Film
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It’s finally here! After weeks of waiting, two premieres (one in L.A. and one in London), and three trailers, Beyoncé‘s highly-anticipated concert documentary, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, has hit theatres at long last.
The film provides a rare peek into Beyoncé’s behind-the-scenes process, namely how she runs her ship as the Mother of the House of Renaissance. Over nearly three hours, the documentary treats fans to pristine footage of several nights of the superstar’s record-breaking Renaissance World Tour. Seamless edits showcase the endless variety of haute couture costumes the “Break My Soul” singer flaunted across her 56 sold-out shows, and intimate black-and-white scenes present the Beyoncé her family sees offstage.
Written, directed and produced by Beyoncé herself, the film — which is evenly split between the concert (just about every track made the final cut) and behind-the-scenes footage — is as much about the enigmatic artistic genius as it is about community — the various intersecting communities that crafted the album and tour, enjoyed the music at the concerts, and inspired the throughlines of Black queer liberation that course through Queen Bey’s most recent musical era.
Nearly all of the tour’s special guests — Blue Ivy Carter, Megan Thee Stallion, Kendrick Lamar, Diana Ross, among them — make cameos in the film, alongside Beyoncé’s family (including JAY-Z, Ms. Tina Knowles and twins Rumi and Sir Carter!) and former Destiny’s Child bandmates Kelly Rowland, Michelle Williams, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson.
Even though we’re over a year removed from the release of Renaissance, it’s a body of work that continues to resonant deeply. The album ranked atop the 2023 Year-End Dance/Electronic Albums chart, and the tour helped Beyoncé earn the biggest touring year in Billboard Boxscore history ($570.5 million), making her No. 1 on the Year-End Billboard Boxscore Top Tours chart.
Clearly, the Renaissance is still in full swing, and now we can all see how Beyoncé got us here. Without further ado, here are seven of the best moments of Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.
Barbie is likely to be well represented when the Academy Award shortlists are revealed Dec. 21. At least two (and maybe even three) songs from the box-office juggernaut could be in contention for best original song (though only two from a film can be nominated, according to a 2008 rule change).
Diane Warren and Alan Menken are each looking to score their 15th best original song nominations, a benchmark that only five songwriters have reached. If John Williams and the late Robbie Robertson are nominated for best original score, each could make history.
“I’m Just Ken”Mark Ronson, Andrew WyattBarbie, Warner Bros.
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Ronson and Wyatt won in this category five years ago for co-writing “Shallow” from A Star Is Born. “I’m Just Ken,” sung by Ryan Gosling, provided one of the funniest sequences in Barbie. Ronson and Wyatt could have a second Barbie song on the shortlist — the bubbly “Dance the Night,” which they co-wrote with Dua Lipa and Caroline Ailin.
“What Was I Made For?”Billie Eilish, FINNEASBarbie, Warner Bros.
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The siblings won in this category two years ago for their title song to the James Bond film No Time To Die. They’re likely to be nominated for this tender ballad, which Barbie director Greta Gerwig has described as her movie’s “heart” song. Barbie is vying to become the first film with two best original song nominees since La La Land seven years ago.
“Keep It Movin’”Halle Bailey, Denisia Andrews, Brittany Coney, Morten RistorpThe Color Purple, Warner Bros.
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Bailey (as young Nettie) and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi (as young Celie) sing this song onscreen in this new iteration of The Color Purple. “Miss Celie’s Blues (Sister),” from the original 1985 film, was nominated in this category. Quincy Jones, who co-wrote that song with Rod Temperton and Lionel Richie, served as a producer of both films.
“Out Alpha the Alpha”Marius de Vries, Josh Sharp, Aaron Jackson, Karl Saint LucyDicks: The Musical, A24
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Megan Thee Stallion sings this ribald song onscreen in Dicks: The Musical, which is based on an off-Broadway show with an even more risqué title, F–king Identical Twins. The rap star is also in the cast, along with another famous Megan (Mullally), as well as Bowen Yang and Nathan Lane. Megan Thee Stallion took part in an all-star performance of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” on the Oscar telecast two years ago.
“The Fire Inside”Diane WarrenFlamin’ Hot, Hulu/Searchlight Pictures
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Warren has been nominated in this category the last six years in a row. If she makes it again this year, she’ll have the longest consecutive streak of best original song nods since Sammy Cahn was nominated eight years running (1954-61). The indefatigable Warren has a second song in play, “Gonna Be You” from 80 for Brady.
“High Life”Gary Clark, John CarneyFlora and Son, Apple
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In addition to co-writing this song, Carney wrote and directed the film. Two of Carney’s previous films, Once and Begin Again, yielded best original song nominees (and a winner in the case of Once). Clark, a Scottish musician-songwriter, was the frontman of 1980s pop band Danny Wilson. Eve Hewson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Orén Kinlan and Jack Reynor sing “High Life” onscreen in Flora and Son.
