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On July 19, two days before Barbie and its soundtrack would arrive, over 150 independent record stores across the country were celebrating early with listening sessions of the star-studded Barbie: The Album.
“We’ve actually never done [that] for a soundtrack release before,” says Kevin Weaver, Atlantic Records’ West Coast president and the album’s co-producer (alongside Mark Ronson and Atlantic’s executive vp/co-head of pop/rock A&R, Brandon Davis). Meanwhile, the label’s international teams were making sure that retailers around the world were involved, too, resulting in an impressive global reach.
“This is the largest scale activation we’ve ever done for something like this,” continues Weaver. “And the feedback that I got from our teams internally was that this was the most successful activation of this nature that we’ve ever done.”
Barbie: The Album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, boasting the largest sales week on vinyl for a theatrical film soundtrack (33,000) since Luminate began electronically tracking music sales in 1991. Overall, the album opened with the biggest week (by units earned) for a theatrical film soundtrack in over four years. (The last soundtrack to score a bigger week was Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born).
Weaver says he and his team thought about their vinyl strategy on day one of planning for the soundtrack. “We had identified the value and the importance of being able to deliver the music with enough time to be able to manufacture the vinyl and get it out into the world for street date. It was [one] of the most critical aspects of what we were doing.”
Nashville Record Pressing (NRP) began pressing the album in May (the plant says a 10-week lead time is typical), ensuring the physical copies would be ready by the album’s release date. The plant manufactured a total of seven variants, with five currently being offered on the soundtrack’s official web store: hot pink, sky blue, milky clear (Amazon exclusive), cotton candy (Barnes & Noble exclusive) and neon pink (Urban Outfitters exclusive). In all, the first run was estimated at 100,000. “That’s a good sized run for an [original soundtrack], and does indicate strong demand for the title,” says Drake Coker, CEO of NRP, which is owned by GZ Media. “Which makes sense, given the strength of the film.”
Given the months-long lead time, Weaver admits he and his team were “really nervous” about the music leaking. And while the label has a long track record of successful soundtrack releases, Barbie was its own beast. “We have songs from the biggest superstars in the world,” he says, noting a handful of whom were kept a secret until the last minute.
“Historically on these kind of projects – I’ve done The Greatest Showman, Suicide Squad, Fast and Furious – we’ve been able to get a physical product on day and date. Historically, that’s been a CD. Usually, we follow with the vinyl and it’s an afterthought,” says Weaver. “Here we just knew the critical importance of that not being the case.” While Barbie: The Album is also available on CD and cassette, he and his team identified early on that vinyl would be a key format for Barbie’s biggest fans.
“We knew that the core demo was ferociously out there buying up whatever merch and product they could get their hands on, and we were able to work very closely with Mattel to really understand their core consumer,” says Weaver. “It just felt like it was going to be so culturally relevant that the vinyl was going to be a collector’s item as much as an audio listening experience.”
As such, various versions kept coming — and might still. On Friday (July 21), the release date for both the film and soundtrack, an expanded version of the album also arrived: Barbie The Album (Best Weekend Ever Edition). It featured two bonus tracks, including Ryan Gosling’s cover of “Push” by Matchbox Twenty (which Gosling sings in the film) and a cover of the Indigo Girls’ “Closer To Fine” — which also plays an integral role in the movie — performed by Brandi Carlile and her wife, Catherine Carlile. Weaver says those two songs have been added to “various configurations of the physical product.”
Fans will also notice “Barbie Dreams” by FIFTY FIFTY featuring Kaliii is missing from the original pressing of the soundtrack. That, along with “Choose Your Fighter” by Ava Max (which appears on the hot prink variant) has since been added to a limited edition repress of the sky blue vinyl. It’s currently available for pre-order, with a ship date of Sept. 22.
“We tried to keep feeding what would be available on the physical side,” says Weaver. “There are definitely overarching conversations between myself and my creative partners — [director] Greta Gerwig and Mark Ronson and filmmakers and the studio — about what are ways in which we can continue to support the music brands here and the appetite within.” An exclusive Record Store Day release isn’t out of the question, with Weaver promising “cool new iterations” ahead. (Weaver says the coolest of all is the custom version called Kevin the Album, made with exclusive cover art in honor of his birthday.)
