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Forbes
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Sinners' Composer Ludwig Göransson Talks Creating The Musical Movie Of The Year
Ludwig Göransson has scored some of the most visually and emotionally arresting films of the last decade, including both Black Panther films, as well as Tenet, Oppenheimer, and others. The two-time Oscar winner (who has also earned several Grammys and an Emmy as well) has a new movie out today (April 18), Sinners. In his latest collaboration with director Ryan Coogler, Göransson isn't reaching again for orchestral bombast or cutting-edge synths or even to hip-hop, where he's found great success in the past – he took home both Record and Song of the Year at the Grammys for 'This is America' by Childish Gambino. Instead, he's reaching deep into the roots of American music and trying his hand at something new: the blues. 'I grew up around the blues. My dad is a blues guitar player,' Göransson shared with me during a recent interview. He recorded most of the Sinners score in a church-turned-studio in New Orleans, where he moved to make sure everything musical about the film was not just authentic, but crafted where the genre – which plays a key part in the movie's story – was created. The scope of the film is vast. Set in a faux version of early twentieth century America's south, it taps into the roots of the blues and the legends that haunt it — specifically, Robert Johnson, juke joints, and the devils at the crossroads. Göransson, a Swedish composer, might seem like an unlikely translator of that history. But he doesn't pretend to speak for it. Instead, he surrounds himself with those who do. 'I wouldn't say that I deeply understand the blues the way the people who created it did,' Göransson admits. 'My experience is very different… But trying to emulate those great artists from the '30s and '40s wouldn't sound true coming from me. It wouldn't sound true to anyone else.' 'It took a while to find my voice,' he says, 'but being immersed in that environment — with the actors, with Ryan, seeing the whole process every day — really helped. By the end, I was living and breathing the film.' He also leaned on collaborators with blues in their bones. Brittany Howard, Raphael Saadiq, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and even Buddy Guy all contributed to the film's musical DNA. 'They were all real blues musicians who live that life,' Göransson says. 'Kingfish was in there… Bobby Rush played harmonica… We had these real heroes playing and contributing to the music.' The result is a score that not only complements the film's themes, but builds on them. The movie – which arrives with a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes – is brilliant, but it wouldn't work without an equally-as-perfect musical backing. Though he may seem like someone who wouldn't be a fit for a blues-centered story, Göransson may have pulled off his most impressive piece of work yet. McIntyre: I was shocked that this is a blues score. That's so outside of your — I mean this in a good way— so outside of everything I've heard from you. How do you approach something brand new like that? Göransson: It's fun because the whole time while we were making the film, Ryan kept saying, "It's so crazy that I'm making a movie about a guitarist and you're the composer." Score-wise, I knew that the guitar was going to be the main piece of the score. One of the things that he wanted early on was to make sure our hero guitar was the right type of guitar. So, the 1932 Dobro that Sammy is carrying throughout the whole film, I've got about three of those. McIntyre: That's real? Göransson: It's a real 1932 Dobro, with the resonator that kind of gets stuck in your head. That's what I used to write the whole score. I grew up around blues. My dad is a blues guitar player, which is interesting. I grew up in Sweden, right? The impact that American blues musicians had, it's massive. My dad was a musician, and as a 15 or 16-year-old he discovered Muddy Waters. These were the blues artists of the '50s and '60s in America, when they were not celebrated there. Bands like The Beatles started listening to these blues artists and brought them to Europe, where they were celebrated as heroes. And only after that did people in America go, 'Oh, look—these guys are Americans.' McIntyre: From covers, right? Göransson: Yeah, yeah. My dad actually wanted to name me Albert, after Albert King. Blues was always around me. That's how my dad expressed himself, playing blues guitar. My love for music didn't come until I heard Metallica for the first time. Heavy metal. That was my way of finding my own personality. My dad had the blues, so I thought, 'What's going to be my thing?' So I had metal, not really understanding at the time how clear the lineage is between blues and metal and rock. I was like, 'I'm doing my own thing.' It's been really cool, in this movie, to be able to tie all those threads together. That's what the score is doing — telling that story. It's a very personal score. McIntyre: The blues you're playing here, or at least the time period it's pulled from, is so specific. Did you have to go back and study pre-1950s blues? What kind of research went into this? Göransson: I'm glad you bring that up. I wouldn't say I deeply understand the blues the way the people who created it did. My experience is very different. Ryan sent me these old recordings from the 1920s and '30s — Tommy Johnson, Robert Johnson. When you think about music from that time, you think about old recordings that sound terrible. It's like looking at a black-and-white photo and thinking that's how the world actually looked. But there was color back then! Ryan wanted to portray that world in a way we've never experienced it before. These musicians weren't old men playing by