Pop-Star Composer

A soundtrack that rocks for a movie that shocks.

"I have the feeling that this movie is just a receptacle for songs David Bowie didn't want to release on any of his albums."

— The Nostalgia Chick on Labyrinth

When you're setting up an All-Star Cast, who says you have to stop at actors?

The Pop-Star Composer is a famous musical figure, known primarily for their work with, well, popular music, who is hired by a movie, television, or video game studio to provide music and songs for their latest work. Think partially-or-completely washed-up rock stars and dueling divas. This is especially common for animated musicals—featuring lyrics and music by a famous songwriter seems a good way to draw audiences. If they already like Songwriter X, then they'll probably like the movie! Or so one hopes. Despite the trope title, the songwriter in question doesn't necessarily have to be an alumnus of the "pop" music genre—they just have to be known for performing something besides movie scores.

This particular practice has been somewhat all-over-the-place since it first began. Earlier, Trope Making examples sprouted up in The '80s with examples such as David Bowie doing the songs for Labyrinth and Queen doing a lot of the music for movies such as Flash Gordon and Highlander (they did not do all the music for these films, however, as admirers of Howard Blake and Michael Kamen will attest). But animated movies in The '90s really codified this trope, with examples such as Elton John doing the songs for The Lion King. In particular, animated movies with this kind of musical casting are prone to Award Bait Songs and composers/performers who used to be kind of cool once.

Ironically, the more mainstream and big-budget a live-action movie generally is, the less likely this trope will be used. With many Hollywood studios serving as corporate siblings of major record labels, "synergy" usually rears its head and a grab bag of artists from a label will be tapped to each provide a number for a movie soundtrack (it was common in The '90s to end TV ads with a list of performers who appeared on the soundtrack, no matter how briefly their work turned up in the actual film). Pop Star Composers usually work in animated features or smaller-scale films that aren't trying so hard to hit every potential radio market and can thus focus more on matching music to the moment.

And before you ask: No, Danny Elfman does not count, though he was in a band.

See also Cult Soundtrack.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Yuki Kajiura, the maker of many soundtracks for various anime series, was one of the two members of famous Japanese pop duo See-Saw, and regularly contributes to Japanese music through the solo project Fiction Junction and the band Kalafina.
• Similarly enough, anime composer Hiroyuki Sawano also has his own music project SawanoHiroyuki[nZk].
• Susumu Hirasawa, a pop star during the '80s and '90s, experienced something of a second coming as a composer of anime soundtracks, notably Berserk and the works of Satoshi Kon.
• Ai Maeda is a film actress and singer, and provides the distinctive voice of the main character in Kino's Journey. Naturally, she also sings the ending theme song. (Relatedly, the ending theme lyrics were written by the original book's novelist.)
• US pop star Neil Sedaka composed the opening and ending themes for the series Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. Ironically, however, this resulted in the openings not being used in the US DVD release.
• Daisuke Inoue, composer and performer (both vocally and instrumentally in some cases) of several songs for the original Mobile Suit Gundam, was well-known in Japan and to some folks in the US for being frontman and saxophonist of the early J-Pop band Blue Comets, who had a huge hit with "Blue Chateau".
• Supercell's soundtrack was the main attraction of Guilty Crown. Another famous Vocaloid producer, livetune, was hired to write the OPs for Devil Survivor 2 and the second season of Oreimo. The latter is actually a double-example, written by livetune and performed by the pop idol duo ClariS.
• Yoshiki Hayashi, for X/1999 with Forever Love, and Osamu Tezuka's Buddha with Scarlet Love Song.
• FLCL featured music from the j-rock band The Pillows, in somewhat of an inversion of this trope — the studio picked the band because they thought their sound fit the series rather than for marketing reasons, and their involvement in FLCL actually caused a popularity bump for The Pillows, rather than the other way around. In addition, most of the music used in FLCL was stuff The Pillows had already recorded — only two songs were actually created specifically for the series, though those two songs ("Ride on Shooting Star" and "I Think I Can") are featured prominently, as the Ending Theme and arguably the series' main theme, respectively.
• Paul Oakenfold arranged the Transformers theme for the English dub of Transformers: Cybertron.
• Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise was scored by former Yellow Magic Orchestra member Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of few soundtracks he did for an animated work. Studio Gainax hired him specifically to tie in with their intentions of making the film an animated Epic Movie, as YMO were one of the most famous bands in Japan, and by the time he was hired in 1986, he had already made a name for himself as an in-demand soundtrack composer. Tellingly, hiring Sakamoto required Gainax to increase the film's budget by ¥40 million.