While it seems the Barbie hype won’t die down anytime soon, Weaver is allowing himself a moment to look back on what he and his team pulled off. “Having the vinyl and being able to deliver it to the consumer the way that we did was one of the funnest aspects of the whole project,” he says. “It’s something that I’m really proud of and something that I’m really glad we were able to figure out how to accomplish.”
When Duran Duran set out to play their first major U.S. show in March 2022 they knew it had to be epic and it probably had to be in Los Angeles. “When we kind of casually sauntered into the project built around a one-off show that we did there as we deepened the concept it seemed we naturally found ourselves talking about our experiences,” bassist — and 30-year-Los Angeles resident — John Taylor tells Billboard about the sky-high location for last year’s A Hollywood High docu-film.
The movie that premiered in November is moving to Paramount+ on June 21 and in advance of its streaming debut, Billboard spoke to Taylor about capturing the moment, the importance of paying tribute to the embattled people of Ukraine, the set list curation and why he thinks the English New Romantic band has been able to stick it out well past many of their peers.
A Hollywood High was filmed atop the Aster Hotel in Los Angeles and it opens with the band describing their first visit to Hollywood and the city’s enduring importance to their musical journey. The 12-song set opens with their 1985 James Bond theme, “A View to a Kill,” and features such classics as “Notorious,” “Come Undone,” “Ordinary World” and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” as well as a handful of songs from the band’s most recent album, Future Past.
Check out the chat with Taylor below (answers editor for clarity and length.)
Why was it important to open the movie with all that background on L.A.’s influence on the band and your enduring love affair with the city?
I don’t know that it was important… but as a guy who has lived there for last 30-plus years, my first experiences there were all in the 1980s and it never left much of an impression on me. I never could have imagined myself settling there. But I can’t see it any other way now… I had to spend real time there to appreciate its pleasures.
[Singer] Simon [Le Bon] says in the into that “Rio” was inspired by your first trip to America. I had no idea that’s what “from the mountains in the north down to the Rio Grande” meant.
For me the idea of “Rio” literally encapsulated a world, a culture we had yet to tap into, which is South America. That first year I was a kid who didn’t have a passport before the band began. My first experience of leaving my country was with the band in 1981 when we came to the States for the first time. But when we got back to Birmingham and toyed with ideas for the next record we talked about the next level of exotic. Simon had a working title, “Rio,” and we had to make a song out of it.
The iconic rounded Capitol Records building plays a big part in the movie and in the intro it’s noted that it looks like the Rotunda from your hometown.
I suppose it does. Birmingham is the one other city with a landmark circular building [laughs]. Being on Capitol Records was pretty cool at the time. It was fortunate and it definitely helped our cause. For me there’s a certain nostalgia for the first couple times we came into America, that innocence to what we were doing. We were still under the radar here, we could make friendships with guys you’d meet at a radio station and end up hanging out and listening to music.
What was it like setting up on that roof and then looking straight at the Capitol building? It being lit up in blue and yellow is a nice permanent reminder of the war in Ukraine.
My first thought was, “we gotta light that f–king building!” I wanted to light it with the Ukraine colors, so we moved very quickly to make it happen. Here we [more than a year later] and the war continues and every night we still dedicate “Ordinary World” to the people of Ukraine. At that moment it felt like a statement, a show of solidarity. Duran Duran has never been a political band, but to make that kind of statement halfway through the show… there’s something very cool about that. And with our old friend the Capitol building.
Why use this as a stunt to announce your U.S. tour?
We were looking to do something that was going to announce our [2022] U.S. tour and there were variable ways to do it. You got back to the Rolling Stones’ Fifth Ave. truckscapade [the Stones famously shut down New York’s 5th Ave. in May 1975 with a truck parade to promote their American tour], which was the greatest of launches. We talked about that, we talked about a truck at the Roxy and then everyone got nervous about setting up gear on a truck. So, we looked for a fixed position and this place came up that none of us knew about it. Our manager said if we perform here we’d have the Hollywood sign behind us and the Capitol building in front.
Was there significance to opening with “View to a Kill?”
I think because it’s a Hollywood thing, a movie thing. It’s a shake-and-bake opener, it’s easy to play, a here-we-are kind of thing. We hadn’t played a show in quite a few months and we wanted to start with something not too difficult.
