Throughout the process, “I continued to go back to wanting Megan to do the verses, feeling like Normani was the best artist to perform the hook and the bridge and the alignment of the two of them just being potentially very magical and powerful - which it ended up becoming.” “It always felt like the two of them on the right record would be a moment,” Weaver says.
Meanwhile, “I had a lot of different versions of, people trying to crack the code on, a new flip of the original Marilyn ‘Diamonds.’ got this version of ‘Diamonds’ in a very raw, early form and immediately felt like this is the one, then at that point really leaned into the A&R and the creative.” It wasn’t hard to pick the artists for it. “We got the Marilyn Monroe estate and the publishing on the sample and interpolation to grant us the rights to interpolate the original master and composition, which they’ve never done before - it was a tough process,” Weaver admits. “Diamonds” is the first song to ever sample Monroe’s recording of the track (you can hear her crying “Tiffany!” and “Cartier!” throughout, as well as the original horns and some other elements from the original master recording). Weaver knew early on that he wanted a diamond-themed song, since a precious diamond is essentially the film’s MacGuffin and Harley Quinn has a dream sequence mirroring Marilyn Monroe’s iconic performance of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
One of the crown jewels (sorry) of the album is lead single “Diamonds,” a collaboration between Megan Thee Stallion (another one of Weaver’s initial picks) and Normani. But at the same time, “I wanted this album and these songs to feel like they had their own unique voice, they had their own unique POV, that they were uniquely tied to the aesthetic of the picture, the feel of the story.” X Ambassadors) collaboration “Sucker for Pain,” Weaver and his team “were drafting the success of Suicide Squad to a certain extent, because it is another iteration of that brand,” he tells EW. Having previously worked on the 2x platinum Suicide Squad: The Album, which yielded hits like Twenty One Pilots’ “Heathens” and the Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, and Imagine Dragons with Logic and Ty Dolla $ign (feat. Produced and overseen by Weaver, Birds of Prey: The Album includes 15 exclusive new tracks, all from female artists. “I wanted to mirror with a music sensibility that kind of spoke to those same themes and through-lines.” “I was looking for a female, badass sensibility to tie directly back to Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey characters,” says Kevin Weaver, President, Atlantic Records West Coast of the soundtrack. J, she finds herself in hot water with crime lord Roman Sionis ( Ewan McGregor), and ultimately teams up with Renee Montoya ( Rosie Perez), Huntress ( Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) to create an unconventional girl gang taking on the sadistic Gotham baddie. No longer benefiting from the protections of Mr. “It motivates me, and it kind of helps me create the characters.” She and the production team worked closely with Atlantic Records to assemble a “sort of musical girl gang,” she says, and create an all-female soundtrack for this women-powered world.īirds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) begins with the end of Harley Quinn’s ( Margot Robbie) relationship with Joker ( Jared Leto, last seen in 2016’s Suicide Squad), and follows her journey to discovering herself as her very own kind of antiheroine, undefined by being the Clown Prince of Crime’s better (worse?) half.
“Music was super important,” says director Cathy Yan.
The candy-colored, R-rated new entry in the DC Extended Universe, Birds of Prey, subverts a lot of expectations for the genre, but it does honor a classic superhero movie tradition: Having an irresistible soundtrack.