Films — Animated

• Disney uses this trope every once in a while:
  • A surprisingly early example: Peggy Lee wrote (with Sonny Burke) the songs for Lady and the Tramp and sang most of them.
  • Country singer Roger Miller wrote and performed "Oo-de-lally", "Not In Nottingham", and "Whistle-Stop" for Disney's Robin Hood (1973).
  • Almost all of the songs in Oliver & Company. "Once Upon a Time in New York City" was co-written by Barry Mann, "Why Should I Worry?" was written by Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight, "Streets of Gold" was written by Dean Pitchford and Tom Snow, and "Perfect Isn't Easy" was co-written by Barry Manilow. Bonus points for the first two of those songs being sung by songwriters themselves, Huey Lewis and Billy Joel (respectively), though neither of them wrote songs for the movie.
  • The Lion King's songs by Elton John (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics).
  • Phil Collins of Genesis wrote the songs for Tarzan. A few years later, he also did the songs for Brother Bear, which then is lampshaded in the DVD Commentary:
    Rutt: Phil Collins, Phil Collins, Phil Collins... He's everywhere.
    Tuke: Doesn't he take a break?
    • In addition, many of the dubs got a major pop star from their area to sing the dubbed songs: Ákos Kovács in Hungarian, Alex Panayi in Greek, Wakin Chau in Cantonese, Hisham Nour in Arabic, Luís Represas in European Portuguese, and Paweł Hartlieb in Polish, just to name a few.
  • The Emperor's New Groove was originally set to feature a whole arsenal of songs by Sting, but due to the movie undergoing a massive plot-shift in development, only two songs remain in the movie: Kuzco's facetiously-used theme song and the end credits Award-Bait Song, "My Funny Friend and Me." The rest of the songs can still be heard on the soundtrack album.
  • Moana's soundtrack, in addition to being composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, features singer Opetaia Foa'i of the New Zealand-based Pacific fusion band Te Vaka. Miranda also did Encanto.
• Aside from Lion King, Elton John also co-wrote and sang most of the songs in The Road to El Dorado with Tim Rice, though unlike The Lion King, that wasn't a Disney movie.
  • Gnomeo & Juliet also features several songs by him (and his usual collaborator, lyricist Bernie Taupin), both originals and classics. The trailer even shows a gnomified version of him.
• While Peter Gabriel's main contribution to Pixar's WALL•E was the end credit song "Down to Earth", he also co-wrote EVE's theme with underscore composer Thomas Newman.
• While most of the Newman family is known for film soundtracks, Randy Newman had a career as a singer-songwriter before (and while) working on films. He's been doing this for quite some time too, including six Pixar movies and The Princess and the Frog.
  • Cars, along with pre-existing songs and Newman's score and "Our Town", also had original songs by Sheryl Crow and Brad Paisley.
• will.i.am performed and co-wrote with composer Hans Zimmer music for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
• Despicable Me had original songs by Pharrell Williams, who was also credited for the underscore along with Heitor Pereira. Pharrell not only came back for the sequel, but one of the songs from its soundtrack — "Happy" — became his biggest hit.
• The Road to El Dorado reunites Elton John and Tim Rice, fresh off The Lion King.
• Originally, Coraline was set to have a whole arsenal of songs by They Might Be Giants. However, they ended up not fitting with the tone of the film, and mostly getting cut. One short song, sung by Other Father, does remain in the film.
• Plan on watching Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron? Hope you like Bryan Adams!
• Curious George has songs by Jack Johnson.
• Animalympics has songs written and performed by Graham Gouldman of 10cc.
• Jimmy Webb, best known for "Wichita Lineman" and "MacArthur Park", wrote the underscore and songs for The Last Unicorn; the group America performed some of the songs.
• Roger Waters composed the music to When the Wind Blows, with David Bowie contributing the title song.
• Over the Hedge has songs written by Ben Folds.
• Sia composed "Rainbow" for the ending credits of My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), in which she has the ponysona Songbird Serenade. Danish artist/band Lukas Graham also contributed "Off to See The World" for the first trailer.
• Makoto Shinkai joined forces with Japanese darlings RADWIMPS for the soundtracks of Your Name and Weathering With You, including multiple tracks for frontman Yojiro Noda to sing on. The two films greatly increased international awareness of them.
• Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails wrote the score of Soul, with jazz musician Jon Batiste also contributing original songs in his genre. Reznor and Ross would later compose for the animated film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.
• For Turning Red, all three 4*Town songs were co-written by FINNEAS and Billie Eilish.
• Merry Little Batman: Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy serves as composer for the film. This marks Stump’s second go in the Batman franchise, having written and performed a song for The LEGO Batman Movie.
• VeggieTales movies:
  • In Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, Anointed performs "Second Chances" and the Newsboys perform "In The Belly Of The Whale".
  • In The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie, Steve Taylor of Newsboys sings "Yo Ho Hero" and Mandisa sings "The Right Thing", the latter of which is not featured in the film, instead appearing on a tie-in sing-along DVD and on the soundtrack.