“Can’t Catch Me Now”Dan Nigro, Olivia RodrigoThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate
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The Hunger Games franchise has yet to receive an Oscar nod in any category, but the red-hot Rodrigo is at the point in her career that the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is likely to pay notice. She and Nigro have received two Grammy nods for song of the year, for “drivers license” and “Vampire.” Will the moody and atmospheric “Can’t Catch Me Now” find favor here?
“For the First Time”Alan Menken, Lin-Manuel MirandaThe Little Mermaid, Disney
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Menken is an EGOT winner, and Miranda will be one as soon as he wins an Oscar. Menken won his first of four Oscars in this category for “Under the Sea” from the original 1989 iteration of The Little Mermaid. Halle Bailey sings “For the First Time” onscreen in the film. Two other Menken-Miranda songs from the film, “Wild Uncharted Waters” and “The Scuttlebutt,” are also in play.
“Find a Way”Linda PerryNyad, Netflix
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This would be the first Oscar nod for Perry, a two-time Grammy nominee for song of the year. Annette Bening and Jodie Foster star in the film, which tells the story of Diana Nyad who, at age 64, undertook a 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida. Perry named her song after the title of Nyad’s book, on which the movie is based.
“Road to Freedom”Lenny KravitzRustin, Netflix
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Kravitz, a four-time Grammy winner for best male rock vocal performance, could score his first Oscar nod for this song from a biopic about Bayard Rustin, a lesser-known but crucial figure in the civil rights struggle. The film’s director, George C. Wolfe, helmed the 2020 movie Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which received five Oscar nods.
“Addicted to Romance”Patti Scialfa, Bruce SpringsteenShe Came to Me, Vertical Entertainment
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Springsteen won an Oscar in 1994 for “Streets of Philadelphia” and was nominated again two years later for “Dead Man Walkin’.” This would be his first nomination with a collaborator — his wife, Scialfa. The original score was composed by The National’s Bryce Dessner. Peter Dinklage and Marisa Tomei star in the film.
“Am I Dreaming”A$AP Rocky, Metro Boomin, Michael Dean, Peter Lee Johnson, Roisee, ScriptpluggSpider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Sony Pictures
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse won an Oscar for best animated feature film five years ago, though its biggest hit, “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee, missed out on a best original song nod. Metro Boomin curated the soundtrack to this film, which reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 in June. A$AP Rocky’s partner, Rihanna, was nominated in this category last year.
“Peaches”Jack Black, Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Eric Osmond, John SpikerThe Super Mario Bros. Movie, Illumination/Nintendo/Universal
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This was the year’s second-biggest hit at the box office, behind Barbie. In addition to co-writing and performing the song, Black was in the animated film’s voice cast as Bowser. This would be the first Oscar nomination for Black, who won a Grammy for best metal performance nine years ago for a track he recorded with Tenacious D for a Ronnie James Dio tribute album.
“Better Place”Amy Allen, Shellback, Justin TimberlakeTrolls Band Together, DreamWorks Animation
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Animated characters portraying *NSYNC perform this song onscreen in the movie. Timberlake was nominated in this category seven years ago for co-writing “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” for the first Trolls film. He and the other members of *NSYNC are in the voice cast, along with Anna Kendrick, Kid Cudi, Troye Sivan, Camila Cabello and Anderson .Paak, among others.
“This Wish”Julia Michaels, Benjamin Rice, JP SaxeWish, Disney
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Michaels and Saxe received a Grammy nod for song of the year three years ago for their collaboration “If the World Was Ending.” It was Michaels’ second nod in that category; her first was for co-writing her breakthrough hit, “Issues.” Ariana DeBose, an Oscar winner for the West Side Story remake, sings “This Wish.” She’s also in the voice cast, along with Chris Pine and Victor Garber.
American Fiction (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM)Laura Karpman
Karpman could be headed for her first Oscar nod for her score to this satirical film that was written and directed by Cord Jefferson (in his feature directorial debut). The film stars Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae and Sterling K. Brown. Karpman won a Primetime Emmy three years ago for scoring The Discovery Channel’s Why We Hate.
Barbie (Warner Bros.)Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt
Ronson and Wyatt, who executive-produced the hit soundtrack album — and were involved in writing and producing several of its tracks — could be headed for their first nod in this category. Wyatt has co-written songs for several Ronson albums. In 2012, the two musicians collaborated on a ballet score for The Royal Ballet of London.
