Music

An illustration of the film Twilight, against a backdrop of musicians playing the soundtrack

Looking Back

The Twilight soundtrack turns 16

Ahead of Twilight: In Concert, we look back at the film’s unreasonably good official album

The Twilight novels were notorious for several reasons, but baseball wasn’t high on the list. Enter the first film adaptation, and whilst the majority of the conversation still revolved around sparkly Robert Pattinson, the scene that has passed into infamy above all others is the moment when the Cullens, with Kristen Stewart’s Bella in tow, gather to play baseball as a family whilst thunder rolls overhead. It isn’t just the superfast CGI running or the frankly iconic matching outfits that make the scene a standout, though – it’s the use of Muse’s ‘Supermassive Black Hole’.

Muse - Supermassive Black Hole [Official Music Video]

Muse were aware that their brand was at odds with that of the Twilight franchise. They’d go on to give several quotes about it over the years – some more cheerful than others, but always with an acknowledgement that Twilight had an undeniable hand in their success. Music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas was good at finding this symbiosis, spotlighting tracks from buzzy artists who might not have quite hit the bigtime in deals that leant cool points to the franchise and meant exposure for the band. She was also able to leverage fandom in larger artists to encourage them to debut new music – this would become more apparent on the later albums, but even Twilight contains two original Paramore songs, written for the film by self-professed Twi-hard Hayley Williams.

For a teen romance, the Twilight soundtrack is never saccharine. Instead, it represents perfectly how the lead characters perceive themselves – indie, angsty, fringe. The blue tint makes every shot look like an album cover for whatever is playing in the background. The melancholic, eerie intro of The Black Ghosts’ ‘Full Moon’ plays as Bella leaves red rock Arizona for the moody forests of Forks. Blue Foundation’s atmospheric ‘Eyes On Fire’ soundtracks a moment of tension in the school parking lot. It’s well-curated, but there’s also a decidedly home-spun feel to it, as if Edward is downloading these tracks for Bella onto her Nokia 7360. This isn’t an entirely fabricated feeling, either – Kristen Stewart was the one who suggested that Edward and Bella should slow dance at prom to ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’ by Iron & Wine, whilst on their first dinner date (during which only Bella eats, because vampires) it’s actually Robert Pattinson’s song ‘Never Think’ that plays in the background.

Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth

The soundtracks of the later films would become more star-studded, but there’s something really special about this first one. The film itself has a scrappy feel to it, weird and wonderful and blue, and its doses of Linkin Park, Mutemath and Perry Farrell’s gloriously meta ‘Go All The Way (Into The Twilight)’ – which almost has the feel of a moody ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ – make it. The original compositions by Carter Burwell are memorable in their own right, particularly ‘Bella’s Lullaby’, but it’s the unexpected, against-the-odds success of Alexandra Patsavas’ album that has us still talking about it all those years later.

Twilight: In Concert tours the UK next month. Find tickets here.