Films — Live-Action

• Danny Elfman formally started his film composing career with Pee-wee's Big Adventure because both star and director were fans of his band Oingo Boingo.
• The Graduate featured songs by Simon & Garfunkel.
• World War Z featured a minimalistic, haunting soundtrack by Muse.
• Labyrinth featured a song score by David Bowie, who also played the main antagonist, the Goblin King (as well as a synth underscore by Trevor Jones). Contrary to the Nostalgia Chick's theory, Bowie was attracted to the project in part because he liked the idea of writing songs for a children's movie — it's just that some of them aren't that far removed from his usual output.
• John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas wrote part of the score for The Man Who Fell to Earth. Interestingly, that film was David Bowie's first Non-Actor Vehicle, and he initially worked on a score with Paul Buckmaster, but for various reasons, it went unused and will probably never see the light of day, save for a backwards bass line that appears on one track of Low.
  • A few years earlier Phillips wrote and performed several songs for Robert Altman's quirky comedy Brewster McCloud. Phillips was also a co-producer for the film.
• Queen provided the music for FLASH! AH-AAAH-- ...er, we mean Flash Gordon. Sorry about that.
  • Queen also were "born to be princes of the universe" with Highlander; most of the songs they did for the film were later collected on A Kind of Magic.
  • Freddie Mercury was involved in the re-scoring of Metropolis's 1984 release. (While he was there, he requested for the East German government to use pieces of the film in the video for "Radio Ga Ga".)
• Roger Waters of Pink Floyd wrote a song for The Last Mimzy called "Hello (I Love You)".
• There Will Be Blood (2007) has a soundtrack by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. Notably, it sounds nothing like Radiohead, but includes part of Greenwood's modernist orchestral work "Popcorn Superhet Receiver". He played the viola and studied classical composition years before becoming a guitarist, and it shows. Greenwood, a frequent collaborator of director Paul Thomas Anderson, has also scored Bodysong (2003), Norwegian Wood (2010), We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), The Master (2012), and Inherent Vice (2014).
• Jazz example: Duke Ellington composed and performed the soundtrack for Anatomy of a Murder (he also briefly appears as juke joint pianist Pie-Eye) and wrote the theme and pilot score for the short-lived TV series of The Asphalt Jungle.
• Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam did the soundtrack for Into the Wild, which also doubled as his solo debut.
• Stewart Copeland of The Police wrote the music for Rumble Fish. He also composed the original theme for Babylon 5 and worked on The Equalizer. In fact, he has an extensive scoring career.
• Pop-rock duo Wang Chung did the synth-rock score for To Live and Die in L.A., which also featured some of their licensed songs.
• Bob Dylan composed a number of original songs for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. He also appears in a minor role. One of the songs from the film, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", is one of his greatest hits, covered by (among others) Guns N' Roses on Use Your Illusion.
• Neil Young improvised the electric guitar soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's acid western Dead Man while watching the film alone in a studio.
• Jack White of The White Stripes performed five songs in the film Cold Mountain and appeared in a minor role.
• Kill Bill Vol. 1 features original music by The RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan.
• Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra recorded the soundtrack for Xanadu.
• Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs collaborated with Carter Burwell on the soundtrack to the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.
• Clint Mansell, former vocalist and guitarist of alternative rock-rap-techno-industrial-grebo band Pop Will Eat Itself, moved into film scores after the band disbanded in 1996. Nowadays he's most famous for writing the scores for every single Darren Aronofsky film.
• Peter Gabriel composed the music for The Last Temptation of Christ, Birdy and Rabbit-Proof Fence. The score for the former was touched up for Gabriel's 1989 album Passion.
• Yoshiki Hayashi produced the entire soundtrack for Repo! The Genetic Opera, created the song VUK-R for it. He also contributed Blue Butterfly for Catacombs, and contributed the title track "IV" for Saw IV. In a more meta sense, he did the theme for the 2012 and 2013 Golden Globes.
• Paul McCartney as solo artist composed songs for several films, including Live and Let Die, Spies Like Us, Fathers Day, Vanilla Sky, and the American versions of The Lake House and The In-Laws. For some reason, films that use his music tend to get too philosophical or too faux-losophical for the intended audiences and achieve limited success.
  • 1966's The Family Way is Fab Macca's only actual film score to date.
• Cameron Crowe's film Singles features songs from bands in the Seattle grunge scene, which had just started to explode. Pearl Jam wrote two original songs, "Breath" and "State of Love and Trust," for the film. Soundgarden created an acoustic track for use in the background ambience of a scene. The song was "Spoonman," which was later re-recorded and became Soundgarden's breakout single. Meanwhile, Crowe's ex-wife Nancy Wilson wrote music for all of his movies up to Elizabethtown.
• Mark Knopfler composed a number of scores for movies, such as Local Hero and The Princess Bride.
• Paramount and Disney's Popeye Live-Action Adaptation was a musical with songs written by Harry Nilsson.
• Daft Punk composed the music for TRON: Legacy.
  • Thomas Bangalter also contributed music for Gaspar Noe's films Irréversible and Enter the Void.
• Horror film Trick or Treat from 1986 had all its songs written by Hard Rock band Fastway, although this also had an instrumental score by Christopher Young.
• The Residents, of all people, performed the soundtrack to little-known Eighties black comedy The Census Taker (although about half of the soundtrack was previously released material).
  • Perhaps even more surprisingly, they provided the score to a Discovery Channel nature documentary series, Hunters: The World of Predators and Prey.
• Mark Oliver Everett of Eels composed the soundtrack to Levity.
• Shudder To Think released two soundtracks in 1998 that were notable for being different from their normal alternative/art-punk sound: the score to High Art was a mixture of ambient music and instrumental trip-hop, while First Love Last Rites was mainly a retraux early 60's pastiche with loads and loads of guest vocalists such as Billy Corgan, Robin Zander, Liz Phair, and Jeff Buckley. Members Nathan Larson and Craig Wedren now both do soundtrack work from time to time.
• Yo La Tengo scored Adventureland.
• Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum scored Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy.