Elemental (Pixar)Thomas Newman
If Newman is nominated, this would be his 15th nod in the category, a total so far achieved by only eight composers in Oscar history. Unlike them, though, he has yet to win. Newman is the youngest son of the late Alfred Newman, who amassed 41 nominations in this category, winning a record nine times.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney)John Williams
This would be Williams’ record-extending 49th nod in a scoring category and his fourth for a film in the Indiana Jones franchise. In total, it would be Williams’ 54th Oscar nomination (the other five are for best original song), which would pull him closer to Walt Disney’s all-time record of 59 for an individual.
The Killer (Netflix)Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
This would be the fourth nod in this category for Reznor and Ross following The Social Network, Mank and Soul (a collaboration with Jon Batiste). David Fincher, who directed The Social Network and Mank, also directed The Killer. Reznor and Ross won for both The Social Network and Soul. Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton star in The Killer.
Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple)Robbie Robertson
This was the 12th and last Martin Scorsese film that Robertson worked on. Robertson, who died in June at age 80, would become the first composer to be nominated in this category posthumously since Bernard Herrmann was cited in 1976 for both Obsession and Taxi Driver. Two other Scorsese regulars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, star in the film.
Nyad (Netflix)Alexandre Desplat
This would be Desplat’s 12th nomination in this category, all since 2006. That’s more than anyone else has accumulated in that period. The French composer has won twice, for The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape of Water. This would be Desplat’s first nod in the 2020s, following three in the 2000s and eight in the 2010s.
Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)Ludwig Göransson
The Swedish composer won in this category five years ago for scoring Black Panther. He was nominated for an Oscar last year for co-writing a song for the sequel. Oppenheimer was the year’s fifth-biggest box-office hit, a strong showing for a three-hour adult drama. The Christopher Nolan film was based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Clockwise: Elemental, Killers of the Flower Moon, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Oppenheimer.
Disney/Pixar; Melinda Sue Gordon; Sony Pictures.
Origin (Neon)Kris Bowers
Origin is the fifth feature film directed by Ava DuVernay. Her 2014 historical drama, Selma, yielded the Oscar-winning song “Glory” by Common and John Legend. Bowers was nominated for documentary (short subject) three years ago for co-directing A Concerto Is a Conversation, which centered on his conversations with his jazz pianist grandfather. This would be his first nod in a scoring category.
Past Lives (A24)Christopher Bear & Daniel Rossen
Past Lives was written and directed by Celine Song in her feature directorial debut. The film, which stars Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro, follows the relationship between two childhood friends over 24 years. Bear and Rossen are members of veteran indie rock band Grizzly Bear, which has landed two top 10 albums on the Billboard 200.
Rustin (Netflix)Branford Marsalis
This would be the first Oscar nomination for jazz saxophonist Marsalis, who is a three-time Grammy winner. Marsalis received a Primetime Emmy nod two years ago for outstanding music composition for a documentary series or special for Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre, which aired on the HISTORY Channel.
Saltburn (Amazon/MGM)Anthony Willis
This would be the Australian composer’s first Oscar nod after building a reputation with his scores for How To Train Your Dragon: Homecoming (2019), Promising Young Woman (2020) and M3GAN (2022). Saltburn is the second film to be written, directed and co-produced by Emerald Fennell following Promising Young Woman. Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi and Rosamund Pike star in the psychological thriller.
Society of the Snow (Netflix)Michael Giacchino
This would be Giacchino’s third nomination in this category following Ratatouille (2007) and Up (2009). He won for the latter. Society of the Snow is a 2023 survival thriller about a 1972 flight disaster in Argentina’s Andes Mountains. The cast comprises Uruguayan and Argentine actors, most of whom are newcomers to the craft. The film is scheduled to be released in theaters on Dec. 15.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)Daniel Pemberton
The English composer has yet to be nominated in this category. His only Oscar nod is for co-writing “Hear My Voice” from The Trial of the Chicago 7, a best original song nominee three years ago. This film is a sequel to 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which Pemberton also scored.
The Zone of Interest (A24)Mica Levi
The English composer was nominated in this category seven years ago for Jackie. The Zone of Interest, based on a Martin Amis novel, revolves around Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife and their plans to build a dream life next to the concentration camp. The film, which was written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, is set to be released in the United States on Dec. 15.
Additional reporting by Melinda Newman.
This story will appear in the Nov. 18, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Although Ryan Gosling was the central piece of Barbie‘s big musical number, he will not have the chance to compete for Grammy gold. Contrary to some online reports, the actor is not among the nominees for the show-stopping “I’m Just Ken.”
On Friday morning (Nov. 10), the Recording Academy revealed the official nominations for the 2024 Grammy Awards. SZA reigns atop the leaderboard with nine nods; R&B star Victoria Monét, alt-rock singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers and engineer/mixer Serban Ghenea follow with seven each.
