2024 soundtrack album
Minions: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album to the 2024 film Minions, a spin-off/prequel and the 5️⃣ third installment overall in the Despicable Me franchise, directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, the latter in his feature 5️⃣ directorial debut. The original music is composed by Heitor Pereira who previously worked on Despicable Me (2010) and Despicable Me 5️⃣ 2 (2013), where he composed the score with Pharrell Williams. Minions, however is the first film in the franchise, without 5️⃣ the involvement of Williams and Pereira taking over the sole credit as the composer.[1] The soundtrack for the film was 5️⃣ released, alongside the film, on July 10, 2024, by Back Lot Music.[2][3]
Development [ edit ]
Pereira who watched the Despicable Me 5️⃣ films, observed audience reaction to the Minion characters, and felt that "this is now a part of their lives, and 5️⃣ I want to do justice to this dedication from the audience", resulting him to score for Minions.[4] The score was 5️⃣ fully orchestrated and dramatic to give a feel of "classic action film". As the film was mostly set during the 5️⃣ 1960s, Pereira recorded the music using vintage microphones which were used by The Beach Boys and Frank Sinatra, which he 5️⃣ felt as "an opportunity to pay homage to the musicians and technicians of that time" and also inspired composers such 5️⃣ as Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin and John Barry.[5] He had stated on the selection of popular songs from the 1960s, 5️⃣ saying "Those songs represent an era but they also have to have a relationship to the moment in the movie 5️⃣ where they appear. The directors love music and those were the songs that they felt at the moment represented the 5️⃣ storytelling the most, like "You Really Got Me" or "My Generation".[6] He also featured some of the songs in the 5️⃣ film are sung by the Minions themselves. He added that "it was fun to write music around it and try 5️⃣ to make the orchestral music and band music to somehow be holding hands with the music of the period without 5️⃣ sounding like somebody that wrote the music then".[6]
"I'm from Brazil, but the first time I heard The Beatles, I didn't 5️⃣ have a clue what they were singing about. But the rhythm and the waves of the sounds that the language 5️⃣ created somehow already put me in a certain frame of mind. I find that the same goes with the Minions' 5️⃣ language." — Pereira, on the use of Minions language[4]
Pereira compared the music for the Minions to that of the Three 5️⃣ Stooges, where the difference is Minions could not speak English. He further said that "Their language is not language, but 5️⃣ the cumulative aspect of the repetition of those words is like creating a language in itself [...] In Minions, a 5️⃣ lot of things go by and then the narrator has left the movie and now they are out there on 5️⃣ their own. Instead of compensating for their lack of language I decided to back off, give them space, and let 5️⃣ their phonetic sounds be very clear. That was a lot of fun because we almost made a dictionary of their 5️⃣ sounds and let the music follow the same kind of repetition."[6] Pereira took the music from their travel through time 5️⃣ and acquired all the personalities through the score.[6]
While the Minions had their own themes, Pereira wrote a new theme for 5️⃣ Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock), who has stated that "Scarlet is not like Lucy in Despicable Me 2. Lucy was helping. 5️⃣ I tried to make her a little more sweet in a way. But with Scarlet, I tried to make her 5️⃣ sound as hard as possible, powerful and mean but with a groove. She is a beautiful character and we can 5️⃣ use her movements to accent the music. For example where she puts all the villains to a test, so that 5️⃣ the one that captures the diamond is the one that eventually she will chose to be her helper."[6]
The score was 5️⃣ recorded at Los Angeles in Newman Scoring Stage, 20th Century Fox Studios and EastWest Studios. The Los Angeles Orchestra performed 5️⃣ the score consisting of 24 violins, 12 violas, eight cellos, five basses, five saxophones, including a bass sax, five trumpets, 5️⃣ two trombones, tuba, a choir of nearly 40-50 members, a rhythm section and a drummer. In order to create the 5️⃣ British jazz sound resembling the music of the United Kingdom in the 1960s, Pereira invited a jazz ensemble consisted of 5️⃣ woodwinds, clarinets, piccolos alongside drums and brass, in the same room, instead of recording each instrumentalists in separate sections. He 5️⃣ also used percussion instruments for big cues.[4]
Track listing [ edit ]
Reception [ edit ]
The music received positive critical response. Filmtracks 5️⃣ wrote "don't expect to sit through a soundtrack like Minions without having already recognized some affinity for the film, because 5️⃣ it is quite challenging to tolerate without any sense of context. Those listening to the score "cold" may find the 5️⃣ action cues ("Minion Mission" in particular) to be of standalone interest, as the orchestra is nicely layered with the solo 5️⃣ woodwind and vocal layers in these parts, but the rest may yield psychological unrest for the uninitiated. Although the album 5️⃣ presentation's cues are quite short, as expected, the entire original score portion clocks in at over 45 minutes, a nice 5️⃣ treat for fans of Pereira's wild and gregarious approach to the concept"[7] Unger the Radar wrote "Heitor Pereira has delivered 5️⃣ one of the best scores of the year so far and certainly one of the best animated scores of his 5️⃣ career. With his name firmly cemented in the Remote Control family and a real gift in film scoring, he is 5️⃣ certainly an artist and a strong name to watch because he certainly knows how to pick projects and provide some 5️⃣ very strong music. Minions is just another notch in his belt of powerful scores."[8]
Chart performance [ edit ]
Chart (2013–14) Peak
position 5️⃣ Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[9] 101 Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)[10] 170 US Top Soundtracks (Billboard)[11] 9
Notes [ edit ]
^ 2012 Universal 5️⃣ Pictures fanfare composed and arranged by Brian Tyler
