{"id":395034,"date":"2026-04-16T10:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T10:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/395034\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T10:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T10:33:10","slug":"a-feeling-of-ecstasy-how-anne-hathaway-and-fka-twigs-created-the-thunderous-mother-mary-soundtrack-anne-hathaway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/395034\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A feeling of ecstasy\u2019: how Anne Hathaway and FKA twigs created the thunderous Mother Mary soundtrack | Anne Hathaway"},"content":{"rendered":"

As David Lowery, the director, was writing the fictional pop star Mother Mary<\/a> for his new film of the same name, he spent a lot of time studying the last 25 years in music. He listened to Taylor Swift<\/a> (whose Reputation concert film inspired the performances in the film), Lorde<\/a> and FKA twigs<\/a>, who appears on screen as a medium named Imogene. But as the film\u2019s haunted love story between Mary (played by Anne Hathaway<\/a>) and her former best friend and designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel<\/a>) emerged, his listening habits shifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pop music fell away and other music started to enter that sphere,\u201d he says in A24\u2019s New York offices. He\u2019s sitting beside twigs and Hathaway the day after the trio attended the film\u2019s premiere in the city. \u201cJames Blake<\/a> and Aldous Harding<\/a> really captured the emotion that I was trying to type out between Sam and Mother Mary. They began to help me channel the feeling of the movie itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film is split into two contrasting modes: Hathaway and Coel largely enact a two-woman play within the confines of designer Sam\u2019s atelier, where a broken and humanized Mary begs her former friend for a dress so good she could have a proper pop rebirth. The other part is Mary in god-like pop diva mode, commanding the stage with enough otherworldly magnetism to make clear that this star has created a cult-like, multi-generational fan base. But Hathaway needed to unlock the broken, desperate, pleading humanity of Mother Mary first; she went into the movie largely blind of what the songs would sound like, save early demos of Burial and Holy Spirit, written by Charli xcx<\/a> and Jack Antonoff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were almost department heads for different aspects of the character,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt like her sound was pretty low on the totem pole, especially when we began.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the film itself is already divisive in early reviews, the music and performance footage has been acclaimed. Antonoff and xcx wrote the majority of the soundtrack, save My Mouth Is Lonely for You<\/a>, a shimmeringly erotic offering from twigs that was left on the cutting room floor during her Eusexua<\/a> sessions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really love the lyrics, but I knew it wasn\u2019t for me,\u201d twigs tells me. She sent two songs to Lowery when he mentioned he needed more for the film; the other is more \u201cethereal\u201d and used during a scene featuring the dress Mary requires from Sam. \u201cAs soon as David said he needed a song, I knew I wrote [My Mouth Is Lonely for You] for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though twigs\u2019 contribution was made separately from xcx and Antonoff\u2019s work, the total soundtrack package paints a very specific and uniform portrait of a 21st century pop star big enough to sell out large venues but weird enough to have both a cult following and avant-garde fashion sense. It\u2019s not unlike what twigs and xcx have experienced of late; both are over a decade into their careers and have recently taken home first Grammys and headlined arenas for the first time. However, the implication of both the music and her characterization is that this fictional pop diva has a slightly glossier mass appeal. (Thankfully, the film doesn\u2019t waste time breaking down the nuts and bolts of her commercial success and lets the performances and songs speak for themselves.)<\/p>\n

\u201cMother Mary for me is the type of style that\u2019s almost on the other side of the glass to what I am,\u201d twigs says. \u201cEven in my own industry, there\u2019s a type of stardom I\u2019ve watched through a window that she really embodies. Everything\u2019s so together and so neat and so perfect and so huge and overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Hathaway has a background in theater and won an Oscar for her performance in the musical Les Mis\u00e9rables, the recording process for Lowery\u2019s film was a very new experience. She spent time with Antonoff to record Mother Mary: Greatest Hits, as the soundtrack is aptly named. She needed to not just explore her vocal range but also how production works. She even changed minor lyrics, having lived with the character long enough to understand what she would or wouldn\u2019t say. Alongside Antonoff, she pushed for the type of sound layering she heard on Tori Amos<\/a>\u2019 Little Earthquakes, a huge reference for her as she dove into Mary.<\/p>\n

FKA twigs, David Lowery, Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel at a Mother Mary screening in New York on 13 April 2026. Photograph: Jamie McCarthy\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things I realized is that lyrics are very important, but the feeling of the lyrics is the most important,\u201d she explains. She cites the story of Earth, Wind & Fire recording September as an example, recalling how they didn\u2019t quite understand the song\u2019s lyrics or meaning but still found a way to transform it into one of the most instantly recognizable hits of all time. \u201cThe way you perform the sound of a word is just as, if not more, important than the word itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a specter looming over Mary and Sam, but the unspoken ghost in the movie is the implied fandom Mother Mary has attracted. Lowery felt it was unnecessary to make explicit; it\u2019s clear through scenes backstage and the type of recovering physical shape she\u2019s in when she surprises Sam that she\u2019s pushed her body past the limit for these shows. It\u2019s also clear through her own name and the ever-present halo she wears that her stardom means a lot to many millions of fictional fans waiting for her comeback.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the original script, there was a lot of explanation about who Mother Mary was as an artist, the depth of her fandom, what her songs had come to mean for people,\u201d Hathaway says. The fandom is an abstraction, suggested through looks, passing headlines and, of course, the songs. But Hathaway does have a clear definition of who is drawn to Mother Mary; it\u2019s not unlike how we see every other pop star functioning these days, comparing her to a \u201cneon plasma\u201d that could only be seen within the confines of a glass container who is struggling to not shatter the glass and hurt those who look up to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer fans are people who could feel safe around her. They could come to her for a feeling of ecstasy as whoever they were. Everybody was welcome,\u201d she explains. \u201cShe loved them so much. They were people that she saw as vulnerable, people who needed a mother. She was twisting herself into this terrible state to avoid hurting them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As David Lowery, the director, was writing the fictional pop star Mother Mary for his new film of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-395034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}