You really leaned into the most recent album with five songs out of the 12 you played. Why did you push the new material so hard during this one-off?
I think at show like that.. You play in Nashville to 10,000 people who payed for a ticket, parking, a babysitter and they come to hear the hits. But the fans who were there are superfans and they’re more interested in hearing new songs than “Girls on Film.” It was fresh for us and easier because when we’re playing bigger venues you have to lean away from the new material, probably only two bathroom breaks there.
You are one of the few groups from your era to still be touring this much, recording music and films and staying super-active. Why do you think you’ve been able to endure for so long?
I think we have a very particular inner dynamic. We fire off each other in a way that drives our engine. It’s not a love fest when we’re on stage, but it’s a dynamic where we push against each other all the time and are very competitive with each other. That is what drives the engine which moves the machine. I think of Sting and Peter Gabriel, who have an extraordinary body of creative works. Where are they now? They’re both on tour but it’s one guy sustaining that kind of creative energy, which is f–king hard. There are some things that are easier for an individual, like social media. That’s definitely easier for one guy, but in the long haul I wouldn’t trade it for the band.
Duran Duran recently launched their 2023 U.S. tour. A Hollywood High will be released on DVD/Blu-Ray on August 4.
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John Williams surprised the audience at Wednesday night’s (June 14) Hollywood premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. According to Deadline, the five-time Oscar-winning 91-year-old composer was joined by a full orchestra for a performance of several movements from the movie, including the main title theme and “Helena’s Theme,” which he wrote for […]
Céline Dion is back in her love overload lane on the moving title track to the upcoming Nick Jonas/Priyanka Chopra romantic drama Love Again. The singer dropped the song on Thursday morning (April 13), in which she softly sings, “Cuz you don’t have to move a mountain, just keep moving/ Every move is a new emotion/ And you don’t have to find the answers, just keep trying/ The sun will rise again/ The storms subside again/ This is not the end/ And you will love again.”
The gentle piano and acoustic guitar track was written by Dan Wilson and Rosaileen Scher (and produced by Wilson) and it features Dion, 55, singing the emotional lyrics, “Summer rain, day by day, sadness fades, the wound is healing/ And time goes by, the eyes will dry and you will find someone to heal with.”
The track will appear in the upcoming film in which Chopra plays Mira Ray, a woman mourning the loss of her fiancé who uses texts to feel connected to him following his death. A trailer that dropped on Valentine’s Day showed Chopra’s Mira trying to move on by going on her first date since his death in which she’s set up with a character played by her real-life husband Jonas. “Maybe we should just take it slow,” she says as they try an awkward first kiss in the back of a cab. Dion also co-stars in the film as herself and acting as a guide to journalist Rob Burns (Sam Heughan), who connects with Mira after she accidentally texts him.
“Love Again” is the first new music from Dion since she revealed in December that she is suffering from the rare neurological disorder Stiff-Person Syndrome. “As you know, I’ve always been an open book. And I wasn’t ready to say anything before,” Dion said in a solemn clip in which she revealed her diagnosis. “But I’m ready now… ’I’ve been dealing with problems with my health for a long time, and it’s been really difficult for me to face these challenges and to talk about everything that I’ve been going through.”
Stiff-Person Syndrome causes muscle rigidity in the trunk and limbs and a heightened sensitivity to stimuli such as noise, touch, and emotional distress, which can set off muscle spasms according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Due to the severe muscle spasms that Dion said “affect every aspect of my daily life,” she announced that she could not re-start her tour in Europe in February as planned. Subsequently, all of her spring 2023 dates were moved to 2024 and 8 of her summer 2023 shows were cancelled.
Love Again is due in theaters on May 12.
Listen to “Love Again” below.
Jennifer Lopez strikes a fierce stance in the new posters for her upcoming Netflix drama The Mother. In the two images for the film slated to premiere on May 12 — the trailer drops on Tuesday (April 11) — Lopez stares into the distance with icy eyes while wearing a fur coat in a snowstorm, a cache of weapons slung over her left shoulder.
