The most effective film songs are those that illuminate character, summarize the story or in any other case add a brand new dimension to the movie expertise. Greater than in most years, in 2025 there was a bumper crop of songs that did simply that.
The obvious examples are the 2 songs Stephen Schwartz wrote for “Depraved: For Good.” There have been no new songs in final 12 months’s “Depraved,” however the growth of the second act (from 45 minutes on stage to 2 hours within the new movie) “gave us the chance to place onscreen issues that occurred offstage or have been solely implied,” Schwartz says.
“The Lady within the Bubble,” sung by Ariana Grande, “is Glinda’s turning level,” he says, “the place she realizes that she simply can’t go on insulating herself from life and the implications of what the folks round her are doing, and what she’s acceding to. It appeared actually vital to take the time to have Glinda take a look at her personal reflection and resolve she will’t dwell any longer with what she’s seeing and has to make a change.”
The opposite track, Cynthia Erivo’s “No Place Like House,” helps to arrange the finale as Elphaba “makes an unlimited sacrifice in an effort to try to save Oz,” Schwartz provides. “We felt that we actually needed to know what that value her, how a lot she beloved her homeland and being part of it, even when it didn’t present the identical love again to her.”
Expressing sophisticated feelings in music is usually a problem, Schwartz says, conceding that Elphaba’s track “went by way of a variety of iterations. (However) songs are at their finest when they’re multi-layered.”
For the six-minute finale of “Highest 2 Lowest,” director Spike Lee sought a recent, unknown singer-songwriter to “audition” for record-label government Denzel Washington. Lee discovered Aiyana-Lee, a British-born L.A. resident struggling to determine herself, on Instagram and reached out on to her.
“He actually needed that second to be particular, one thing that encapsulated that journey,” she says. “King David (Washington’s character) is looking for himself once more and why he went into music within the first place. The track stood for soulful, true artistry, one thing that he had misplaced contact with for a really very long time.”
She wrote almost a dozen songs earlier than selecting the one for the movie. “Spike and I have been on the cellphone on daily basis attempting to get this down,” she provides. “He inspired me to inform my story, and convey my life expertise into the function and the track, so the whole lot I’m saying may be very uncooked and actual to me.”
In stark distinction to Aiyana-Lee stands veteran Diane Warren, who has amassed 16 Oscar nominations over almost 40 years of film songwriting (and received an honorary Oscar in 2022 “for her genius, generosity and passionate dedication to the ability of track in movie”).
She penned “Expensive Me” in the course of the making of “Relentless,” a documentary about her single-minded willpower to make songwriting her profession and the success that has adopted. “Music saved my life in some ways,” Warren says. “I didn’t have a simple time rising up.
“I needed to jot down a track to that lady that sat in that room alone and felt just like the world was in opposition to her,” she notes. “I needed to jot down a love letter to her. I needed to say, ‘You realize what? You don’t see it now, it doesn’t really feel prefer it’s going to be okay, however it is going to be.’”
Warren says that it’s her “most private track—however right here’s the irony: it’s perhaps my most common track. I’ve gotten extra response to this track than virtually any track I can recall. It’s touching folks.”
