short-form and long-form content, and how to find music for YouTube videos,  TikTok or Instagram.