The intense images were shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz to promote the film in which Lopez plays an assassin who comes out of retirement to protect the daughter she’s never met from murderous criminal bent on revenge. The action adventure is the follow-up to last year’s Super Bowl halftime doc Halftime, as well as the singer’s return to rom-coms, Shotgun Wedding.
The film’s trailer finds a jacked Lopez doing pull-ups in a frigid climate in a sports bra and beanie cap and toting a long gun around while hunting. “She needs protection right now,” a steely-eyed JLo says amid a montage in which she speaks to her teary daughter in a diner, rips through town in a high-speed chase and pulls off a variety of action sequences on motorcycles and snowmobiles.
“If there’s trouble… come find me,” she says ominously. The rest of the cast for the film directed by Niki Caro (live-action Mulan) includes Joseph Finnes, Lucy Paez, Omari Hardwick, Paul Raci and Gael Garcia Bernal.
Not much else is known about the movie, but if Lopez’s husband, Oscar-winner Ben Affleck, is to be believed it is likely to be another one of her signature hits. “Here’s this incredible actress and this incredible performer. And then we’re sitting in the car, you know, and I’m humming along, like I will, you know, to the radio. And then a professional singer goes ahead and sings along and you kind of feel like, ‘Well that’s embarrassing,’” he told the hosts of the Smartless podcast last week about his awe about his wife’s talents and the songs she’s written about him over the years.
That high praise came a week after the couple walked the red carpet for the premiere of the dramatic origin story of Nike’s Air Jordan sneakers, Air, which Affleck stars in and also directed. At the time, he had more kind words for J.Lo for standing by his side during the film’s production, saying, “I love you. You mean the world to me. You’re fabulous, you’re amazing, you’re wonderful, good, kind, magnificent and I love you.”
Check out the poster and trailer for The Mother below.
La Usurpadora is hitting theaters in a new musical adaptation presented by Pantelion Films — 25 years after the Mexican telenovela starring Gabriela Spanic and Fernando Colunga aired.
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Directed by Santiago Limón and produced by Matt Walden and Paul Presburger, La Usurpadora: The Musical, similar to the famed 1998 novela, revolves around identical twin sisters Valeria and Victoria who were separated at birth and 28 years later meet and switch lives. The former is humble and kind, the latter is rich and cruel.
A 13-track soundtrack, executive produced by Grammy- and Latin Grammy-winning producer Sebastian Krys, accompanies the original film.
“Matt Walden called me and said he was turning a telenovela into a musical and I said ‘That’s insane, count me in!’” Krys said during a press screening in Miami on Wednesday night. “It makes sense because the way he would point it is that telenovelas are already over-the-top, so the next logical step is to have everyone singing and dancing.”
Though the film is based in the modern day, its soundtrack pays tribute to some of the biggest Latin hits of the ’90s, including Celia Cruz’s “La Vida Es Un Carnaval,” Gloria Estefan’s “Mi Tierra,” Selena Quintanilla’s “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” Ricky Martin’s “Vuelve,” Cristian Castro’s “No Podrás” and many more.
“We’d go back and forth in finding the right fit musically, lyrically, and then getting the rights,” Krys explains of his soundtrack debut that took more than four years to create. “I’ve worked with a lot of those artists in a lot of their records, like with Ricky Martin and Franco De Vita. I’ve worked with Gloria for 12 years, so doing this soundtrack was a little daunting because I didn’t want to screw the original songs up.”
“One of the things that I love the most while recording the songs is that he gave us total freedom of feeling the songs our own way,” adds Isabela Castillo, who portrays Valeria and Victoria in the musical. “It was a process of about four months where he gave us the liberty of playing around and experimenting with the harmony and melodies. That’s what you’re going to see here. We have song mashups, different ingredients, and new musical arrangements that these songs didn’t have back in the day. It’s really mind-blowing.”
Bringing the ’90s hits to life for La Usurpadora: The Musical was an overall joy for the cast, which also includes Alan Estrada, who portrays Carlos Daniel, the love interest of the twins.
“For me, the last 20 minutes of the movie was my favorite to perform,” he says. “I find the mash-up of ‘Vuelve’ and ‘Cosas del Amor’ very exciting and you’ll see many things unfold in that scene. It brings me happiness. At the Los Angeles screening, everyone clapped as if they were watching a play. I’ve never seen that happen in a movie, and I really liked that reaction. As an actor, we want our work to become memorable in some way.”