• AC/DC made the soundtrack of Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive.
• R.E.M. wrote the underscore for Man on the Moon, which was titled after their hit song about the movie's subject, Andy Kaufman. That song becomes an instrumental Leitmotif in the score, and they also contributed a new song in "The Great Beyond".
• The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan has also written film scores, most recently for trashy auteur features like Jonas Akerlund's Spun, and Asia Argento's adaptation of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, though his first entrances into the genre involved more mainstream fare like Ransom and Stigmata.
• Anne Dudley, composer of the scores for (among many others) American History X, The Full Monty and The Crying Game (as well as the TV series The 10th Kingdom) first became famous as a member of experimental electronica group Art Of Noise, as well as a prolific string arranger for many, many songs. She more or less moved into this full time - what she's done since leaving the band couldn't rationally be described as "pop".
• In 2004, Pet Shop Boys composed a score for the 1925 silent film The Battleship Potemkin, and performed it live with the Dresdner Sinfoniker in Trafalgar Square.
• Former Yes guitarist Trevor Rabin has moved into writing soundtracks full-time since leaving the band in 1994.
• Tangerine Dream. And how. Well known in the 1970s for their experimental electronic sounds. 1970s output: 9 studio albums and 1 soundtrack. 1980s output: 6 studio albums and 13 soundtracks - including Thief, Risky Business and the American cut of Legend (the original British cut featured a score by Jerry Goldsmith).
• The Proposition, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Blonde, and The Road all had soundtracks by Nick Cave and his bandmate Warren Ellis. (Not that Warren Ellis.) They also arranged the cover-heavy soundtrack to Lawless, performing it with a number of guest artists including Mark Lanegan, Emmylou Harris, and Ralph Stanley. Cave also wrote the screenplays to both The Proposition and Lawless.
• Jonah Hex (2010): Prog Metal band Mastodon composed the score for the 2010 film.
• Batman (1989) had songs by Prince (although they aren't nearly as prominent in the film as Danny Elfman's score - some of the songs on the Prince album aren't even in the film). The sequels weren't as beholden to a single pop star; Batman Returns had Siouxsie and The Banshees provide one number, and the Joel Schumacher-helmed entries had a jumble of artists provide songs (Nick Cave, Seal, U2, The Smashing Pumpkins, etc.).
• Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and his collaborator Atticus Ross did the soundtrack for The Social Network and won an Academy Award for their efforts. They worked together again on the score to the 2011 adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and also had Karen O contribute guest vocals for the Cover Version of "Immigrant Song" featured in the opening credits. Reznor and Ross once again collaborated on the soundtrack to Gone Girl. Interestingly, all three are were directed by David Fincher, meaning that Reznor and Ross are now effectively part of Fincher's Production Posse.
• BT scored the films Stealth, The Fast and the Furious, Catch And Release, Look and Monster, along with the Pixar Shorts Tokyo Mater and Partysaurus Rex.
• The Zombies composed some songs for Bunny Lake is Missing and briefly appear in it as well.
• Idiosyncratic acoustic guitar wizard Leo Kottke somehow did the soundtrack for a bottom-of-the-barrel Troma film, Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid.
• Attack the Block was scored by Basement Jaxx, known for their house music.
• Todd Rundgren did the score for Dumb and Dumber. The Farrelly Brothers later got Pete Yorn to do the music for Me, Myself & Irene.
• Marilyn Manson co-wrote the score for Resident Evil (2002).
• U2 wrote and recorded several songs for the film The Million Dollar Hotel.
• Randy Edelman began his career as a musician who occasionally did film scores, recording a few albums in the process. Since the 1980s, he's recorded film scores full time.
• Yellow Magic Orchestra alum Ryuichi Sakamoto spent 40 years scoring films in-between various solo-projects, starting with Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (which he also starred in alongside David Bowie). He won an Oscar alongside Talking Heads frontman David Byrne for the collaborative soundtrack for The Last Emperor (which consequently has two pop star composers). Sakamoto's final scoring project was for 2023's Monster, which came out months after his death from a years-long battle with cancer.
• The Polyphonic Spree performed the score to Thumbsucker. Before he Died During Production, Elliott Smith was going to score it instead. The songs Smith did complete for the film (one original song and Cover Versions of Big Star's "Thirteen" and Cat Stevens' "Trouble") were still included in the final product.
• Speaking of Cat Stevens, he supplied the music for Harold and Maude. The film included two new songs "If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out" and "Don't Be Shy" and alternate versions of "Trouble", "On the Road to Find Out", "I Wish, I Wish", "Miles from Nowhere", "Tea for the Tillerman", "I Think I See the Light", and "Where Do the Children Play?". None of the new material made it onto the 1972 soundtrack, which only used previously released recordings.
  • Elton John was originally asked, but turned it down and suggested Cat instead.
• Jeremy Barnes' first album as A Hawk and a Hacksaw provided the soundtrack for the documentary Zizek! AHAAH has also written an unofficial score that they perform live at showings of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
• Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys provided five acoustic songs for the 2010 film Submarine, each used in memorable montages between the two main characters. One of them was even rerecorded for the Monkeys' fourth album.
• Two former members of Led Zeppelin did film scores. Jimmy Page did the scores for Death Wish II and Death Wish 3, and John Paul Jones did the score for an obscure film called Scream For Help.
  • The original Death Wish had a score by Herbie Hancock. He also scored Blowup and The Spook Who Sat by the Door.
• While he didn't score the whole film, Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis composed and performed several short instrumental pieces for the independent film Gas Food Lodging.
• Jonathan Davis of Korn wrote the music and the words for Lestat's songs in Queen of the Damned (the novel had blatantly vampire songs; the film had more ambiguous ones). For contractual reasons, his vocal performances could be used in the film itself, but not on the official soundtrack album; instead, the album included versions of these songs performed by other well-known singers (Wayne Static of Static-X, David Draiman of Disturbed, Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson, and Jay Gordon of Orgy).
• Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz has co-scored Ravenous (1999) with Michael Nyman and 101 Reykavik with Einar Örn Benediktsson
