Anyone else remember how fire the soundtracks were for the original Hunger Games trilogy? Everyone from Taylor Swift, Lorde, Coldplay to The Weeknd wrote fresh songs for the YA dystopian movies starring Jennifer Lawrence. As the countdown for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is officially underway, one of the biggest young names in music just announced their presence on the soundtrack: Olivia Rodrigo.
Thus far, the latest The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes trailer had revealed Rachel Zegler will sing her own iteration of “The Hanging Tree,” but the soundtrack just got even better. Olivia Rodrigo took to social media to announce she wrote a brand new song for the movie. Listen to the snippet below:
The upcoming song is called “Can’t Catch Me Now”, which Olivia Rodrigo penned herself. The snippet introduces an epic track from Rodrigo as she sings lyrics like “There’s blood on the side of the mountain, there’s writing all over the walls” and its hook “Comin’ like a storm into your town, You can’t, you can’t catch me now.”
Rodrigo is famously a huge Swiftie, and retroactively gave Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff writing credits on her song “Deja Vu” for its similarities to “Cruel Summer,” along with giving up millions in royalties to Paramore thanks to “Good 4 U” and “Misery Business” comparisons. Now, like Taylor Swift was for 2012’s The Hunger Games, Rodrigo is the first big name to be announced to be on The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
When Taylor Swift was 22, her song for The Hunger Games with The Civil Wars, “Safe & Sound,” was released as a single a few months ahead of the movie’s release. Check out the 2012 music video:
The Hunger Games’ core target audience has always been teenage girls, so Lionsgate made the smartest choice they could enlisting the massive pop star to write for one of 2023’s most highly-anticipated upcoming book adaptations. Director Francis Lawrence said this with the announcement (via Entertainment Weekly):
From the very beginning of this franchise, we have been fortunate to attract some of the world’s most talented recording artists whose music has accentuated and complemented the drama of the films while underscoring the emotional weight carried by the characters. With her highly charged lyrics and urgent voice, Olivia Rodrigo taps into all of that as much as any artist today. She’s an absolute thrill to work with and we couldn’t be more excited that her music is a part of the movie.
Along with Olivia Rodrigo’s social media announcement, stars of The Hunger Games prequel Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth and Josh Andrés Rivera, who were recently given a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement to promote the movie amidst the actors strikes, turned up in New York City’s Time Square to celebrate tickets going on sale ahead of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes coming to theaters on November 17. Rodrigo’s song “Can’t Catch Me Now” will be available to listen to in full this Friday, November 3.