themselves. They were edgy, dangerous young guys. This music was the kind that would get you pulled out of church. Those recordings were often just one person and a microphone. But the reality was, they were playing for crowds. And learning how the band was formed… Back in the '20s, people played alone on the corner or in juke joints. They didn't want to share money. It wasn't until later, when Howlin' Wolf moved to Chicago and brought musicians from different parts of the Delta, that bands started forming and performing in bigger venues. McIntyre: The moment the film began, with that opening graphic about people receiving powers from the devil through music – the first thing I thought of was Robert Johnson. How much of an influence do you think he had on the story itself? Göransson: I think a lot of those musicians were influences. Robert Johnson is obviously the most famous today. People still talk about him as one of the best guitar players in the world. When you listen to those old recordings from the 1920s and '30s, what he's doing on the guitar is insane. The playing, singing, rhythm, phrasing — no one can do that anymore. That kind of expression is gone. I'm glad we still have those recordings, and that's why his story still resonates, because he was just so good. That whole mythology of music and the devil... I think that's something that will always be around. Music has such power. Anyone who goes to a live show can feel it. That artist becomes something else on stage, almost like an idol, and then when they walk off, they're just a regular person again. McIntyre: Blues is one of those genres you can't fake. People who understand it can immediately tell when it's not authentic. Were you nervous about that? How did you make sure what you were creating wasn't just blues-adjacent? Göransson: That was one of the biggest challenges — finding my expression of the blues. Trying to emulate the great artists from the '30s and '40s wouldn't sound true coming from me. It wouldn't sound true to anyone else either. So how do I find my place in this? It took time. It helped that we moved to New Orleans for three months while they were shooting the film. My partner Serena, who was the executive music producer, and I basically lived on set and in the studio. Every day, actors would come in to record songs, and we'd go to set and shoot them. After that, I'd go back to the church studio in New Orleans and work on the score. It took a while to find my voice, but being immersed in that environment — with the actors, with Ryan, seeing the whole process every day — really helped. By the end, I was living and breathing the film. McIntyre: So you were right in the middle of where the blues was born, but there's also something deeper in the music that you captured. It felt emotionally real. What helped you go beyond just replicating the sound to actually writing something so touching? Göransson: Writing the songs specifically meant working with the right artists — people who could really channel that expression of the blues. For Jamie's song, 'Perlene's Song,' I went to Nashville and worked with Brittany Howard. She wrote it. She's an incredible instrumentalist and singer — totally the real deal. For the surreal montage moment, I worked with Raphael Saadiq. Also a true instrumentalist. He plays guitar, he sings. It was important to have people like that involved. That was the key to unlocking that part of the film. McIntyre: That surreal moment — I've been telling people about it since I saw the film. It's one of the most incredible music sequences I've ever seen in a movie. The music, the direction, the cinematography… It almost felt like a different film, but in the best possible way. What was it like crafting that scene, blending blues with African rhythms and contemporary hip-hop? Göransson: That was a big journey. The song I did with Raphael Saadiq was the foundation of that whole scene. We all had to work really closely together — visual effects, the DP [director of photography], Ryan, Serena, the choreographer, everyone. I got a previs from Michael Ralla — the visual effects artist — so I could see what Ryan had in his head. It was basically a little animated layout of the whole scene, so I knew the timing and could build the music around that. We did rehearsals where Ryan and the cinematographer were literally walking between extras to map it out. I had my rig on the floor, kind of DJing on the spot. We had one day to shoot it, and that day felt magical. It felt like we were putting on a live show. Every time we did a take, it felt a little different. Ryan was guiding the Steadicam operator — this massive IMAX camera rig — through the scene. All the actors and extras had to focus really hard because we only had so many chances. It really did feel like a concert. McIntyre: That must've taken days to choreograph and rehearse. Göransson: The prep took two months. Then we had just one day to shoot it. McIntyre: That's insane. How many original songs are in the film? Göransson: That's a good question. I need to figure it out. There are a bunch of original songs, and also a bunch of non-original songs. McIntyre: I'm not familiar enough with that world to know what's traditional and what's original. Göransson: Well, the traditional songs are things like 'The Irish Station" and 'Let's a Go,' which is Scottish, and 'Walk Around to Dublin,' which is Irish. That one was written into the script by Ryan because he wanted this magical performance by Jack O'Connell. There's history there, with the Irish vampire coming into that story. What happened to immigrant workers in America is basically what happened to them in Ireland too, going way back. And the character is trying to save them, right? Then there's 'Travelin',' the song Miles performs in the car. That's an original song by Alvin Youngblood Hart, a