Barbie was widely expected to clinch a number of Grammy nominations thanks to its star-studded compilation soundtrack album and separate score album, composed by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. As Barbie broke records at the box office — eventually strutting its way to a worldwide gross of over $1 billion — the soundtrack reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200, collecting several Billboard Hot 100 smash hits in the process, including Dua Lipa‘s “Dance the Night” (No. 6), Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice‘s “Barbie World” (No. 7, with AQUA) and Billie Eilish‘s “What Was I Made For?” (No. 14).
All three of those tracks received nominations in the best song written for visual media category alongside “I’m Just Ken” and Rihanna‘s Oscar-nominated “Lift Me Up” (No. 2) from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. The Grammy guidelines for best song written for visual media state that the award is a “songwriter(s) award.” A description of the category on the official Grammy website reads: “For a song (melody & lyrics) written specifically for a motion picture, television, video games or other visual media, and released for the first time during the Eligibility Year.”
Although Gosling is the sole vocalist for “I’m Just Ken,” he is not a credited writer on the song. Those honors go to Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt — a powerhouse duo that picked up both an Oscar and a Grammy for their contributions to Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper‘s Hot 100-topping “Shallow” from 2018’s A Star Is Born.
Gosling’s performance of the track was entered into the best pop solo performance race, but it failed to make the cut in what was a very crowded category this year (281 entries). This year’s best pop solo performance nominees are Miley Cyrus (“Flowers”), Taylor Swift (“Anti-Hero”), Olivia Rodrigo (“Vampire”), Doja Cat (“Paint the Town Red”), and “What Was I Made For?”
Furthermore, the Barbie actor likely won’t have a shot at taking home a gilded gramophone should Barbie The Album take home best compilation soundtrack for visual media. The rules for that category state: “Award to the principal artist(s) and/or ‘in studio’ producer(s) of a majority of the tracks on the album. In the absence of both, Award to the one or two individuals proactively responsible for the concept and musical direction of the album and for the selection of artists, songs and producers, as applicable. Award also goes to appropriately credited music supervisor(s).”
Currently, Barbie: The Album is credited to Various Artists — but it’s probably safe to bet that Ronson and Wyatt would take home the trophies in the case of a Barbie victory. At the very least, Gosling will be able to find solace in the fact that “I’m Just Ken” gifted him his very first Hot 100 entry, peaking at No. 87.
A Grammy may remain out of reach, but Gosling could very well add a third Oscar nomination to his collection. A nod for his supporting performance in Barbie would follow his best actor citations from 2007 (Half Nelson) and 2017 (La La Land).
The music documentary Garland Jeffreys: The King Of In Between, which premiered Wednesday (Nov. 8) during the DOC NYC film festival, reintroduces audiences to a masterful musician whose commercial success may never have matched his critical acclaim — but whose rich legacy is worth celebrating.
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“People that know him cannot believe that other people don’t know him,” says documentary director Claire Jeffreys, the singer’s longtime manager and spouse, speaking in the opening moments of the film over the backdrop of the Brooklyn-born singer’s performance of “Coney Island Winter.” The documentary can be viewed online via DOC NYC through Nov. 26 and is seeking distribution.
Despite the director’s close connection to her subject, Claire Jeffreys has maintained a filmmaker’s distance — while letting a cast of sources speak to her husband’s long history of musically adventurous, socially aware songwriting.
Among those who offer testimony here are the music critics Robert Christgau and David Hajdu, longtime friend and actor Harvey Keitel, and fellow musicians including Graham Parker, Alejandro Escovedo, Vernon Reid, Laurie Anderson—and Bruce Springsteen.
“He’s in the great singer/songwriter tradition of Dylan and Neil Young; one of the American greats,” says Springsteen.
Garland Jeffreys, 80, raised in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, was shaped by his Black, white and Puerto Rican heritage — “father of coal, mother of pearl,” he once sang — absorbing early musical influences from doo-wop to jazz to 1950s rock’n’roll. “My background, my racial mixture, my past, the music that went through my house, it all comes out in my music,” says Garland in the film.
The documentary takes its title from Garland’s 2011 album The King of In Between. “It’s Garland’s phrase and he really related to it because of his growing up biracial,” Claire Jeffreys told Billboard in a conversation before the premiere. “His way of relating to the world was shaped by being neither fish nor fowl, black nor white. He mentions in the film that radio wouldn’t play him on the white stations and he wasn’t being played on the Black stations. [But by] saying `the king,’ he was claiming that he was still standing and still feeling like he had something to offer.”
What Garland Jeffreys had to offer, with all his charm and intensity, was clear from the start. Laurie Anderson appears in the film because, when Garland left Brooklyn to attend Syracuse University, he became fast friends with Anderson’s husband-to-be, Lou Reed.
