hbo’s ‘euphoria’ score demonstrates the inevitable growth of much more than artist-curated soundtracks
By Grace Niemiec
There’s a common theme among the soundtracks of major blockbusters in the last year. In fact, the similarities are hard to ignore.
Since the massively successful release of Kendrick Lamar’s Black Panther soundtrack in 2018, filmmakers have enlisted booming artists to take creative control of the songs featured in their productions at a rapid frequency. Directors have received the message that when a movie-goer’s favorite artist is featured on a film’s soundtrack, there’s no doubt they’ll turn up to theaters to listen in context.
Subjectively speaking, it seems as though every filmmaker has been hopping on this train recently. Into the Spider-Verse. Creed II. Lion King: The Gift. Why shouldn’t they? With the year’s most popular artists attached to the project’s soundtrack, fans and money roll right in. It’s a no-brainer. This trend should only be expected to rise in the future. But there’s a much more subtle trend in bloom right beneath our noses — one far more difficult to ignore: the expansion of artist-curated projects into scores rather than just soundtracks.
There’s an important distinction to make between a production’s soundtrack and its score. While a soundtrack is an umbrella term for all of the music featured in a production’s run-time, it is usually used in reference to the non-instrumental songs. A score, on the other hand, includes the theme-establishing music played through nearly the entire project and it’s often wholly instrumental as to not distract from dialogue. For instance, while Kendrick Lamar took overall creative control of Black Panther’s soundtrack back in 2018, he didn’t lay a finger on the film’s score, which was entirely arranged by Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson.
A prime example of this newfound trend toward scores in action is demonstrated by no other than HBO’s hit teen drama Euphoria. It works as an eight-episode series that follows the lives of modern teenagers that deal with internal conflicts and the constant desire for their own form of happiness, often causing them to turn to drugs and other vices. Not only the soundtrack but also the scoring of the show was entirely handled by singer-songwriter Labrinth. The British musician, whose real name is Timothy Lee McKenzie, is probably most well-known for his collaborative album with artists Sia and Diplo, LSD, in the spring of 2019. McKenzie’s 26-track Euphoria project was released onto streaming services on October 4.
Just as Lamar took central themes of the Black Panther film — including racial, cultural, and political conflict — and transformed them into a project of cross-genre unionization representative of the clash of cultures that occurs in the movie itself, McKenzie drew from Euphoria’s major motifs. From the often-times cold, yet emotionally driven instrumentals of the tracks “We All Knew” and “Home From Rehab,” McKenzie epitomizes the loneliness, dissatisfaction, and isolation brought on by the characters’ addictions, complex flaws, and statuses as teenagers in 2019’s climate. In addition, he flaunts the common trait of the generation Euphoria seeks to portray in nearly every song: technology. The synth and electronic-heavy sounds that saturate the background of the show perfectly set the tone for the chaotic Gen Z mood that showrunners seek to get across, exactly as a score should. Not to be forgotten, the dreamy atmosphere that McKenzie puts into instrumentals like “Slideshow” and “Say Goodnight” pairs excellently with the astoundingly defined artistic aesthetic of Euphoria.
This turn from the drafting of high-profile musicians as a simple means to gain attention and commercial success for a project is shifting to something much more. Labrinth’s intense contribution towards the overall final product of Euphoria cannot be ignored. While he did compose songs that would bring in more attention to the production, including a single in collaboration with the show’s star, Zendaya, in August, McKenzie chose to use his musical expertise to bring much more than just his stage name to the table. His contributions led to the glittery and dazed setting that earned Euphoria the majority of its critical praise, a reward that can’t be as easily earned by the simple soundtracks artists are curating in film.
With the smashing success and popularity of Euphoria, it’s only a matter of time until projects throughout media take this opportunity to enhance their popular appeal, commercial success, artistry, and resonance among audiences as a whole at the same rate in which filmmakers recruit artists to solely curate their soundtracks today.