The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film (also known as Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film The Great Gatsby) is the soundtrack album to the 2013 film The Great Gatsby, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel of the same name. Interscope Records released it on May 6, 2013. The album was produced by Baz Luhrmann and Anton Monsted, with Jay-Z serving as the album's executive producer. The soundtrack comprises fourteen songs, including new material and cover versions performed by various artists. It contains a mixture of genre, including hip hop, jazz, and alternative music. Luhrmann specifically selected these styles of music to better immerse the audience into the story of The Great Gatsby.
The album received a mixed response, with the selection of songs and singers dividing critics. It peaked at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and appeared on several national record charts. The album has received three gold certifications from the Australian Recording Industry Association, the Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry, and the Recording Industry Association of America. The album spawned three singles: "Young and Beautiful", "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)", and "Bang Bang".
Background Jay-Z served as an executive producer for both the album and the film. The album's artwork features a small circular icon with "JZ" inside it, directly below the album's title. He worked with film director Baz Luhrmann for two years to transform the Jazz Age theme of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel into the musical equivalents of blended hip-hop, traditional jazz and other contemporary genres. On his approach to the project, Luhrmann said: "The question for me in approaching Gatsby was how to elicit from our audience the same level of excitement and pop cultural immediacy toward the world that Fitzgerald did for his audience? And in our age, the energy of jazz is caught in the energy of hip-hop." Luhrmann also stated that Jeymes Samuel was one of the individuals he worked with on the soundtrack. He served as the film's executive music consultant. He further described his collaborations with the producers of the album during an interview with MTV saying, "[Jeymes is] a really great friend of [Jay's] and just a unique human being. He defines energy; he defines spirit and he's a pop cultural genius. And I worked with Anton Monsted ... a great little team." The duo also worked with composer Craig Armstrong, who scored Luhrmann's films Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001), and executive music supervisor Anton Monsted.
Production The soundtrack contains both new music and cover versions. Fergie, Lana Del Rey, Florence and the Machine, Jay-Z, the xx, and will.i.am contributed original songs. Covers include Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" by Beyoncé and André 3000, Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" by Bryan Ferry with the Bryan Ferry Orchestra, Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" by Emeli Sandé and the Bryan Ferry Orchestra, and U2's "Love Is Blindness" by Jack White. Del Rey said of her experience contributing to the project: "It was an honor to work with Baz Luhrmann on his amazing adaptation of one of the most extraordinary books ever written. The movie is highly glamorous and exciting; Rick Nowels and I were thrilled to write the song for the film."
On April 2, 2013, Amy Winehouse's father used his Twitter profile to claim that Beyoncé had not informed him of her plans to cover "Back to Black" and that he wanted income from the song to go to his Amy Winehouse Foundation. He wrote, "I don't know this but what if Beyoncé gave £100,000 to foundation. Do you know how many kids that would help? Just putting it out there." He later added, "Let me repeat. This is the first I have heard of Beyoncé doing Amy's song." Kia Makarechi of The Huffington Post noted that Beyoncé did not use the song on a personal record so it was "slightly curious" for Winehouse to ask her for a donation. Winehouse later used his Twitter account to write: "I like Beyoncé's cover and have no probs." However, upon hearing the full-length track, he wrote on his Twitter profile, "I just heard the André part of 'Back to Black'. Terrible. He should have let Beyoncé do it all."
Music and lyrics
The Daily Telegraph described the film's music as a "decidedly modern mix of 21st century rap, rock and pop". Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone commented that the album's songs have "a consistent mood of noirish, doomed romance". Several songs feature influences from electronic music which was also present on the soundtrack for Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Other musical elements featured on the album include electronica, hip-hop, and rock music with jazz-age sounds. Kathy McCabe of Australia's The Daily Telegraph noted the inclusion of "orchestral flourishes" in most of the songs. Instrumentally, horn-driven sounds with loping bass beats and house music synths are used in the songs.
The songs' themes include partying, murder, and heartache help to drive "the story's point home – illusionary love, the excess of the leisure classes, [and] the curse of money" as noted by Cristina Jaleru of the Associated Press. Entertainment Weeklys Adam Carlson concluded that the soundtrack's songs reflected that it is set nearly a century in the past. He noted that it contains "all honking brass and a preference for tempos that slide up the scale like liquor, getting hot just as they hit the chorus". Logan Smithson of the webzine PopMatters commented that an important function of a soundtrack is, "[...] to maintain a cohesive sound: a general theme to piece the tracks together and make it sound like a single piece of work rather than a collection of songs." He felt that the soundtrack accomplished this feat although the artists come from a mixture of genres and backgrounds. He further noted, "The Great Gatsby Soundtrack does its job of capturing the sound of the Roaring '20s. A fusion of horns brings the era to life with a modern twist. Jazzy melodies are captured by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra. Some songs certainly have a neo-soul vibe going, reminiscent of the late Amy Winehouse."