“Lou really admired Garland, as well as loved him,” says Anderson. (On his 2017 album 14 Steps to Harlem, Garland covered the Velvet Underground’s “Waiting For the Man” in tribute to his longtime friend.)
In 1970, Garland made his recording debut as part of the group Grinder’s Switch, with its musical echoes of The Band. But it was his own self-titled solo debut album on Atlantic Records three years later that signaled the arrival of a singular musical force.
Writing in The Village Voice, Robert Christgau described the debut album’s musical ambitions (“Stonesy blues shuffles rubbing elbows with reggae from Kingston”) and declared that “this man should be given the keys to every city whose streets he walks — ours first.”
The film captures the edginess of New York in the 1970s, an era that defined Garland’s songwriting, from the “heat of the summer” threat of “Wild In The Streets” (arranged and recorded with Dr. John) to the hometown romanticism of “New York Skyline.” Both came from Garland’s 1977 album Ghost Writer, a collection that prompted Rolling Stone to name him the most promising artist of that year.
Two years later, American Boy & Girl contained the enchanting, reggae-tinged single “Matador,” which became a top five hit in several European markets but failed to crack the Billboard Hot 100. Success abroad, however, planted the seed for support Garland needed for a landmark album he released in the early 1990s.
As Garland tells the story in the film, he was at a New York Mets game at Shea Stadium. “I was in left field, absorbed in the game, and a guy from behind me said, `Hey, buckwheat! Get the f–k outa here!’ It was a shock. It was very personal. And I really said to myself, `Don’t call me buckwheat.’”
Don’t Call Me Buckwheat arrived from Garland Jeffreys in the U.S. in April 1992, heralded in a Billboard feature as “a significant concept album that musically crosses gospel, doo-wop, rock, reggae and rap, in songs that describe a lifelong struggle with crossing color lines.”
Notably, the album had been released the previous fall in Europe by BMG International (a corporate precursor to the BMG of today) after Garland was signed and championed by a German executive, the company’s senior vp of A&R, Heinz Henn.
Don’t Call Me Buckwheat “came out 30 years ago, it could have come out 30 minutes ago,” says Springsteen in the film. “I don’t know of anybody who was writing about race as directly as Garland was in the early 90s.”
Told by an interviewer at the time that the record could make listeners uncomfortable, Garland replied: “This to me is an album of hope, it’s a vision of hope.”
But Don’t Call Me Buckwheat from failed to chart in America. Musical “categorization is the reality and tyranny of the music business,” critic David Hajdu says in the film, “and he’s been a victim of it.” Beginning with The King Of In Between in 2011, Garland began self-releasing his albums, but the documentary does not depict this journeyman artist as a victim of the music industry, nor of life.
The film is, in part, a love story. In a charming scene filmed in the hallway of their New York apartment, Claire and Garland Jeffreys describe their first meeting after one of his shows. Claire describes their mutual goal of achieving sobriety. And their daughter Savannah is featured both as a teenager, resisting her father’s invitation to sing with him, and then in a beautiful duet in the studio with her dad, recording “Time Goes Away.”
In 2019, Garland Jeffreys announced he would stop touring. The documentary includes the celebration of his career which took place on June 29, 2019, at the original City Winery on Varick Street in Manhattan’s Hudson Square neighborhood. The night’s performers included, among others, Laurie Anderson, David Johansen, Chuck Prophet, Vernon Reid, Willie Nile, Suzanne Vega, and Savannah Jeffreys, who took the mic and deadpanned, “So I met Garland in 1996…“
“I wanted to show other people’s affection and respect for him,” says Claire Jeffreys of that night. “So it was overwhelming.” Now her documentary has succeeded, in part, by redefining what it means to be a successful musician. “In today’s world, we’re so caught up in mega success or failure, there’s no humility, there’s no just being a working artist,” she says, reflecting on her husband’s rich body of work, created over nearly five decades.
“Sometimes Garland would get very discouraged about where he stood, so to speak, in the pantheon of the music business. And I would say, `Garland, you’ve made a living as a performer and a songwriter. You’ve raised a family. That’s a huge accomplishment.’ I said, `I think you’ve gotta claim that and own that.’ And he really did get to that place in the end. And that was what I was hoping.”
Halloween songs might not be as celebrated — or profitable — as Christmas music (though that’s changing a bit), but there’s no denying the grave reality that people go batty for spooky songs as Oct. 31 approaches. Simply put, folks who want to avoid spooky songs around All Hollows’ Eve don’t have a ghost of […]
Four years after he finished work on the final big-screen adaptation of the zeitgeist-y Hunger Games book trilogy, director Francis Lawrence got a phone call from producer Nina Jacobson, another veteran of the series. And she wasn’t looking to reminisce.
Suzanna Collins – the mind and pen behind the dystopian sci-fi series – had just rung up Jacobson with some news: “Hey, surprise! I’m almost finished with a new book.” Lawrence sums up their reaction: “Wow…. Okay!”
