''Blade Runner 2049 – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack'' is the soundtrack album for the 2017 film '' Blade Runner 2049''. Released in October 2017, the album contains music composed by

Hans Zimmer Hans Florian Zimmer (; born 12 September 1957) is a German film score composer and music producer. He has won two Oscars and four Grammys, and has been nominated for two Emmys and a Tony. Zimmer was also named on the list of Top 100 Living G ...

and Benjamin Wallfisch, along with additional tracks by

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...

, Frank Sinatra and

Lauren Daigle Lauren Ashley Daigle () (born September 9, 1991) is an American contemporary Christian music singer and songwriter. After being signed to the label Centricity Music, she released her debut album, '' How Can It Be,'' in 2015. It reached No. 1 on ...

. The soundtrack was produced by Michael Hodges, Kayla Morrison and Ashley Culp. It also includes the piece "Tears in the Rain", which was originally composed and performed (as "Tears in Rain") by

Vangelis Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou ( el, Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου ; 29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis ( ; el, Βαγγέλης, links=no ), was a Greek composer and arranger of ...

, the composer of the original 1982 soundtrack ''

Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...

''. ''Blade Runner 2049'' is the sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 film ''

''. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, it stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford,

Ana de Armas Ana Celia de Armas Caso (; born 30 April 1988) is a Cuban and Spanish actress. She began her career in Cuba and had a leading role in the romantic drama '' Una rosa de Francia'' (2006). At age 18, she moved to Madrid, Spain, and starred in t ...

, Sylvia Hoeks and Jared Leto. Set thirty years after the original film, the story depicts a bioengineered human, a

replicant A replicant is a fictional bioengineered humanoid featured in the 1982 film ''Blade Runner'' and the 2017 sequel ''Blade Runner 2049'' which is physically indistinguishable from an adult human and often possesses superhuman strength and intellig ...

blade runner named K, who discovers the remains of a once-pregnant replicant. To prevent a possible war between replicants and humans, K is secretly tasked with finding the child and destroying all evidence related to it. The soundtrack was nominated for the

BAFTA Award for Best Film Music This is a list of winners and nominees for the BAFTA Award for Best Original Music, formerly known as the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music, which is presented to film composers, given out by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts si ...

at the

71st British Academy Film Awards The 71st British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTAs, were held on 18 February 2018 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 2017. Presented by the British Academy of Film and Telev ...

. In 2018, the Soundtrack received a Grammy nomination for Best Score Soundtrack for visual media, losing to

Ludwig Göransson Ludwig Emil Tomas Göransson (; ; born 1 September 1984) is a Swedish composer, conductor and record producer. He has scored films such as ''Fruitvale Station'', the ''Rocky'' franchise entries ''Creed'' and ''Creed II'', ''Venom'', and ''Tene ...

's score for Black Panther.

History

Warner Bros. reportedly considered engaging the

rapper Rapping (also rhyming, spitting, emceeing or MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular". It is performed or chanted, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The ...

and

music producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

El-P Jaime Meline (born March 2, 1975), better known by the stage name El-P (shortened from his previous stage name El Producto), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Starting his career as a member of Company Flow, he has been a ...

to write the film score for ''Blade Runner 2049'', and he was commissioned to write a short score for the film's first trailer. Conscious of the legacy of Vangelis's score for the original 1982 film, El-P's composition made use of a

Yamaha CS-80 The Yamaha CS-80 is an analog synthesizer released in 1977. It supports true 8-voice polyphony, with two independent synthesizer layers per voice each with its own set of front panel controls, in addition to a number of hardwired preset voice set ...

analog synthesizer An analog (or analogue) synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of ...

, an instrument used by Vangelis. However, El-P's music was not used in the end, and he has stated that his score was "rejected or ignored".

Jóhann Jóhannsson Jóhann Gunnar Jóhannsson (; 19 September 1969 – 9 February 2018) was an Icelandic composer who wrote music for a wide array of media including theatre, dance, television, and film. His work is stylised by its blending of traditional orchest ...

, who had worked with Villeneuve on '' Prisoners'', '' Sicario'', and '' Arrival'', was initially announced as composer for the film. However, Villeneuve and Jóhannsson decided to end the collaboration because Villeneuve felt the film "needed something different, and I needed to go back to something closer to

soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack ...

". New composers

and Benjamin Wallfisch joined in July 2017. In September, Jóhannsson's agent confirmed that he was no longer involved and that he was contractually forbidden from commenting on the situation. According to Epic Records, Zimmer and Wallfisch sought to continue the legacy of the original ''Blade Runner'' score by incorporating the Yamaha CS-80 synthesizer. Zimmer has said of the soundtrack: "First of all, I realized that Denis illeneuveis a director who has a vision; he has a voice. Remember, I've done a lot of movies with Ridley Scott. So, it was important that this was an autonomous piece of work. Let's just be honest. Ridley is a hard act to follow—as is Vangelis. While Ben allfischwas four-years-old, I had actually experienced all of this. We watched and literally, as we stopped watching, we decided on the palette. We decided this wasn't going to be an orchestral thing. The story spoke to us."

Release

The soundtrack album was released online on October 5, 2017, and a two-disc CD version was released on the Epic Records/ASG Records label in the United States on October 27. On October 25, 2017, it was announced that a vinyl double-LP of the soundtrack album would be released on December 15, 2017, in a numbered limited edition of 2500, pressed on 180-gram premium vinyl, intended for

audiophile An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a piece of recorded music or a live musical performance, typically inside closed headphones, In-ear monitors, open ...

s. Although the information about the release mentioned that the album would have 24 tracks, the advertised tracks on sites selling it shows only 20 tracks, with the tracks by Frank Sinatra and

being omitted from the LPs.

Track listing

Note indicates tracks that are not on the limited edition two-LP vinyl release

Charts

References

External links

Official film website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blade Runner 2049

Soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack ...

2017 soundtrack albums Epic Records soundtracks Hans Zimmer soundtracks Science fiction film soundtracks