Memphis blues musician. One of the first things Ryan and I did before shooting was go to Memphis and do the Mississippi Blues Trail. We brought my dad from Sweden too. Got him on the trip. We met a lot of musicians along the way, and some of them actually appear in the film. McIntyre: When you were writing and recording the score, how many of the musicians were people you'd already worked with versus local blues players you brought in just for this? Göransson: That was the whole point. They were all real blues musicians who live that life. I consider myself a good guitar player, but we featured real blues guitarists on the score. Kingfish was in there — Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram — from Clarksdale. Eric Gales. Bobby Rush played harmonica. And, of course, Buddy Guy is in the movie. We had these real heroes playing and contributing to the music. McIntyre: You're also listed as an executive producer on the film. Was that just about the amount of work you put in, or did you actually help shape the story? Are you interested in being more involved in musical storytelling going forward? Göransson: Ryan knew early on how much music would be in this film and how involved I'd need to be — not just in composing, but across all departments. Serena and I had to work closely with costume, casting, everything. You needed someone overseeing the music's integration in all parts of the film. That level of involvement is why Ryan brought me on as a producer too. McIntyre: I was blown away by Miles Caton. The moment he opens his mouth, especially in that barn scene, his voice stops you. Did his casting or his performance change your approach to the music once you saw what he could do? Göransson: It definitely affected things. We looked at so many kids. It was hard to find the right person. Then as soon as we saw Miles, and he opened his mouth, Ryan and I both knew — this was it. He was 18 at the time, and I could tell from the way he sang and spoke that he was a real musician. He didn't play guitar at first, but that didn't worry me. I could tell he was serious. He had three months before shooting, and he used that time to study every day with a guitar teacher in Philadelphia. He lived in New York, and would commute. After three months, he wasn't just noodling around, he was playing real guitar solos, with a slide on his finger. That slide used to be just a bottle you'd break and put on your finger to play. The melodies you can make are more vocal that way, because you can slide between notes instead of just jumping from one to the next. I was still surprised when I finally saw him play on set. He was really good. And his voice is just so beautiful, so unique, so mesmerizing. There's a scene where he's singing in the car with Stack, and Stack hears his voice for the first time — that's a genuine reaction. That was my reaction too. McIntyre: What makes your working relationship with Ryan Coogler so special? I want to say "successful," but that's not quite right, it feels deeper than that. You've made such distinct and powerful scores together. I remember watching your Black Panther docuseries, and it was clear how much work went into it. What is it that works so well between you two? Göransson: I'd say it's how deep he wants to go. And it's art, right? He invites you into that process, and I think we both just enjoy the journey. Every time we dive into one of these projects, it feels like we're transcending our previous work. Whenever we go on one of these adventures together, we come out the other side having leveled up. McIntyre: When I first interviewed you, it was just days after you won your Grammys for 'This Is America.' Since then, it's been mostly film and TV. Are you planning to stay on this path, or do you want to get back to working with artists again? Göransson: What's cool about the way things are now is that I get to do both. I'm curating the soundtrack, working with artists, writing songs for the film with them. So I'm incorporating both worlds — film scoring and producing music — into one. I think that's one thing I do that's maybe a little different. Most studios have one composer and one soundtrack producer, and they never really overlap. I thought, why not just combine them?
Los Angeles Times
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
They found the music of ‘Sinners' together — just as they have from the beginning
'Sinners,' Ryan Coogler's newest film, supposes that music has the power to conjure spirits past, present and evil. It's a compelling hook, one that leads the story's heroes, including Michael B. Jordan (playing twins), Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo and revelatory newcomer Miles Caton, into conflict with bloodsucking creatures of the night but also on a time-tripping tour of American musical history. This is a movie that features legendary bluesman Buddy Guy and, on the soundtrack, banjo evangelist Rhiannon Giddens and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. It's a movie where music sizzles and wails out of every pore. In one knockout set piece, Caton — baby-faced but with the time-stained voice of a 60-year-old railroad man — sings a new blues song ('I Lied to You') at the film's central juke joint. Positioned behind a gigantic Imax camera (Coogler literally had his hands on the operator's hips), the director rips a time portal open and whirls through the crowded room where, suddenly, ancient African drummers and dancers share the floor with 1930s plantation workers, a rock guitarist, modern twerkers and DJs alike. The camera, airborne, rushes up through the roof, which bursts into flames. 'We actually lit the s— on fire, bro,' says Coogler, 38, proudly. His cast and crew gathered at the end of principal photography to watch the central building set ablaze for the shot. 