The Hunger Games scribe didn’t offer much information about her forthcoming novel, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, other than that it was a prequel — and it incorporated “a big musical element,” Lawrence recalls.
After reading the book in early 2020, not long before it arrived on shelves, Lawrence was officially in. “I love a villain origin story,” he says of Songbirds, which tracks the rise of trilogy antagonist Coriolanus Snow. The same went for Jacobson. “Suzanne trusting me with this series, we’ve had an incredible rapport and bond,” she says. “I was all in.”
Returning to the director’s chair for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes – which hits theaters Nov. 17 – served as a dual homecoming for Lawrence. Not only was he returning to the Hunger Games arena, but to the task of pairing songs with distinctive visuals. After all, he first cut his chops as a music video director, helming clips for Destiny’s Child (“Independent Women Part I”), Shakira (“Whenever, Wherever/Suerta”), Justin Timberlake (“Cry Me a River”), Britney Spears (“I’m a Slave 4 U”) and Beyoncé (“Run the World (Girls)”), even winning the best music video Grammy for directing Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” An impressive resume to be sure, but not an exact match for the musical milieu Collins imagined for this story.
Songbirds introduces us to Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), an itinerant folk singer thrown into the titular kill-or-be-killed battle – as well as an unlikely romance with Snow (Tom Blyth). “[Collins] told me about the history of Appalachian music of the ‘20s and ‘30s and how often they were based on songs or ballads or poems that had been passed down for generations and collected over time,” Lawrence says of the music that inspired the character of Baird. Collins advised the director to check out Ken Burns’ 16-hour documentary Country Music (“this was during the pandemic, so I had time,” he adds) for context, but both of them realized that finding the right musical collaborator for the film – someone who lived and breathed this music — would be essential to making sure Baird felt like a dusty, jagged diamond in the rough.
Enter Dave Cobb. A Nashville mainstay who’s produced albums for Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson (i.e., country singers who value grit over studio polish), Cobb’s contributions for 2018’s A Star Is Born and 2022’s Elvis proved he could work within the Hollywood system without sacrificing his musical ethos.
When his name came up during pre-production, the team got on the phone to feel out his interest level. The connection was immediate.
“Talking to him, he’s an incredible historian of music and has such a passion that rivals Suzanne’s for the origins of what we think of as American music,” Jacobson recalls of their initial conversation. Lawrence agrees: “It was his resume but also just the chat. He’s such a great, smart guy and has such knowledge of the country music genre; he fit the family and is supremely talented.”
Dave Cobb
Becky Fluke
As for the nine-time Grammy winner, Cobb tells Billboard that Collins’ vast knowledge of history – music, political and otherwise – made him excited to hop on board and write songs to accompany her lyrics from the book.
“One of the things that was so attractive about working on this film [is that] I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a more intelligent person in my life than Suzanne Collins. She’s an absolute genius, by any measure,” Cobb says. “Suzanne telling me the impetus of the story had me captivated. I’m a history buff, and everything in this film — everything she’s written for Hunger Games — is derived from real history.”
That, however, presented an additional challenge: “I had to make [the songs] feel like turn-of-the-century, timeless classics. That’s a very hard thing to do,” Cobb admits with a laugh. But it wasn’t entirely outside his sphere of experience, either. “My grandmother was a Pentecostal minister, so I grew up with hymnals my whole life,” he says. “I’m very familiar with this sound growing up in the South and it was really fun to exercise that muscle of things I’d heard growing up, and put it into melodies.”
Collins’ musical acumen was an asset, too. “Dave had long conversations with Suzanne, and she’d give him the history of where the song came from,” Lawrence says, adding that Collins even “had some time signatures in mind” for certain songs before Cobb began writing.
“They have a shared love of the same music and the history of music,” Jacobson says. “She was present virtually for a lot of the recordings and had a lot of conversations with Dave, but gave him latitude, too. She always gives artists an enormous amount of freedom to interpret her work.” Lawrence seconds that: “He wrote the full songs, and we barely did changes.”
When it came time to hash out those songs with a band, Cobb intuitively knew a recording studio wouldn’t cut it.
“The big thing for me was to get the ability to be completely unorthodox,” he says. “We had this crazy idea to come down to my hometown of Savannah, Georgia, and rent an old mansion and record in that.” Using the seminal recordings of 20th century folk archivist Alan Lomax as a guiding light, Cobb found a “200-plus-year-old house” and brought along a few ringers — including bluegrass wonder Molly Tuttle — to record the guide tracks.