Songs The opening song, "$100 Bill" by Jay-Z contains a chopped and screwed beat and electro-rap elements, and is written from the perspective of a modern-day Gatsby. It begins with a speech by Leonardo DiCaprio, while throughout the song Jay-Z is backed by samples of a children's choir and a '20s jazz horn. In the song, he raps about being remembered, the pitfalls of wealth, as well as comparing rich people from the 1920s and the 21st century. "Back to Black", written by Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse, originally appeared on her 2006 album of the same name. It was the last song added to the album after Jay-Z's suggestion to Luhrmann that it be included to add a darker moment to the album. It is a slower version than the original with chopped-and-screwed elements, a dark and haunting sound, using guitar, moody synth and electro bleeps to provide the instrumentation. "Bang Bang" performed by will.i.am contains a sample of the jazz composition "Charleston" (1923) and features Louis Armstrong-inspired vocals along with hi-NRG, EDM, electropop and. hip-hop elements, and 1920s-style dance music as well as the use of a ukulele. "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)" is a swing, hip-hop, and dubstep song which references the novel's viewing parties held by Gatsby.
"Young and Beautiful" was written by Del Rey and Rick Nowels. Musically, it is a lush ballad which contains Del Rey's sweeping vocals accompanied by dreamy strings and canned percussion. Lyrically, the song is written from the perspective of Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby's lover, and it talks about being young forever, going to parties, nostalgia, and vulnerability as shown in the lyrics "Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?". "Love Is the Drug" originally appeared on Roxy Music's 1975 album Siren; the song was written by band members Ferry and Andy Mackay. It contains jazz elements, trumpet wails, and skittering drums as well as honky-tonk, bass sax, sleazy strings, and vocal "oohs". "Over the Love" performed by Florence and the Machine is written from the perspective of Daisy Buchanan. It contains references to the yellow dress she wears and the green light that hovers outside her home on the dock in East Egg; both were inspired by the novel. Instrumentally, it uses a light piano and Welch's "trademark heart-wrenching wail". "Where the Wind Blows" contains soul vocals performed by Coco O and contains an old-time piano sampling with a whirring drum 'n bass circular beat and jazzy keys. R. Kurt Osenlund of Slant Magazine commented that the song has the "instrumentals of a Cole Porter classic, but vocals akin to those of Jennifer Hudson". Jim Farber of New York's Daily News noted that she sings with the doll-like vocals of Betty Boop.
"Crazy in Love", credited to Beyoncé, Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), Rich Harrison, and Eugene Record, originally appeared on her 2003 album Dangerously in Love. It was chosen for inclusion on the album as it reminded the Luhrmann of a character from the novel and it was a blend of modern and traditional music complete with a jazz band and Sandé's vocals. The version included on the album is a swing and soul mash-up. The song "Together" by the xx contains skeletal electro-pop elements and a slow atmosphere, as well as a dark and insistent backing, metronomic beat, and breathy, deep vocals which climax with an orchestral swell. Thomas Corner of the Chicago Sun-Times, notes that "[it] evokes the narrative's palpable desperation in its hushed tone and nagging heart-monitor beat." "Hearts a Mess" first appeared on Gotye's second studio album, Like Drawing Blood (2006). It is a "neo-lounge ballad" "with the same clunking, treated backbone used in Gotye's song 'Somebody That I Used to Know'". Lucy Jones of NME notes it is instrumentally complete with "strings, martial beats", horns and Wouter "Wally" De Backer's vocals". According to Philip Cosores of Paste magazine, three of Gotye's vocal styles are featured in the song, "the hushed and earnest songwriter, the Sting-esque frontman with remarkable range to handle the chorus, and then the human and battered character of the song's latter moments".
"Love Is Blindness" was originally written by Bono with music by U2 and appeared on the band's 1991 album Achtung Baby. The rock-hip-hop version on this album contains drum beats, "piercing yelps...and a gut-poking bass line". "Into the Past" is a slow-tempo song performed by Nero and contains dubstep elements and strings. "Kill and Run", which contains electronica elements and is performed by Sia, was compared with Adele's songs, most notably with "Skyfall" because of its lush and languid sound, backed by strings, and because "[it] slowly builds to a crescendo that hits all the right emotional notes without becoming overwrought". "No Church in the Wild", which was originally included on Watch the Throne (2011), appears on the deluxe edition of the album. It features vocals by Kanye West and includes techno-rap elements.
Release and promotion On April 4, 2013, Interscope and Warner Brothers announced the album's track listing. The same day, a new trailer for the film featured previews of three songs from the soundtrack: "Back to Black", "Over the Love", and "Young and Beautiful". One MTV contributor wrote that the trailer spotlights the relationship between two of the film's characters, "but it's really only here to show off the movie's soundtrack". A six-minute sampler of the soundtrack, which contained snippets of the songs, excluding "Back to Black" and "100$ Bill", was released on April 16, 2013, on YouTube. The whole album was made available for streaming through NPR on May 2, 2013. It was released through Interscope Records on May 6, 2013.