La Usurpadora: The Musical, whose cast also includes Susana Zabaleta, Jesús Ochoa, Alejandra Guzmán and Spanic, the OG Usurpadora actress, to name a few, premieres Friday in the U.S. and April 12 in Mexico.
KISS may be winding down their touring years, but that doesn’t mean you’ve seen the last of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Not by a long-shot. The long-running greasepaint rockers will revisit their early years in an upcoming biopic slated to hit Netflix in 2024 according to longtime manager Doc McGhee.
McGhee discussed the project recently on The Rock Experience With Mike Brunn show, revealing, “It’s a biopic about the first four years of KISS. We’re just starting it now. We’ve already sold it, it’s already done, we have a director, McG. That’s moving along and that’ll come in ’24.” It appeared that McGhee was referring to Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle director and veteran music video helmer McG, who most recently worked with Jennifer Garner on the Netflix body swap comedy Family Leave; at press time a spokesperson for McG had not returned Billboard‘s request for confirmation on his role in the film.
Singer and co-founder Paul Stanley had earlier let the cat out of the bag in April 2021, when he tweeted out a link to a Deadline story with details on the project. That story revealed that the doc, Shout It Out Loud, will be directed by Joachim Rønning, whose credits include Kon-Tiki and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and will be written by Ole Sanders. At press time no information was available on casting for the film.
Stanley and bassist/singer and fellow co-founder Gene Simmons are cooperating on the project, which will chronicle their more than half-century friendship and the formation of the group in Queens, New York in the early 1970s with former founding members drummer Peter Criss and lead guitarist Ace Frehley.
Simmons and Stanley recently confirmed what they said are their final run of concerts ever, two shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden slated for Dec. 1 and 2. Ahead of the back-to-back nights at the iconic New York City venue, KISS will play 17 other shows across the U.S. and Canada as part of its End of the Road World Tour, including stops in Los Angeles, Seattle, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Baltimore.
In the interview with Brunn, McGhee said that while the Gene and Paul era of KISS is ending later this year, he doesn’t see it as the end of the brand, which he compared to the Marvel universe. “Will there be other forms of KISS maybe in the future after I’m gone and after they’re gone?” he teased. “I don’t see that KISS goes away,” he added, suggesting that the brand could continue in different forms into the future and that a deal to potentially sell their likenesses isn’t out of the question.
Check out the McGhee interview below.
If you missed out on BTS‘ Oct. 15 show at Busan’s World Expo 2030 bid on Oct. 15 then you’ll have another chance to re-live the magic in early 2023. The on-hiatus K-pop superstars will release BTS: Yet to Come in Cinemas in movie theaters worldwide on Feb. 1.
According to a release announcing the movie the footage from the concert has been fashioned into a “special cinematic cut, re-edited and remixed for the big screen,” complete with new close-ups and a “whole new view” of the entire show. The concert in front of a huge crowd in Busan, South Korea featured the band’s members — Jin, RM, Jimin, V, J-Hope, Suga and Jung Kook — playing some of their most beloved hits, including “Dynamite,” “Butter” and “Idol,” as well as the first concert performance of “Run BTS” from June’s Proof album.
The movie presented by HYBE, Trafalgar Releasing and CJ 4DPlex will hit screens for a limited run in more than 110 countries and territories, with a special Feb. 4 event dedicated to “light stick screenings,” during which ARMY members can light up the theaters with the group’s signature glow devices. In addition to standard formatting, Yet to Come will also be released in a number of special versions, including immersive 270-degree field of view ScreenX, 4DX, which mimics the effects of the concert’s live atmosphere and 4DX Screen, which combines both formats.
“We look forward to collaborating once again with the teams at CJ 4DPlex, and HYBE to bring BTS’ awe-inspiring Busan concert to the big screen in this special cinematic cut,” said Trafalgar Releasing CEO Marc Allenby in a statement. “The group’s engagement with audiences has always been perfectly suited to the cinema, and we are excited to welcome fans from all corners of the globe to this must-see celebration.”
Tickets for the screenings will go on sale here beginning Jan. 10 at 7 p.m. ET.
