Lorde recruits Grace Jones, Q-Tip and Chemical Brothers for Hunger Games soundtrack

Sole music curator of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 announces soundtrack for film, featuring a Kanye remix and new songs from the singer’s ‘true heroes’

Lorde has announced details of her soundtrack to the newest Hunger Games film, recruiting Kanye West, Grace Jones, Chemical Brothers and other “heroes” to record original songs for the movie.

Lorde, who is 17, was announced this summeras the “sole curator” of the third in what has become a lucrative series of soundtrack albums. Like the previous records, the music for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 brings together all-new songs from various pop, hip-hop and indie rock talents; unlike its predecessors, Lorde herself was pestering the artists to make sure they would contribute.

“It was really important to me with the soundtrack that people know how involved I was,” Lorde told Billboard. “A lot of that was me reaching out to people directly, having a conversation on the phone, sending an email, sending a text.” Lorde didn’t want acts to feel like their music was “going to be flung into some pot and chosen later … I really cared about what was happening.”

With this in mind, at least 15 of Lorde’s “true heroes” recorded songs in tribute to Katniss, Peeta and the suffering citizens of Districts 1 through 13. Several of the tracks are collaborations: Charli XCX with Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon, the Chemical Brothers with Miguel, and Stromae’s Meltdown features Lorde, Pusha T, Q-Tim and Haim. Other contributors include Bat For Lashes, Tove Lo and Chvrches, while Kanye “reworks” Flicker.

One cut still remains mysterious: track five is “To Be Announced”, according to the official press release. But as Lorde tweeted on Wednesday, the vague details aren’t there “[for] secrecy’s sake”: the teen star, who only just completed a world tour, hasn’t “quite finished” the song.

Even without a celebrity curator, the previous Hunger Games soundtracks secured songs by top-flight artists such as Coldplay, Taylor Swift and Arcade Fire. Both reached the US billboard’s top 10.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1, the second-last instalment in the series, arrives in UK theatres on 20 November.

Soundtrack tracklist:

1. Meltdown – Stromae ft Lorde, Pusha T, Q-Tip & Haim
2. Dead Air – Chvrches
3. Scream My Name – Tove Lo
4. Kingdom – Charli XCX ft Simon Le Bon
5. TO BE ANNOUNCED
6. Lost Souls – Raury
7. Yellow Flicker Beat – Lorde
8. The Leap – Tinashe
9. Plan The Escape (Son Lux Cover) – Bat For Lashes
10. Original Beast – Grace Jones
11. Flicker (Kanye West Rework) – Lorde
12. Animal – XOV
13. This Is Not a Game – The Chemical Brothers ft Miguel
14. Ladder Song – Lorde

Let the Games Begin

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In a very real way, advertising has transformed much like media itself, becoming less one-sided and more conversational.

The real trick—the Holy Grail, if you will—is for an ad to “go viral.” But that’s often easier said than done.

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Marketing professionals continue to struggle with this concept. While Gangnam Style or Angry Birds seem to go viral almost on their own, overnight, making an ad memorable is another challenge altogether. Going viral on purpose, it turns out, is really hard.

The Hunger Games is taking a clever approach to its marketing campaign for Mockingjay: Part 1, the third film in the blockbuster series from Lionsgate (combined box office of over $1.5 billion worldwide for the first two films.)

Rather than simply release movie trailers and posters advertising the film, the latest Hunger Games entry is releasing propaganda for the film’s fictional dictatorship, Panem. The latest trailer shows President Snow (Donald Sutherland) dressed all in white standing next to Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) against an all-white background.

It’s not an ad for the film directly, but rather a message to all the districts in Panem explaining the benefits of a peaceful relationship with the Capitol—and the risks of rebellion. It’s perfectly creepy.

As we recall, the second film in the series, Catching Fire, ended with the beginning of a rebellion. This first Mockingjay trailer reminds us of that, and brings us back into the story. It’s also in keeping with the posters that have been released for the film, each readily share-able on social media.

In these posters, the Capitol “celebrates” the hard work of each District—like the miners of District 12, Katnis’s stomping grounds.

These posters are cool enough—detailed, attractive, ominous—to spread online in ways that a more traditional movie poster likely would not. There’s a whole suite of the posters, as well, making it more likely for viewers to sift through each of them

VIA Forbes