• The soundtrack for Magnolia was written mostly by Aimee Mann.
• Arcade Fire composed the score for her and have earned an Academy Award nomination for it. They also composed "The Horn of Plenty" (Panem's National Anthem) for The Hunger Games.
• Neil Diamond wrote the soundtrack for The Film of the Book of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
• Pink Floyd did the soundtracks for two obscure French films, La Vallee (soundtrack album Obscured by Clouds) and More (soundtrack album More). Interestingly enough, due to the soundtrack albums being regarded as de-facto studio albums by Floyd's fanbase, both films are now basically regarded as "those films Pink Floyd wrote soundtracks for" and not much else.
• The Bee Gees contributed songs to Saturday Night Fever and its followup, Staying Alive.
• Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks composed both the scores and contributed songs for Quicksilver, The Wicked Lady and Lorca and the Outlaws.
• Air did the soundtrack for The Virgin Suicides.
• Can did the soundtracks for several obscure films, of which Deep End is the most well known and collected these songs on their album "Soundtracks".
• Popol Vuh composed several soundtracks for films by Werner Herzog.
• Frank Zappa did the soundtrack for The World's Greatest Sinner. He was also approached to do Star Wars, but refused the project.
• Captain Beefheart's "Hard Workin' Man" was written for the film Blue Collar.
• The band Goblin wrote the soundtrack for several Dario Argento films, including Deep Red, Suspiria (1977) and Tenebre.
• Curtis Mayfield wrote the soundtrack for Superfly resulting in the hits "Superfly" and "Pusherman".
• How could ever forget Isaac Hayes' music for Shaft?
• Earth, Wind & Fire scored Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.
  • EWF also did the music for the forgettable film, That's the Way of the World, starring Harvey Keitel as a record producer and featured the band as the new group he was producing. Their soundtrack is pretty much the only thing people remember of it.
• Wu-Tang Clan did the soundtrack for Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
• Brian Eno wrote Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks for the documentary film For All Mankind, but due to lukewarm audience reactions the project was delayed. The album came out in 1983, while the film only got an official release in 1989. Nevertheless: probably more people have listened to the album than ever saw the film.
• The film adaptation of The Circle (2011) has Benny Andersson of ABBA. He also produced the film and was the driving force behind getting the film made.
• DEVO's Mark Mothersbaugh has been scoring films since 1987 with credits ranging from Wes Anderson flicks to The LEGO Movie.
• thenewno2, Dhani Harrison's (son of George Harrison) band composed the score to Beautiful Creatures, which got acclaim even from people who didn't like the movie.
• Murphy's Romance (1985) got Carole King as its composer — and then the studio failed to even release an official soundtrack, despite it containing some of King's best work in "Running Lonely" and "Love For the Last Time". To say that fans are still displeased about this would be an understatement.
• Kung Fury was scored by synthwave master Mitch Murder, with additional contributions from Lost Years, Betamaxx, and Highway Superstar, and the main theme, "True Survivor", is sung by the one and only David Hasselhoff!
• The score for Kiler is by Kuba Sienkiewicz and his band Elektryczne Gitary.
• The score of Lost in Translation contains several songs composed by Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine fame, including one actual My Bloody Valentine song and four songs released under his own name that are unique to the film soundtrack. The four new songs he contributed were amongst only a handful of recordings he released (either as a solo artist or with MBV) between 1991's Loveless and 2013's m b v.
• Miles Davis put together a band to record the soundtrack for the 1958 Louis Malle film Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud).
• Nothing Left To Fear was scored by Slash in collaboration with Nicholas O'Toole. The score was primarily instrumentals featuring guitar and a string section, but two songs also featured vocals by Myles Kennedy (of Alter Bridge as well as Slash's backing group).
• Arthur (1981) was originally going to feature an entire underscore by soft rock performer Christopher Cross, but precisely because he'd never scored a movie, the filmmakers went with Burt Bacharach instead. Cross, Bacharach, and the latter's then-collaborator Carole Bayer Sager (who integrated a line from an unrecorded song she'd written with Peter Allen) went on to write the Award-Bait Song "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" together, which won the Best Original Song Oscar and remains one of Cross's most popular songs.
• Toto composed the score for David Lynch's Dune (1984).
• Lionel Richie composed hit song "Say You, Say Me" for 1985 film White Nights.
• George Harrison did the soundtrack to Shanghai Surprise. It didn't help the film any. "Breath Away" and "Someplace Else" later appeared on his album Cloud Nine.
  • He'd previously contributed the song "Only a Dream Away" for Time Bandits, which was also made by HandMade Films. The head of the studio Denis O'Brien wanted him to do the whole soundtrack.
• Alan Price of The Animals did the soundtrack for O Lucky Man! He and his band appear throught the film as a Greek Chorus. Lindsay Anderson originally wanted to make a documentary about them touring England, but the cost of licensing songs they performed was too high, so he put them in his film instead.
• Quite a few blaxploitation films — Isaac Hayes for Shaft, Curtis Mayfield for Super Fly, Bobby Womack for Across 110th Street, Marvin Gaye for Trouble Man (which was his first big break), James Brown for Black Caesar, Roy Ayers for Coffy, Willie Hutch for The Mack and Foxy Brown, Edwin Starr for Hell Up In Harlem and Barry White for Together Brothers to name a few.
• Some Freaks writer and director Ian MacAllister McDonald initially contacted Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys just to use a couple of their previously released songs in the film - Walter ended up doing a whole score for the movie on top of that.
• Dave Grohl composed the score to the film Touch 1997. The score includes two appearances by other rock musicians: John Doe sings one song, while another is a duet between Grohl and A. Post.
• The Shout's score was composed by Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks. As of 2021, the full soundtrack has not seen an official release, although the main theme can be found on Banks' album A Curious Feeling under the title "From the Undertow".
• New Order provided the score for Control, a biopic about the band members' days as Joy Division and especially the tribulations of late frontman Ian Curtis. The band had contributed songs to other movies in the past (e.g. Pretty in Pink and Salvation!), but this was the only time they made a full film score.