“With all the creaks in the walls, you can hear the history in the recording — it wasn’t like a clinical studio,” Cobb says. “The old microphones we used looked like they’d been under a bed for 75 years. Molly Tuttle played a big part – she played the guitar of Lucy Gray, and I found this old ’30s Gibson that she played on. It wasn’t just a regular acoustic guitar – it has character.
“That was a big part of making this come to life. There’s bleed between the bass going into the fiddle going into the banjo — it’s just absolute chaos in a way that makes things dangerous.”
Making it sound dangerous was only half of the equation, however. Ironically, to find a real-life location that looked Appalachian, the film crew decamped to Duisburg, Germany, filming a pivotal scene at an abandoned factory to evoke District 12’s black market district. “It’s something they would never do in the States – they turned [the factory] into a publicly accessible park and let nature take over,” Jacobson says. “There’s all these places where you can go into gritty, grubby basements with the equipment still there.”
With that as the backdrop, Zegler delivers one of the film’s finest musical moments, forcing our emotional investment in her romantic relationship with a character we know grows up to be a monster – all while singing the hell out of a breathtaking song that could pass for a long-lost Carter Family classic.
“Rachel is such an incredible talent that she ended up singing everything live [on set],” Cobb says of Zegler. “She’s so naturally gifted – it was effortless for her.”
Rachel Zegler and Tom Blyth in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Murray Close
Despite being one of the first people in talks for the role (and a fan of the franchise), Zegler initially wasn’t able to do the film because of hectic scheduling issues. As the search for Lucy Gray Baird dragged on, Jacobson grew concerned. “We auditioned a zillion people and there are a lot of wildly talented people out there, but this is such a specific character. When she sings, it has to be jaw-dropping; anything short of that won’t deliver.”
Kismet came to the rescue, however, when Josh Andrés Rivera (who worked with Zegler on West Side Story) landed the role of Sejanus, Snow’s best friend. “He had this amazing audition,” says Jacobson. “I didn’t realize he was Rachel’s boyfriend – I just thought he was the guy who came in and gave us a great audition.” With Rivera set for a lengthy lockdown stay in Europe while filming the movie, Zegler and her team reconsidered the scheduling conflicts. “We got the call [from her team]: ‘Is it too late?’”
A chemistry test between Zegler and Blyth sealed the deal – even over Zoom, it was palpable. “We all wanted to be mindful of her musical theater background and make sure we got that authenticity in her singing,” Lawrence says. “As soon as she came on the Zoom test with her and Tom, I had her sing an a cappella version of ‘Wildwood Flower’ to Tom. And she just nailed it. It was slow, emotional and she had a little dialect happening. It was so, so good.”
“Rachel has this beautiful, almost ‘30s American pure voice,” Cobb muses. “She can sing anything.”
Her performance is equally revelatory. In Songbirds, Zegler believably portrays a tough, charismatic survivor who carefully guards her inner life and moral code; as we watch her become vulnerable with a character “people have already decided they hate,” as Jacobson says of Snow, it’s impossible to resist getting caught up in this suspenseful, engrossing rush of a film. While Collins’ evocative lyrics and Cobb’s familiar yet fresh melodies do a lot of heavy lifting, it’s hard to imagine anyone but Zegler pulling off the balancing act demanded by the story.
“We knew it would be a challenge to adapt this book,” Jacobson admits. “But it’s also a sort of homecoming, having made so many of these with Francis and this creative team. It’s a rare gift.”
“[Collins] writes from a thematic foundation that gives [Songbirds] relevance and importance,” Lawrence says. And though he has no insight into whether the series ends here, he’s certainly up for another one. “If she came up with another book — whether a direct sequel or a standalone or a new series in this world — I would be really into doing it again.”
It’s almost time for 1989 (Taylor’s Version), and Taylor Swift has dropped another preview of what’s to come with a snippet of her re-recorded “Out of the Woods.” “Out of the Woods (Taylor’s Version)” is featured in the latest trailer for Illumination and Universal’s animated film Migration, due out in theaters Dec. 22. Explore Explore […]
“I’m Just Ken” got a funny new twist on SNL Saturday night (Oct. 14), thanks to host Pete Davidson. The former cast member performed his own version of Ken’s rock ballad from the Barbie soundtrack on the season 49 premiere, which finally arrived after the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture […]
Taylor Lautner was flexing like a goddamn acrobat to “Karma” at a movie theater for the opening weekend of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.
The actor, who happens to be married to another Taylor (Dome) and is an ex of Taylor Swift‘s, backflipped in front of the big screen at a showing of the blockbuster concert movie that’s headed for a $100 million domestic opening.
Tay shared a couple videos of her husband being the life of the party in front of their friends at an Eras Tour movie viewing via Instagram Stories, here and here. She posted the clips on Saturday (Oct. 14).
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Other Instagram Stories showed Tay singing along and dancing to Reputation‘s “Ready for It” and “Look What You Made Me Do.”
