''Everything Everywhere All at Once (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)'' is the
soundtrack album
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television show. The first such album to be commercially released was Walt Disney's ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' ...
to the
2022 film of the same name directed by
Daniels. The original score and music is composed by the
Son Lux
Son Lux is an American experimental band. Originally the solo project and moniker of founding member Ryan Lott, the band's first three albums, '' At War with Walls & Mazes'', ''We Are Rising'' and ''Lanterns'', shaped the band's unique sound th ...
. The album and its musical score became popular as it featured prominent musicians, performing the tracks including
Mitski
Mitski Miyawaki (born Mitsuki Laycock; September 27, 1990), known professionally by the mononym Mitski, is a Japanese-born American singer-songwriter. Mitski self-released her first two albums, '' Lush'' (2012) and '' Retired from Sad, New Caree ...
,
David Byrne
David Byrne (; born 14 May 1952) is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist and filmmaker. He was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of ...
,
André 3000
André Lauren Benjamin (born May 27, 1975), better known as André 3000, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor. He is best known for being a part of southern hip hop duo Outkast alongside fellow rapper Big Boi.
B ...
,
Randy Newman
Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist known for his Southern American English, Southern-accented singing style, early Americana (music), Americana-influenced songs (often ...
,
Moses Sumney
Moses Sumney is a Ghanaian-American singer-songwriter. His self-recorded EP, ''Mid-City Island'', was released in 2014. He released another five-song EP in 2016, titled ''Lamentations''. His first full-length album, ''Aromanticism'', was released ...
and
yMusic
yMusic is an American sextet chamber ensemble from New York City. Consisting of a trumpet, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello, the group was formed in Brooklyn by trumpeter CJ Camerieri and violinist Rob Moose in 2008.
Career
The ensem ...
.
Son Lux worked on the score and soundtrack for more than three to six years, with the band members individually worked on the score following Daniels' advice. The album was produced and curated simultaneously with Son Lux also producing their studio albums, ''
Brighter Wounds'' (2018), the ''Tomorrows'' trilogy (20202021), and its reprised studio version ''Tomorrows Reworks'' (2021). In the process, more than 100 musical cues were created for the album, with over 49 songs were finalised in the soundtrack album that lasted for over 2 hours.
Before the soundtrack release, two songs: "This Is a Life" featuring Mitski and Byrne, and "Fence" featuring Sumney, were released as singles on March 4 and 14. The album released on March 25, 2022 by
A24 Music, and received positive critical reception for the composition, setting, instrument blending and collaboration of renowned artists.
Production
Background
The band Son Lux was announced as the film's composer during January 2022. Daniels were appreciative of the musical style and approach for the studio albums. They met the band through
FaceTime
FaceTime is a Proprietary software, proprietary videotelephony product developed by Apple Inc. FaceTime is available on supported iOS mobile devices running iOS 4 and later and Mac computers that run and later. FaceTime supports any iOS devic ...
by late-2019. Daniels did not approach them as a band, instead articulated the importance of the band member's solo projects. The band's lead member Ryan Lott, said that "I think that the complete picture of not only who we are as a band, but also who we are as individuals and what we have accomplished and the places we’ve gone creatively individually, meant for them that there was a possibility that many of these universes of sound could be within reach with this particular trio
..they gave us a lot of license to feel free to be ourselves. They guided us along the way in developing music for this film, and in some instances, there is some interesting kind of bleeding that happened."
This film marked the band's fourth film as a composer, following ''
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby
''The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby'' is the collective title of three films written and directed by Ned Benson in his directorial debut, and starring Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy, alongside a supporting cast of Viola Davis, Bill Hader, Kathe ...
'' (2014), ''
Paper Towns
''Paper Towns'' is a novel written by John Green, primarily for an audience of young adults, and was published on October 16, 2008, by Dutton Books. The novel is about the coming-of-age of the protagonist, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen and his search fo ...
'' (2015) and ''
Mean Dreams
''Mean Dreams'' is a 2016 Canadian coming-of-age film, coming-of-age thriller film directed by Nathan Morlando and written by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby. The film stars Sophie Nélisse, Josh Wiggins, and Bill Paxton. It was screened in the Di ...
'' (2016), but first as a 3-piece band (previous films were all composed when Son Lux consisted of only Lott). The band's lead guitarist
Rafiq Bhatia
Rafiq Bhatia (born 21 August 1987) is an American musician, composer, guitarist, and producer. He is the guitarist and fellow producer of the American experimental rock band Son Lux, having been a touring member prior.
As a solo artist, he has re ...
had said that the creative process of scoring for a film was very different from that of their works in studio albums, as the difference is not serving another medium, or supporting what happening in the other medium, adding "Unlike scoring a film or, or creating music for dancers, or you know, any of the other kinds of collaborations that we might embark on with artists and other media, like making a record, all there is is the sound; the sound comes first."
The band said that scoring for the film was similar to working on five different films, being made into one.
Recording
The music production went on for two to three years.
The band created the compositions while simultaneously working on ''Tomorrows'', a trilogy of studio albums.
More than 100 cues were created for the film. On the creation of the score and sound, Rafiq Bhatia said that each piece of music "would have its own kind of tone where, you can just tell from the sound, color and all that sort of stuff, right away that we're in this world." They had created short themes with melodic cues as "it was about finding instantly recognizable melodic ideas, and then contextualizing them instantly with either idiomatic genre, nodding instrumentation, or orchestration, or doing the exact opposite, positing them in a world of sound that feels very strange, very alien, or flirting between sound design and score, where the particular 'instruments' involved are not really recognizable instruments."
