Cobra Kai creator talks this season's music (and the song they're dying to use one day)

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Cobra Kai season 4, episodes 1-6

When it comes to crafting the perfect Cobra Kai episode, the soundtrack is almost as essential as the karate. And finding the right song for key moments — like a training montage or a finale reveal — is a group effort.

"It comes from so many different places," says Jon Hurwitz, who created Cobra Kai with Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg. "It's a combination of, we'll write songs into the scripts, we have an amazing music supervisor, and our editors are awesome when it comes to, they have their own bins of music."

Poison, Ratt, Journey, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon — the Netflix comedy has used them all, and in season 4, the kick-ass needle drops continue. For the episode 5 sequence in which Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) makes a series of ill-conceived efforts to recruit female students to his Eagle Fang dojo, the team chose the perfect song: Mötley Crüe's raucous 1987 jam "Girls Girls Girls."

"I believe 'Girls Girls Girls' was written into the script," says Hurwitz. "A lot of times we write things into the script, but sometimes we'll write something into the script that we can't afford. I mean, our fantasy is having the kind of music budget that would allow for us to have nonstop AC/DC and Bon Jovi and Guns N' Roses."

One AC/DC song in particular almost played a major role this season. In episode 2, Johnny puts Miyagi-Do sensei Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) through a grueling Eagle Fang training session, which the creators wanted to set to AC/DC's famous 1990 head-banger, "Thunderstruck."

"We had 'Thunderstruck' written into the script," says Hurwitz. "We've written 'Thunderstruck' into the script several times over the years, and we've never been able to afford it in that moment or to make that choice [to spend the money on it] right now." Initially, adds Hurwitz, he and his fellow creators thought there was no way they could set the training montage to any other song, but then Cobra Kai's music supervisor, Michelle Johnson, stepped in with different options that had the same macho-metal feel. The winner: "Breakin' Outta Hell" by the Australian rock band Airbourne.

"Michelle Johnson has done an amazing job, she's been phenomenal in understanding the tone of the show," says Hurwitz. "She'll pitch us many, many songs or send music to our editors and we'll narrow it down. There's nothing we love more than finding the right song for a montage."

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