Nobuo Uematsu said he thought about Sephiroth all day for weeks when writing the villain's motif
Like a wrestler entering the octagon, Sephiroth’s menacingly iconic “One-Winged Angel” theme song plays almost any time he appears in a Final Fantasy 7 scene. Just mentioning the title likely conjures the track’s first few rhythmic thumps considering just how legendary this tune is. However, it wasn’t an easy number to put together, as composer Nobuo Uematsu said writing the theme was “tough.
And then I’d repeat it the next day: go to the office in the morning, think about Sephiroth the entire time, and write some more music.” This apparently went on for about two to three weeks, Uematsu said, which is a good and bad thing. It was good because all this obsessing over Sephiroth gave him more material to work with, but all that abundance became unwieldy, and he had to “figure out how to piece” everything together into one cohesive track.