Live-Action TV

• Rainer Werner Fassbinder's adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz used this for dramatic effect to emphasize the Wham Episode nature of the epilogue. Until then the show had been a naturalistic Historical Fiction set in the Weimar Republic. However, the epilogue undergoes Trippy Finale Syndrome filled with Anachronism Stew and features features a lot of anachronistic songs, including "Candy Says" by The Velvet Underground, "Me and Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin, tracks by Kraftwerk and "Chelsea Hotel" by Leonard Cohen.
• The scores for Heroes were written by Wendy & Lisa, who scored Tim Kring's previous show, Crossing Jordan (and later Touch (2012)). They also did Nurse Jackie (winning an Emmy for the series theme).
• Nelson Riddle, responsible for the jazzy Route 66 theme, moved into television and film scores but rose to fame as a popular bandleader and arrangement artist for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole.
• They Might Be Giants scored the pilot and some early episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, as well as the Theme Song.
• Todd Rundgren did the music for the show, Crime Story.
• Stewart Copeland of The Police was the composer for the pilot of Babylon 5; however, his techno score was not carried over to the series itself, where most of the music was done by Christopher Franke, formerly of Tangerine Dream.
  • Speaking of Stewart, he also did most of The Equalizer.
  • And most of the original music for Dead Like Me.
• Tangerine Dream were also responsible for the title theme to Street Hawk, along with much of the incidental music.
• David Bowie (again) wrote the score for the BBC miniseries The Buddha of Suburbia. The pieces he composed were reworked into a separate album, also called The Buddha of Suburbia - only the title track from the album is used completely unaltered in the series. From there, he re-recorded one of the other songs, "Strangers When We Meet", for his solo album 1. Outside.
• The short-lived Cop Rock had its music composed by Randy Newman.
• Les Revenants music was scored by Mogwai.
• Mark Mothersbaugh (again) did the first theme for Sliders and work on other TV shows, most recently The Last Man on Earth.
• Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (again) did the score for Watchmen (2019).
• Liz Phair did some television scoring, starting with Swingtown, a show by her childhood friend Mike Kelley based on their upbringing in Chicago.
• Gloria Estefan sings the theme song to The Fox Cubhouse.
• Donkey Hodie:
  • Taylor Iman Jones, best known for Groundhog Day, alongside several of the characters from the show, performs the theme song.
  • Bill Sherman, who worked on tick, tick... BOOM! and In the Heights, composes the songs on the show.
• Inai Inai Baa! had many celebrities write songs for the show:
  • Yoshiko Miura, known for writing the 80's J-Pop hit "Natsuiro no Nancy", wrote many songs for the show, most notably "Wan Wan Paradise", "Kaede no Ki no Uta" and the Milestone Celebration song "Zutto Issho".
  • Yuzu wrote the songs "Kanpa~i!" (which they also performed a cover of) and "Yurayura".
  • GReeeeN wrote four songs for the show, "Popopopose" (which they also covered), "Banbanzai!", "Dakarando" and "Tetotetotetotetote".
  • SEKAI NO OWARI wrote "Yoru no Tangentai"
  • Pikotaro wrote "Pyon Pyon Animal Party".
• Isabella Summers, the "Machine" of Florence + the Machine, has done the music of Little Fires Everywhere, Panic, Sex/Life, Physical, Paradise City and The Offer.
• The Jim Davidson sitcom Up the Elephant and Round the Castle had a theme song by Keith Emerson. Davidson was both a friend of Emerson and a huge prog rock fan.
• Midsomer Murders: Famous English folk singer Seth Lakeman wrote the eponymous ballad for the episode "Ballad of Midsomer County". It was even available to download at one point.

Theatre

• Elton John wrote two extra songs for the Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of The Lion King, and went on from there to write songs for Disney's Aida and the Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of Billy Elliot. Less successful was Lestat, a musical adaptation of The Vampire Chronicles.
• Rupert Holmes, best known for "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)", wrote the songs for Drood, and later helped finish Curtains.
• Big River had songs by country singer Roger Miller.
• Jim Steinman composed the score for the musical adaptation of Tanz Der Vampire.
• The French-language opera Prima Donna, composed by Rufus Wainwright.
• Duncan Sheik, a pop star in The '90s, is probably better known as a Broadway composer nowadays, having won Tony Awards for Spring Awakening.
• Bono & The Edge composed the songs for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. They also made a score for the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of A Clockwork Orange (one of its tracks became the B-side for "The Fly" and was used in Johnny Mnemonic).
• The Capeman by Paul Simon.
• Chess, by Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA.
• Ça Ira, by Roger Waters. Yes, really.
• David Eugene Edwards of Woven Hand was commissioned by the Ultima Vez Dance Company to create soundtracks for their Blush and Puur shows. The soundtracks were partly original songs, and partly rearranged versions of prior Woven Hand songs.
• Cirque du Soleil:
  • Amaluna, in addition to being scored by the famed duo Bob & Bill (also contributing to Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, KOOZA, and Totem), featured Montreal singer-songwriter Jenifer Aubry as lead vocalist.
  • Anthony Gonzalez, frontman of French synthwave/shoegazing band M83, scored Volta.
• Musician Sara Bareilles wrote the songs for the musical version of Waitress, even starred in the show for six weeks.

Theme Parks

• The music for the current version of The Incredible Hulk Coaster at Universal's Islands of Adventure was composed by Patrick Stump, the lead singer of Fall Out Boy.
• From 1996-2003, Disneyland's Space Mountain featured music that was composed by surf rock guitarist Dick Dale.