Before admitting they were experiencing “post-Taylor Swift show depression” after seeing Swift live in Los Angeles in August, the couple attended another show on The Eras Tour. In July, Lautner the actor made a surprise appearance onstage at Kansas City’s Geha Field at Arrowhead Stadium for the premiere of Swift’s “I Can See You” music video, in which he stars alongside Joey King. He entertained the sold-out crowd by impressively flipping down the catwalk toward the pop icon.
“He was a very positive force in my life when I was making the Speak Now album, and I want to say he did every single stunt that you saw in that music video,” Swift said onstage. “He and his wife have become some of my closest friends, and it’s very convenient because we all share the same first name.”
Swift and Lautner dated briefly in 2009. Their relationship is believed to have inspired the Speak Now apology track “Back to December,” which reminisces on what Swift missed after breaking up with a former boyfriend: “Your tan skin, your sweet smile, so good to me, so right.” Elsewhere in the song, she says, “You gave me all your love and all I gave you was goodbye.”
Swift’s The Eras Tour film already grossed $39 million Friday (Oct. 13), according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s box office update on Saturday, and has a shot at becoming the biggest October opening weekend of all time in North America if it surpasses Joker‘s $96.2 million. Swift called the premiere of her concert film “the most electric experience of my life.”
When it comes to the music of Sofia Coppola’s films, “There’s always a bit of impressionism,” says Thomas Mars, the lead singer of Phoenix — who also happens to be married to the director. Think of My Bloody Valentine’s “Sometimes” scoring Scarlett Johanssen’s taxi ride through late-night Tokyo in Lost in Translation, Kirsten Dunst cavorting through a decadent young queen’s wardrobe as Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” blasts in Marie Antoinette or the haunting chords of Air lending a foreboding tone to 1970s U.S. suburbia in The Virgin Suicides.
And in Coppola’s latest film, Priscilla (out Nov. 3 from A24) — about when a teenage Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) and Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) met — one moment in particular seems destined to join the canon of the director’s great needle drops: after Priscilla and Elvis’ first kiss, the resounding, viscerally recognizable trio of guitar chords of Tommy James and The Shondells’ “Crimson & Clover.”
“Sofia is really attuned to the grand majesty of popular music,” says veteran music supervisor Randall Poster, who shares music supervision credit on the film with Phoenix. “In a sense, ‘Crimson & Clover’ is as epic as Mozart or Beethoven — it encapsulates every adolescent emotion possible.”
In adapting Priscilla from Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, Elvis & Me, Coppola did use some of the historical music cues mentioned in it, such as a cover of Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” (which Phoenix plays variations of as the score throughout) and Brenda Lee’s “Sweet Nothin’s.” But for the rest of the soundtrack, “I didn’t want it to sound corny, like some music of that era can to me,” Coppola says. A fan of producer Phil Spector, his sound “became a way to tie things together. I wanted to embrace the melodrama of strings and big production.”
Sometimes that meant nodding to Spector in unexpected ways: As the film opens, the orchestral psychedelics of Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home” fade into Spector’s trademark kick drums and lush strings — and the joltingly nasal voice of Joey Ramone covering The Ronettes’ “Baby I Love You” (a track from the Ramones’ Spector-produced End of the Century).
But many times during the film, silence is used to striking effect. As Mars points out, key synchs like “Crimson & Clover” needed some quiet preceding them. “We felt this will be a big moment, so we can’t have too much music before. To make sure these moments are highlighted, there’s a bit of negative space.” And silence was, in fact, a big part of the discussion among Coppola, her longtime editor Sarah Flack, Mars and Poster about how music would inform the telling of Priscilla’s story. Coppola has always been drawn to illuminating the interior lives of young women, and Priscilla, for much of the film, is alone — left at Graceland, away from her family, while her husband is off in the military or on film sets.
“She’s trying to fit in; she’s not sure where she is,” Mars says. “It takes time for her to get her life back, to make her own choices.” Emphasizing the stillness of her life without Elvis, and the noise and parties when he returns, was important. “I think those silences push you deeper into the movie, ultimately,” Poster says.
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Although Elordi magnetically portrays Elvis, the film is centered in Priscilla’s experience, and his music is almost entirely absent from it. Authentic Brands Group, the majority owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises, which controls approval of Elvis song usage, did not grant it to Coppola. But that meant “we had to make a weakness a strength,” Mars says. “In the end, it’s better that it’s more focused on Priscilla’s perspective.”
And it seems the film’s subject was pleased. At the movie’s Venice Film Festival showing, Priscilla embraced Coppola and wiped away tears during a standing ovation. “We haven’t talked specifically about the music, but she said, ‘You did your homework,’ ” Coppola says. “She felt it was authentic, which was so important to me.”
This story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.