A version of this story about the music in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” first appeared in the Race Begins issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
For the collective known as Son Lux—Ryan Lott, Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia—making music for the fast-paced film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” always sounded crazy.
“It didn’t make any sense,” Lott said, laughing. “That was kind of a brand.”
The original plan was to use some of Son Lux’s existing music, adjust it, and adapt it for the film. But two days before production ended, the pandemic hit. What followed was a lengthy post-production period in which the band was able to create “mountains of music” for the film while recording their own three-album release, “Tomorrows”. Son Lux finally penned an entirely new score, appropriately varied and aurally enormous. “The challenge was to keep it from being a total disaster,” Lott said. “It’s a two-hour, 12-minute movie, and there’s an hour and 55 minutes of music, which is insane.”
Initially, Lott said, the band thought it would write some of the score and attract other people to create music that “wasn’t in our wheelhouse.” But it didn’t work that way. “In the end, we end up discovering all these different versions of ourselves,” he said. “They came to us because they loved our music, but they also loved the music that we have all released as individual artists. I think they saw an ecosystem, a kind of multiverse of possibilities.”
“Fortunately, we have the ability to split the work, and this was the first movie we shot as a band,” Lott said. “I have a fair amount of music experience, but this was my first time making music for the guys (Chang and Bhatia), and it was great doing it together as a band. We could divide and conquer. It was a lot of fun coming up with a plan for who gets the lead on what, and then exchanging files and, ‘OK, now it’s up to you to orchestrate and it’s up to you to put the finishing touches on.’ .’”
At the end of the game, the band decided that they also wanted to write a song for the end credits. “It felt crazy to take it, but we thought, ‘This movie deserves a song,’” Lott said. “We pitched the idea to (the ‘EEAAO’ directors) the Daniels and they said, ‘Well, sure, if you can handle it.’”
Eyeing the song, titled “This Is a Life,” as a collaboration opportunity, Son Lux approached Japanese-American singer Mitski. “We got her almost a copy of the movie, and she went crazy, which happened every time we contacted all the people,” Lott said. “I started to imagine a song where two voices were singing together, but it was almost like they were singing two different songs over the same piece of instrumental music, and then they came together in these ecstatic moments, these little explosions of color. and madness.”
David Byrne was also on his wish list and he also loved the movie. (“He turned my head,” he told Son Lux). Byrne suggested that the song be comforting and spacious after the film’s wild ride, “and as soon as he said that, I was like, ‘He’s absolutely right,'” Lott said. “I was so excited that I sat down with the intention of writing this song, and this never happens, but I wrote the song in 20 minutes, start to finish, with the exception of David’s contribution.
“There is a fine line between being a complete revelation and a complete failure,” he added. “But while I’m talking about it, I get goosebumps.”
Read more of the Race Begins issue here.