Video Games

• The score for Max Payne 3 was composed by noise/noise-rock band HEALTH. The techno soundtrack in Club Moderno consists of various artists from the Trouble and Bass record label.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Masato Nakamura from the J-pop band Dreams Come True wrote the soundtracks for Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Unfortunately, he held the rights to his music for the games, which left with him. The only music he didn't write was the drowning music and the chaos emerald jingle, which could and would be used for later titles.
  • Michael Jackson was reportedly hired to compose for Sonic 3. Some members of Sonic Team claim Jackson's involvement was unofficial and happened without Sega's knowledge if it happened at all; others claim to have possession of a complete soundtrack's worth of demos from Jackson. How much of his work actually made it into the finished game is unknown. (The fact that several of the credited musicians, like Brad Buxer, actually worked for Jackson makes it even harder to guess.) Rumors abound, though, about suspiciously similar songs, stolen beats, and whole messes of trouble relating to the situation.
  • Jun Senoue and his band Crush 40 wrote music for several of the 3-D games.
  • R&B musician Akon remixed Dreams Come True's "Sweet Sweet Sweet" for Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
  • The final boss theme of Sonic and the Black Knight, "With Me", is performed by Emma Gelotte and Tinna Karlsdotter from All Ends, the lead guitar work is done by Marty Friedman from Megadeth.
  • Jaret Reddick from Bowling for Soup performed "Endless Possibilities" from Sonic Unleashed.
  • Sonic Colors had Alex Makhlouf of Cash Cash do the main theme. Later on, they and Circuit Freq did remixes for Sonic Generations.
  • This goes all the way to Sonic Forces, where Douglas Robb of Hoobastank wrote and performed "Fist Bump".
• Trent Reznor (from Nine Inch Nails) composed the score for Quake. His contributes are noted by the "NIN" logos on the nail packs, which are used as ammo for the nail gun.
  • Reznor's drummer buddy, Chris Vrenna also supplied the score for American McGee's Alice.
• The first three Spyro the Dragon games had their soundtrack composed by Stewart Copeland of the famous 80s band The Police.
• Utada Hikaru, a Japanese-American singer, writes the theme music for the Kingdom Hearts series. Skrillex joined them in composing the opening theme for Kingdom Hearts III, "Face My Fears".
• Legendary Thrash Metal band Megadeth composed the soundtrack for the game Never Dead, and judging from the comments on the Youtube pages the fans are just there for Megadeth.
• The overarching Leitmotif in Tales of the Abyss is derived from the theme music, composed by BUMP OF CHICKEN, called "Karma".
• The God of War Blood & Metal EP by Roadrunner Records was made with this in mind: Includes appearances by Trivium, Killswitch Engage, Opeth and Dream Theater, all writing original material.
• David Bowie co-wrote and performed the songs of Omikron: The Nomad Soul, and appears as two different characters in-game. Several of the songs made it onto his album hours... Because of this, the game was made free-to-play shortly after his death.
• BT produced the soundtrack of Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005. One of the songs in DHT 2(the intro and the second Hoover Dam level) was a remix of his own "Mad Skillz (Mic Chekka)".
• Descent II had three of its songs produced by Ogre of Skinny Puppy, and an instrumental remix of "Haunted" by Type O Negative.
• Iron Helix's ambient, electro-industrial soundtrack was composed by Peter Stone, also known as the one-man musical act Xorcist.
• IDM / trip-hop artist Amon Tobin composed/produced the soundtrack for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.
• Techno DJ-producer Sasha produced several exclusive songs for WipEout 3, as well as including his single "Xpander".
• Halo:
  • Halo 2 has "Blow Me Away" by Breaking Benjamin, "The Odyssey" by Incubus, and "Connected" by Hoobastank, although the last isn't used in the game.
  • Massive Attack producer Neil Davidge co-soundtracked Halo 4 alongside Kazuma Jinnouchi of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker fame.
• The title theme to WRC, "Speed", was produced by Rollo & Sister Bliss, the producers of Faithless.
• Sonic Mayhem (aka Sascha Dikiciyan aka Toksin) produced the music to Quake II, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Hellgate: London, as well as half the music to Quake III Arena, the rest of which was done by Front Line Assembly.
  • Speaking of Front Line Assembly, they soundtracked the freeware RTS game AirMech.
• Indie pop musician Owen Pallett (session violinist / string arranger on albums by Arcade Fire and others, and has some solo albums) composed part of the music to Traffic Department 2192 (specifically, the songs "Menu", "Vulture", "Intro 2", and "Death"), about 8 years before his earliest recorded music.
• Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy, from the bands System 7 and Gong, composed the music for a few games: the Xbox 360 port of Centipede & Millipede (2007), and the Interactive Movie game based on The Lawnmower Man (1993)^note this one is only by Hillage, according to the credits and its sequel Cyberwar (1994).
• Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and Myst IV: Revelation both featured songs by Peter Gabriel.
• Rez includes original and pre-existing songs by musicians such as Ken Ishii, Jojouka, Adam Freeland, Coldcut, and Oval.
• The soundtracks to Mirror's Edge and Capsized were produced by Solar Fields, aka Magnus Birgersson, while Lisa Miskovsky performed the former's theme tune, "Still Alive" (not to be confused with the Portal theme).
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle has a soundtrack largely made by various J-rock bands such as Neutrino, Missile Chewbacca and HONDALADY.
• Test Drive 4 featured the Younger Younger 28's and Orbital. The track "Runnin' Out of Time" is actually the same as "Out There Somewhere Part 2" from Orbital's In Sides album. TD 6 had three exclusive songs by Empirion.
• Lollipop Chainsaw had boss music composed by Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence.
• Scivelation, a sci-fi shooter has four songs written by John Moyer from Disturbed
• The title theme for Rise of the Robots was done by Queen's Brian May. He had composed a full soundtrack to the game, but his label asked for delays, which prompted the developers to make their own soundtrack to get the game out on time. May also did the theme for its sequel.
• Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose scoring projects are normally films, also lent his skills to a few vido game projects too:
  • Sakamoto composed the soundtrack of Tengai Makyou: Ziria, the first multimedia Eastern RPG, for the PC Engine CD.
  • Sakamoto composed the Sega Dreamcast startup sound.
  • The highly offbeat Sega Dreamcast game L.O.L.: Lack of Love was the product of an unusual collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and obscure developer Love-de-Lic.
• Azam Ali of VAS and Niyaz performed vocals on and composed the soundtrack to Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow, as well as contributing to Thor: The Dark World and the track "Pakistan Run" from Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
• The Australian Synthwave duo Power Glove soundtracked Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which also reused their song "Hunters" from Hobo with a Shotgun.
• Poets of the Fall, a Finnish Alternative Rock band, has a nice sideline composing videogame soundtracks.
  • Max Payne 2's ending theme, "Late Goodbye" was their first release, which suddenly became the Breakaway Pop Hit that properly launched their careers as perennial chart-toppers, and eclipsed the game itself.
  • In the Alan Wake games, they're the real talent behind the Heavy Mithril Fake Band known as Old Gods of Asgard, and play all of the original songs that the band plays in-game.
  • Poets' Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen did the soundtrack to indie FPS Shattered Horizon.
  • Likewise, Kaarlonen soundtracked Rochard, while the whole band performed its Theme Song, "Grinder's Blues."
• Ghost Recon: Future Soldier's soundtrack was co-produced by the symphonic electronica group Hybrid, alongside franchise regular Tom Salta.
• The Devil May Cry reboot, DmC: Devil May Cry had a soundtrack by Combichrist and an original score by Noisia.
• Carmageddon's soundtrack is partially instrumental versions of 3 tracks from Fear Factory's album, Demanufacture. The included songs are Demanufacture, Zero Signal (Also used for the game's intro sequence), and Body Hammer.
• The title theme to Johnny Bazookatone was written by Richie Sambora and Tico Torres, both of Bon Jovi.
• Mirror's Edge Catalyst's theme song, "Warning Call", is by CHVRCHES, while Solar Fields once again produced the game's underscore.
• Alone in the Dark: Stewart Copeland wrote the credits song for The New Nightmare.
• French-Canadian artist Coeur de pirate (Beatrice Martin) composed the soundtrack for Child of Light.
• Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange 2 have original scores by Jonathan Morali, the frontman of Syd Matters. Life Is Strange: Before the Storm continued this trend, with an original score by the indie band Daughter, and Life Is Strange: True Colors has a score by Angus & Julia Stone. In each case, a few songs by the respective bands make their way onto the licensed soundtrack as well.
• Mitch Murder, of Kung Fury fame, scored the indie games Megamagic: Wizards of the Neon Age and Impact Winter.
• Seattle-based dream pop artist Lena Raine (neé Chappelle) composed the soundtracks to Guild Wars 2 and Celeste.
• Prog-rock legends Yes composed the end credits theme to Homeworld, apparently for no better reason than because they saw some screenshots and concept art and thought it sounded awesome.
• Finnish spacesynth/synthwave artist Dreamtime produced the soundtrack of Rigid Force Alpha/Redux.
• CHVRCHES also performed the end titles theme of Death Stranding.
• Haven (2020)'s soundtrack was produced by Danger, who was also featured in The Game Bakers' previous game, Furi.
• Starfield: Imagine Dragons wrote and performed Children of the Sky as a tie-in song to the game.
• In addition to the numerous appearances by artists rerecording their existing songs in simlish over the years, The Sims 2 features several original compositions by one Mark Mothersbaugh, frontman for Devo.

