I don’t usually review film soundtracks, but one has been rolling around in my mind since it came out, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Olivia Rodrigo, Rachel Zegler, Flatland Calvary and a lineup of perfectly matched talented singers and bands. I have not seen the movie, and now probably won’t because it has come and gone in my town, and I never get around to watching movies on TV – too many concerts to go to and articles to write.
Putting aside the film and just concentrating on the music, it is spectacular. So much emotion, so much power, and so much depth. The lead-off song “Can’t Catch Me Now” by Olivia Rodrigo soars and whispers and fills your ears and your heart. Then, as Rodrigo fades away, the album shifts to “The Hanging Tree” by the fabulous Rachel Zegler. It just nails you with its instrumentals, and cinematic imagery, spun out with Zegler’s soft, feminine voice. I could listen to this all night – except, there are so many other songs on the album beckoning me.
The album moves to Flatland Calvary’s “Wool,” a mystical, gentle, folksy, heart-wrenching ballad with a hypnotic hook and fiddle and guitar accents that just grab you. The album stays folksy with Sierra Ferrell’s “The Garden” and Zegler’s “The Ballad of Lucy Baird”, both with angelic voices that swirl around you like incense smoke. Molly Tuttle picks up the pace with “Bury Me Beneath the Willow” but moves strongly into roots territory, as does the barn danceable “District 12 Stomp” by the Covey Band and Zegler, “The Cabin Song by Billy Strings, and “Keep on the Sunnyside” by Josie Hope Hall and The Covey Band.
The album returns to Rachel Zegler this time with James Newton Howard in the “Old Therebefore,” but the film’s spoken lines come in over it, breaking the spell, they are weaving (the same thing happens in “Nothing You Can Take from Me”). Bella White reweaves the spell with “Burn Me Once”, using her soft, sweet, perfectly controlled voice that weaves through guitar notes.
Zegler comes back to us with “Pure as the Driven Snow” backed by stunning banjo picking . It’s roots but so much more, as her angelic voice carries the story along. “Winter’s Come and Gone” is the deepest mountain music on the album. By Charles Wesley Godwin, it brings you back to when life was simple and we had time to appreciate the seasons and the birds.
While much of the praise for this album (and its Grammy nom) centers around Olivia Rodrigo’s “Can’t Catch Me Now”, my props go to “Lady Gray I and II” written by William Wordsworth and performed by Rachel Zegler. Irish in its heart (although Wordsworth was an English poet) it is a powerful story of a young girl lost in a snowstorm that completely captures you. Zegler’s vocals are serene, controlled, mystical, razor-sharp and so, so sweet.
I will be rooting for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes at Grammys this year, even if I missed the movie.
Patrick O’Heffernan
