Birds of Prey is flying onto DC Comics fans’ playlists, as Daniel Pemberton’s score for the new movie has gotten a digital release through WaterTower Music. Birds of Prey: Original Motion Picture Score is now available through iTunes, Amazon Music, and all other digital music platforms.
The album contains 27 tracks of the instrumental score that Pemberton composed for Margot Robbie’s starring vehicle as Harley Quinn, utilizing the character’s eclectic personality to draw influence from all genre of music. In that sense, it’s not so much a score album as it is a veritable buffet of music choices.
“One of the best things about writing this score was the fact I felt Harley Quinn as a character would be into anything. I [could] see her listening to whatever she wants: opera, metal, hip-hop, EDM, rockabilly, gospel, pop,” Pemberton said in Friday’s press release. “I always felt she didn’t really care for one thing. She’d absorb them all and not give a f–k if anyone thought it was cool or not. So I felt I’d do that with the music.”
That makes it a bit of a departure for the three-time Golden Globe Award nominee, whose only previous superhero credit was 2018’s critically acclaimed Marvel film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Pemberton is better known for crafting gritty, atmospheric scores for dramas like Steve Jobs, Molly’s Game and Edward Norton’s recent film Motherless Brooklyn. He also composed the score for the award-winning Black Mirror episode “USS Callister.”
But the best film and television composers can spread their wings (no pun intended) across a variety of plots and genres, and that’s what Pemberton has done with Birds of Prey: Original Motion Picture Score. The film itself is frenetic and not supposed to make a ton of sense; it’s starring Harley Quinn, after all, and prides itself on being loud, bright and constantly in your face. The score embraces that chaos and preserves the underlying sense of fun that one imagines Harley feels every time she gets to literally beat the bad guys.
It’s certainly not like any other score that’s been crafted for a superhero movie, and whether you’re a DC Comics fan or a film score enthusiast, you’ll get a kick out of this offbeat collection. Sample the record by playing the opening track below, then download it now at your favorite digital retailer.
Photo Credit: WaterTower Music/Courtesy of Defiant PR. Article content is (c)2020 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr.
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