Web Animation

• They Might Be Giants have a history of back-and-forth collaboration with Homestar Runner and the Brothers Chaps. While the Brothers generally do their own music (usually toy keyboard ditties or hair metal), TMBG have provided several songs for Homestar cartoons. Notably, their tribute to Strong Bad's 200th email had John Linnell voicing the first violation of The Poopsmith's vow of silence. In turn, the Brothers have animated two music videos for TMBG ("Experimental Film" and "Figure Eight") and performed with them as puppet versions of Homestar characters.

Video game/Roblox based /animesque film The Fireant War features songs from Melanie Martinez.

Western Animation

• Clone High features music by singer-songwriter Tommy Walter, performed by his alternative rock band Abandoned Pools, including several songs that would later appear on the band's first album.
• Several Cartoon Network series, including Ben 10, Teen Titans, and Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi featured music by Andy Sturmer, former frontman of early-90s power-pop band Jellyfish. Notably, the latter featured an actual cover of Jellyfish's "Joining A Fan Club". Sturmer's an unusual example though - nowadays he's almost as well known as one of Puffy AmiYumi's songwriter/producers as he is for his former band.
• The Raccoons had several songs by Lisa Lougheed (the voice of the character Lisa), which also appeared on her Evergreen Nights album.
• The second season recording of the Rocko's Modern Life theme was performed by Kate Pierson and Fred Schneider of The B-52s.
• The aforementioned Stewart Copeland of The Police also wrote the theme to The Life and Times of Juniper Lee.
• The instrumental theme of the first season of The Batman was written and performed by U2 guitarist The Edge.
• Country Music singer Billy Dean wrote (along with Verlon Thompson) and sang the theme to Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa.
• Mark Mothersbaugh (yes, again) has a fair bit of animation on his resume, from Rugrats to Regular Show.
• Besides the theme song, the TV special Really Rosie features segments based on Maurice Sendak's "Nutshell Library" books set to music by Carole King.
  • She also did the main theme song of the first Care Bears Movie.
• J.G. Thirlwell of Foetus fame has provided scores for The Venture Brothers and Archer, amongst others.
• They Might Be Giants has performed the theme songs to two kids' shows: Higglytown Heroes and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
• Little Richard performs the theme song to The Magic School Bus, while Lin-Manuel Miranda performed it for the reboot The Magic School Bus Rides Again.
• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023): R&B singer Raphael Saadiq of the multi platinum group Tony! Toni! Toné! serves as the composer for the series.
• The theme song for Hilda was composed by Canadian producer and singer Grimes.
• Bob and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame perform the theme song of the Exchange Student Zero TV series.
• Big Blue has its theme song done by Timbaland, whose work series creator Gyimah Gariba is a fan of.
• VeggieTales:
  • In the credits of Larry-Boy And The Rumor Weed, The W's do a Rewritten Pop Version of "The Rumor Weed Song".
  • Newsboys provides the theme song to The League of Incredible Vegetables.
  • Ali D. Theodore composed songs for Celery Night Fever, while Terry Crews sang a song as his character Bruce Onion.
  • Jamie Grace performed a Rewritten Pop Version of "Enough To Share" for Veggies In Space: The Fennel Frontier.

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