Star Wars has always been known for its music, but it’s never really had a banger – until now.
The climax of Andor Season 2’s first story arc features the character Mon Mothma realizing that the rebellion is in shambles, her marriage is over, she’s lost her daughter to a religious cult and her best friend has betrayed her. So what does she do? She downs a drink or three and decides to dance the pain away.
And, as the show intercuts the culmination of three tragic story arcs against the warbling synths of the soundtrack, you realize that – now matter how bad things get – a banger is still a banger.
Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy seems to realize that, and in an interview with Vanity Fair, he says that he embraces the memes and remixes that fans have created, and hopes that composers Nicholas Brittell and Brandon Roberts can release stems for the track.
“I’m hoping that they’re working out the legality of getting the stems out to, if not everybody, at least a certain number of DJs who they approve of, who can mess with it,” Gilroy noted. “The most interesting thing would be to see what people do from scratch, but using the musical material. I bet there’s going to be some very cool versions of it out there.”
We have not seen anything on this yet, though, and there are probably a host of legal hassles involved in releasing stems from a Star Wars soundtrack. If any readers know more, leave a link in the comments!
The Cantina Band have come a long way…
STAR WARS: Tales of the JEDI (Original Soundtrack) by Kevin Kinear has electronic ‘VANGELIS/Dead Can Dance’ like; ‘Flight into Darkness & ‘Dooku’s Downfall’, which are both hauntingly beautiful IMO.
C’mon the Canina Band music? Ewok Celebration? This is not Star Wars’ first banger. It’s not even Andor’s first banger.
I don’t recall ‘Yub Nub’ burning up the dance floors….
But I’m old enough to remember MECO’s disco synth Star Wars cover!
It was one of the cringiest moments in Star Wars history
Yep especially after Disney took over
Andor Season 1 & 2 and Rogue One are the best Star Wars since Empire Strikes Back.
It’s for adults, though, and a lot of fans want to relive their childhoods.
Exactly, Rogue One is arguably the equal of Empire. The only drawback being the score, which came off at times as a bit of a pastiche of John William’s work. If the team who worked on that and Andor had taken the helm for the main part of the franchise I firmly believe there would be few complaints.
I have exactly the same assessment of new Star Wars productions as you, Synthroid. The rest could be trashed, by my personal opinion.
I really enjoyed Rogue One and Andor Season 1. This in comparison was tediously slow and eventually anticlimactic. The final episode was a damp squib. The whole season could have been 5 or 6 episodes. The rest was unnecessary filler. I always expect a bit of filler in a season of TV but half the season? Way too much
Awful. I’m really sorry to see the money making machine destroying Lucas’ legacy.
To me, Star Wars is a movie trilogy that ended in 1983. Whatever happened afterward doesn’t add to it and can be ignored entirely.
Amen to that!
…..Easier said than done apparently.
The olds remember.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2tgkef
“It’s called getting down. It’s a little a before your time if it frightens you…”
With many Gen Z and Alpha it seems like it does, lol. Original ravers remember and we know that Andor/Rogue One took on the Star Wars baton and ran with it. Seriously though, I wonder how many people commenting negatively have actually seen it. On Youtube, I’ve encountered a few people who did this and turned out not to have done, thinking erroneously that Andor was corporate slop like Ashoka or that awful Kenobi dreck. If you have seen Andor though and still think it’s bad, there’s nothing I can do for you. Though I generally concur with the opinion of many fans, regarding Star Wars post Disney and even post, Return Of The Jedi, annoying forest dwelling teddy bears not withstanding, there is a not insignificant part of those complainging who do so because of a desire to remain children. Something like Andor, that takes the material into darker more complex territory maybe a bit much for them, poor dears.
You can like Andor and still think the wedding dance scene was shit
The two are not mutually exclusive
Basically what I wrote in an earlier comment. If you look below, you’ll see that I described people raving at a Chandrilan as a bit clumsily handled, describing it as a misstep. I also adressed the fact that some people were apparently using one scene, that wasn’t that great, to trash the whole series, when that could be easily done with almost any of the Star Wars movies. Dude, it’s not hard to read a few relatively short comments on a page. Next time it will save you making an argument that doesn’t relate to anything that was actually stated.
Most of the other stuff is pretty poor, but Andor as well as Rogue One are two of the best things to come out of the whole Stars Wars ouvre. The only misstep for me was everybody raving at a wedding on Chandrilan. Even though it worked in terms of the character and their desire to escape the immense psychological pressure they were under, by being in their body and dancing, it seemed unrelated to that world. It was like Buck Rogers boogying to funky analog synths in a futuristic Disco setting. Although I do see the difficulty in realising any kind of scene where people are creating or listening to music in a Sci Fi setting. How does one create a aural experience that is significantly different to musical styles and gestures that already exist? Seems pretty hard if not impossible.
However, judging two whole series on the basis of one mishandled scene, seems short sighted. Especially since both Andor and Rogue one are the only works in that franchise to take the whole premise of an interplanetary war against an opressive regime somewhat seriously, actually presenting it in an adult manner, without overly relying on space wizards and faux Arthurian legend type stuff.
I love and gew up with the original trilogy, but as an adult, I recognise that there was plenty of cringy nonsensical stuff in there. If we’re gonna talk about cringe, Return Of The Jedi, had a bunch of arboreal teddy bears, living a life based on crude estimations of indigenous people. Now, that was cringy af. I’m not going to abandon Lucas’ larger project though, based on misjudgements like this, even though this one lasted significantly longer than one scene, and people shouldn’t do with this with Andor.
Exactly, Rogue One is arguably the equal of Empire. The only drawback being the score, which came off at times as a bit of a pastiche of John William’s work. If the team who worked on that and Andor had taken the helm for the main part of the franchise I firmly believe there would be few complaints.
Rogue one is ok, better than the pre’s or seq’s but it hasn’t aged as well as the original series, especially watching it after Andor. Some of the dialog with Jan just comes off weird, particularly Andors speech to her before they leave Yavin. It’s bloated with poorly written characters just shoehorned in because of mid-2010s Hollywood groupthink. The shakeycam dates it to this period too. It’s also hobbled with flashbacks, where somehow the original series managed to get away with not a single one across three whole movies. Just tell the story please.
Thankfully they stuck the landing for Andor S2 in the last 3 episodes. With scenes like drunk Mothma and many others in the first two arcs I was almost ready to give up.
And the track is bad. It sounds like some of the poorly advised electro house circa 2008.
Too young to remember the disco bangers from a new hope? 🙂
that techno dance music in Andor 2 is very primitive. I had to lower the volume and wait until the next scene. How can you repeat the same silly melody again and again? And how can you dance to this?
In an advanced society one would expect a much more developed kind of dance music.
Season 2 of Andor is very good in my opinion. The first episodes are stupid and boring. But the last few episodes indeed are rather good. Especially that Disney allowed the word “genicide” in the script. And the similarity of the words “plaza” and “Gaza”.
Some of you folks have lost your way a bit. The song IS an absolute banger and it fit perfectly for the scene. You want Star Wars to have the same traditions you’re accustomed to in your own life, and if your world was a little bigger you’d realize that plenty of weddings feature DJ’s who play rave music. I was part of that scene when it started in the US and went to a few weddings that had local rave DJ’s spinning popular tracks of the time the whole night, not just one or two sprinkled in like many weddings these days.