Beam & Giddens Cover Bob Dylan For Parenthood Finale

The last episode of NBC’s long-running family drama Parenthood aired on Thursday night, and if you haven’t seen it yet you may want to stop reading at this point. Parenthood told the story of the Braverman clan, a flawed but extremely lovable family that dealt with issues many of us have faced. The Planet Waves version of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” was the Parenthood theme song for the duration of its run, so it was fitting the finale came to a close with a gorgeous cover of the song.

The show concluded with a montage displaying what the future held for each wing of the Braverman family featuring a “Forever Young” soundtrack. As part of the montage, we see Iron & Wine (aka Sam Beam) and Rhiannon Giddens of Carolina Chocolate Drops recording their version of “Forever Young” at the Luncheonette recording studio, which one of the characters (Crosby Braverman) runs.

Parenthood boss Jason Katmis explained how the “Forever Young” cover came together to Yahoo! TV:

“What happened was, we decided that we wanted to do this version of ‘Forever Young,’ because that song has been such a part of the show. So we had the idea of getting someone to do it. And Sam Beam came up, and I’ve been a huge fan of his. We’ve used his music a lot. We use it on Parenthood. One of my favorite needle drops ever was on Friday Night Lights, when we used an Iron & Wine collaboration with Calexico.

And then Rhiannon Giddens, she was in this Showtime movie about Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, the Bob Dylan thing. So she was part of that band. And I had never seen her before, but I had gone to the premiere and they had an impromptu concert afterwards, and I thought her voice was beautiful, and her violin playing was beautiful. So we thought of bringing the two of them together. And it all came together very quickly. I was so excited about it, I actually went to the recording session where they pre-recorded the song. It was really great.

Watch the stirring final scene of Parenthood:

Here’s the complete version of Iron & Wine + Rhiannon Giddens’ “Forever Young”:

“Forever Young” is available for purchase via iTunes.