“We are thrilled to announce our second ScreenX collaboration and first 4DX, 4DXScreeen collaboration with BTS,” added Jong Ryeol Kim, CEO of CJ 4DPLEX. “This film is made for both special formats, which fans can experience our movie completely through enlarged screens with 3 different angles and moving motion seats aligning to BTS’s music.”
Yet to Come is Trafalgar’s fifth release with BTS, following on the heels of this year’s BTS Permission to Dance on Stage — Seoul: Live Viewing, as well as 2020’s Break the Silence: The Movie, 2019’s Bring the Soul: The Movie and 2018’s Burn the Stage: The Movie. The one-off concert in Busan was BTS’ final performance together for the immediate future as the elder members of the group are facing enlistment for South Korea’s mandatory military service: oldest member Jin enlisted for active duty earlier this month.
Barbie was a giant part of the childhoods of millions of boys and girls. But in the bonkers first trailer for the big screen adaptation of the eternally popular Mattel doll directed and co-written by Greta Gerwig that dropped on Thursday (Dec. 15), the iconic pink panthress of womanhood literally looms very large in a 75-second tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1968 outer space psychological drama 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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From the brief photographic glimpses that have leaked out so far of the film starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as her super-smooth forever boyfriend Ken, Gerwig (and co-writer filmmaker Noah Baumbach) appear to be leaning heavily into kitsch and visual overload. And the trailer is proof that they are going for it in a major way.
“Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been… dolls,” says a narrator over sunrise scenes in the desert. Then, as Kubrick’s haunting 2001 theme, Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra” bubbles up in the background, we see a group of girls playing with their baby dolls in the dusty expanse. Our narrator intones darkly, “But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls… until,” at which point Strauss’ horn stabs crescendo and we see the first glimpse of the towering, monolith-like Barbie posing in white sunglasses and a striped one-piece bathing suit, tilting her shades down to give the girls a cheeky wink.
Cue the smashing on the boring babies (shades of Kubrick’s apes bashing apart human bones) as one of the toys is tossed into space and a disco soundtrack explodes into Barbie’s technicolor. We then get the first moving look at Gosling’s Ken in his ab-baring, fringed green jacket, chilling with his equally buff pals in Barbie’s all-pink-everything dream universe.
The film slated to open on July 21 also features America Ferrara, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman and Will Ferrrell as Mattel’s CEO.
Check out the Barbie trailer below.
It’s hard to imagine a more apt title for a film about one of the most beloved recording studios of all time: If These Walls Could Sing. The first trailer for director Mary McCartney’s upcoming documentary about Abbey Road Studios dropped on Monday (Nov. 14) and it is packed with fond remembrances from rock all-stars, including her dad, Sir Paul McCartney, as his former bandmate, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Noel Gallagher, Nile Rodgers and Star Wars creator George Lucas, among others.
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“When you enter a place with so much history around it, it’s kind of sacred in a way,” John says at the top of the two-minute trailer. “People want to come here. They want the sound of Abbey Road.” The Disney+ doc will drop on Dec. 16, in time to commemorate the studio’s 90th anniversary. In the preview, Mary McCartney says Abbey Road has been part of her life “for as long as I can remember,” as attested to by snaps of a baby Mary — now 53 — laying on the studio floor on a blanket.
There is, of course, ample footage of Sir Paul attesting to the special alchemy of those rooms in St. John’s Wood, including him popping up to play a beloved piano just over his shoulder as Mary ticks off the many genres of music that have been laid down in those four walls, from classical to pop, Afrobeat, blues and more.
Former Oasis guitarist/co-vocalist Noel Gallagher notes that “a huge part” of his record collection was recorded at Abbey Road before Lucas and composer John Williams speak of the studio as a “gift to music,” which explains why they recorded some of the most iconic Star Wars music at the London landmark during a time when it was struggling to attract patrons.
Mary McCartney spoke to Rolling Stone about the film, telling the mag, “Hearing it was the anniversary of Abbey Road Studios brought back so many memories to me. I have grown up visiting Abbey Road, it feels like family to me. In directing this feature-length documentary, it felt natural to explore the wealth of stories, and unearth so many unheard gems that I had not known about.” The film will also feature interviews with Oasis singer Liam Gallagher, Williams, Celeste and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, among others.
Watch the If These Walls Could Sing trailer below.