They also blended various instruments, including
paigu
The Chinese ''paigu'' (排鼓; pinyin: páigǔ; also spelled ''pai gu'') is a set of three to seven tuned drums (in most instances five are used), traditionally made of wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the ste ...
,
gong
A gongFrom Indonesian and ms, gong; jv, ꦒꦺꦴꦁ ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ja, , dora; km, គង ; th, ฆ้อง ; vi, cồng chiêng; as, কাঁহ is a percussion instrument originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Gongs ...
s,
foil violin, and Mayan
flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
s made of cedar, which they referred as the "unrecognizable instruments". Son Lux made samples of the paigu in their own studio during the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. They also sampled the tuned gongs and Chinese percussion instruments which were "chopped up and processed in different ways".
Ryan Lott played a version of
Claude Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
's "
Clair de Lune" using tuned gong.
They used
temporary music
''Temporary Music'' is the 1979 debut EP and 1981 debut album by the New York based no wave music group Material.
The band had previously worked with Daevid Allen on New York Gong's 1979 '' About Time'' album. The ''Temporary Music 1'' EP was ...
from film and television as an inspiration for creating the soundtrack. Bhatia also referenced the score for ''
The Matrix
''The Matrix'' is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in ''The Matrix'' film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantolia ...
'' while creating the song "Plug Fight," crediting ''The Matrixs composer,
Don Davis, for one of the characters as a reference point.
They said
the score for the first ''Matrix'' film was "absolutely brilliant" and helped them to find the "
science-fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univers ...
palette for the film". Son Lux said that there were several "vision-specific music moments" including the use of "Clair de Lune" along with traditional Chinese music and opera.
Collaborations
The album featured collaborations from several renowned artists. André Benjamin, also known as
André 3000
André Lauren Benjamin (born May 27, 1975), better known as André 3000, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor. He is best known for being a part of southern hip hop duo Outkast alongside fellow rapper Big Boi.
B ...
played flute for five tracks. The band liked his musical approach, and when they called Benjamin for the recording, he brought different kinds of flutes that had different registers, with some being double-sided so that the user might play two melodies simultaneously.
They recalled the recording sessions being a "surreal and crazy thing" and claimed their score work akin to a "professional recordist playing on field".
Randy Newman
Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist known for his Southern American English, Southern-accented singing style, early Americana (music), Americana-influenced songs (often ...
contributed for one of the tracks, "Now We're Cookin'". The band said that the inclusion of Newman were "Daniels' dream" and had watched the rough-cut of the film during the pandemic, which Newman liked. Lott approached him for recording one of the tracks, and had also sang the theme with Newman.
David Byrne
David Byrne (; born 14 May 1952) is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist and filmmaker. He was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of ...
and
Mitski
Mitski Miyawaki (born Mitsuki Laycock; September 27, 1990), known professionally by the mononym Mitski, is a Japanese-born American singer-songwriter. Mitski self-released her first two albums, '' Lush'' (2012) and '' Retired from Sad, New Caree ...
contributed for two tracks, while
Moses Sumney
Moses Sumney is a Ghanaian-American singer-songwriter. His self-recorded EP, ''Mid-City Island'', was released in 2014. He released another five-song EP in 2016, titled ''Lamentations''. His first full-length album, ''Aromanticism'', was released ...
worked on the track "Fence". Chang was one of the drummers in Sumney's band, had sent a sample of the cues for the track, sampling one of them and Lott created a different cue for the track. Sumney also wrote a song in the same cue, which was finalised as the track from the album.
Actress
Stephanie Hsu
Stephanie Ann Hsu (born November 25, 1990) is an American actress. She originated the theatrical roles of Christine Canigula in '' Be More Chill'' and Karen the Computer in '' The SpongeBob Musical'', performing in the Broadway runs of both. On ...
also sang the track "Sucked Into A Bagel".
Track listing
Reception
Writing for the music website
''Pitchfork'', Annie Geng gave the soundtrack 7.5 (out of 10) and said "The thrill of Son Lux’s score is in its audacious range. As ''Everything Everywhere All At Once'' snaps between zaniness, hilarity, darkness, and hope, so too does its soundtrack. Despite running an hour and 54 minutes, the score doesn’t lose coherence
.. Son Lux’s broader artistic ethos are rooted in the imperative of creation, so sprawling in its possibilities as to span an entire multiverse. Life, like music, is meant to be created. We can choose to fester in the bleakness of our unerringly chaotic world, or—like the Daniels and Son Lux—we can see chaos for what it is: an art of its own." ''Spectrum Culture''
's Holly Hazelwood gave a score of 80/100 "''Everything Everywhere All at Once'' is a movie of rare beauty and immense magic, and the fact that this soundtrack doesn’t feel incomplete without the visual element is a testament to its quality. For those who have seen the film, though, diving into this soundtrack is a fantastic way to stay inside the film’s expansive, hyperactive world for just a little longer. In the end, that’s what the best soundtracks are supposed to do: help you hold onto the magic long after the credits have come and gone." Debby Das of
The Harvard Crimson
''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...
praised Son Lux as the "perfect choice to compose the film’s jarringly primal soundtrack" and stated "Watching and listening to “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is the closest a viewer might get to being a kid in
Willy Wonka
Willy Wonka is a fictional character appearing in British author Roald Dahl's 1964 children's novel ''Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'' and its 1972 sequel ''Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator''. He is the eccentric founder and proprietor ...
’s candy shop."
Notes
References
{{Authority control
2022 soundtrack albums
Son Lux albums
Comedy-drama film soundtracks
Ambient soundtracks
Post-rock soundtracks