Wednesday, May 12, 2010

::Team Eclipse:: Metric Blog Post About Composing 'All Yours' with Howard Shore


Yes ... It’s official. Our song “All Yours”, co-written with the legendary film composer Howard Shore and performed by Metric, is going to be featured in the movie Eclipse, the next installment in the worldwide phenomenon known as the Twilight saga.

I've always wanted to write music for film, but I never expected to start with something on this scale, so you can imagine how surprised I was when out of nowhere I got a phone call from Howard Shore, who I’d never met or even spoken with before. Most people know him as the man who wrote the acclaimed score for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I grew up on Shore's earlier works-- his score for David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch in collaboration with jazz great Ornette Coleman still stands as one of the most ambitious & unusual scores out there.

To my amazement, Howard was calling to ask me to work with him on his latest project: scoring the next Twilight movie, Eclipse. He wanted Jimmy & I to write the theme song for the pivotal last scene in the movie, integrating the music from his existing score into a composition that would express the emotional ending of the film. Seriously?!?! The lyrics would have to be in the voice of the main character Bella, and we had to stay within the confines of harmonic and melodic themes Howard had in mind for the last scene.

We've had songs from our albums licensed for use in movies & tv shows before, but composing for a score was completely different. Every day as the song progressed--from sitting at the piano with Jimmy in NYC recording acoustic versions and reading the script (see photo below), to working at Howard's studio upstate, to tracking vocals at our own studio Giant in Toronto, to mixing at Electric Lady with Howard on the line from Abbey Road in London-- every step of the way we did our best to fulfill Howard’s vision of the film's last moments.

Still, everybody knows the movie business is insanely competitive, and for things like this, it’s never a sure thing until the movie is done and the picture is locked...

But as of today, it's happening. Our song, “All Yours”, is in the movie and will be the lead off track from the soundtrack, to be released on June 8th.

I don't have to tell you what an honor it was to be hand picked by Howard to do this work. We are massively grateful for the opportunity & hope you all enjoy Metric's first ever film composition.

Now, back to reality...

xo emily


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