'It was almost, like, ritualistic.' In theaters Friday, 'Sinners' is the latest lovechild between the writer-director and his longtime music man, Ludwig Göransson, the Oscar-winning composer who previously fused the nostalgic brass heroism of 'Rocky' to modern hip-hop in 'Creed' and who adapted traditional West African idioms to Marvel-sized blockbuster dimensions in Coogler's 'Black Panther' films. 'Sinners' is a culmination of their unique creative partnership, a deeply personal celebration of their shared love of music and of each others' families. 'Everybody had this sense of urgency,' says Coogler via Zoom from New York, 'where we all knew that this might be the last time in our lives where we could make something like this, that requires this much of ourselves.' The ex-footballer likened it to returning a kickoff and taking advantage of a fleeting hole in the defense. 'I felt like that every day on this movie, like there might not ever be a time when Ludwig can just move to another town and uproot his whole family.' Göransson, 40, is on the Zoom call too, albeit in a different box onscreen. He's busy finishing up the 'Sinners' soundtrack album at Electric Lady Studios. And even though Göransson is a white Swede with Samson locks and Coogler hails from Oakland and has cornrows, they talk with the easy fraternity of two guys who bonded over a mutual love of hip-hop at a pool table in USC's student housing. Göransson has scored every Coogler picture since his 2009 student film 'Locks,' and he never merely varnishes them with music in postproduction — he is truly Coogler's co-author. He also is a partner in Coogler's new production company, Proximity Media. And despite his background — growing up in Linköping, Sweden, in the 1980s — Göransson was practically baptized in American blues music. His father worshipped guitarists from the Delta and even wanted to name his son after the Mississippian Albert King but was outvoted by his wife, who named him after Beethoven. 'I grew up with [my dad] always listening to those guitar heroes, having those records at home,' says Göransson. 'He filmed those concerts from the '70s that he wanted me to watch, with Albert King playing guitar and smoking a pipe onstage in rainy Stockholm.' Göransson absorbed his dad's passions and mutated them into a personal obsession with Metallica, an electric descendant of the blues, in the process becoming a guitar player proficient in everything from thrash metal to jazz. For 'Sinners,' Coogler, per usual, started sending Göransson drafts of his ambitious script about two brothers (Jordan, seamlessly doubled) who open a juke joint in 1930s Mississippi and accidentally attract a trio of vampires. The story was first sparked by his uncle James, a blues-loving man from Mississippi who died when Coogler was in post on 'Creed.' Listening to the blues became a way of 'conjuring' his uncle, the director says. After he made 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,' Coogler was washing dishes one night and listening to 'Wang Dang Doodle,' a 1960 blues song about a crazy all-night party with a colorful cast of characters, and lightning struck. Fueled by a lifetime love of horror, the filmmaker developed a plot that resurrected the life force of the early blues scene and merged it with the intriguing possibilities inherent in a vampire's eternal lifespan. He was excited that the guitar-shredding Göransson (who has played onstage at Coachella) could finally write a guitar score, and the director even took up the instrument himself while writing his script, receiving riff lessons from his friend. 'If you've got the right type environment with the right type of people, you feel immortal,' says Coogler, awed by Göransson's chops. 'I've seen Ludwig on guitar, I've seen him shred, and I'm like: I don't know that person.' There was obviously going to be much source music in the film: blues tunes, Irish folk songs, church music, all of it performed onscreen. It seemed a fairly straightforward task, at first. They asked Serena Göransson — Ludwig's wife and a studio violinist whose playing had a starring role in his score for 'Oppenheimer' — to produce all of the songs. She took one read of the script and had some direct advice. 'She was like, there's no way you do this and just go down to New Orleans on weekends,' recalls the composer. 'So, yeah, we rented a house, and it turned out that we stayed for three months, and the scope of the project was way bigger than I thought it was going to be.' The Göranssons set up camp in the heat of a Louisiana summer with their two young children last year. Serena, a classically trained performer who 'was taught that all music came from Bach,' says on a separate Zoom call from New York that she recognized that this uniquely southern Black music had to be handled with care and expert consultation. 'I feel like a steward of this project,' she says, 'especially with the music. I just feel like it has a life of its own and the right artists are coming in to collaborate with us at the right time.' They interviewed blues legends and ethnomusicologists, as well as the top singer of traditional Sean-nós vocal music in Ireland. Ludwig Göransson even got to take his father on the blues trail in Memphis as part of a research trip. He co-wrote original songs with Brittany Howard, onetime lead singer of the Alabama Shakes, and Raphael Saadiq, the R&B maestro from Oakland, which became key moments in the plot. He gave Lindo — who plays a scene-stealing old soak nicknamed Delta Slim — piano lessons. The Göranssons rented a studio (converted from a church) in New Orleans and worked tirelessly with the supporting cast — Jack O'Connell, Lola Kirke and Peter Dreimanis as folk-singing vampires, Jayme Lawson as a seductive torch songstress — rehearsing their numbers again and again to the point where, as Serena Göransson says, 'you could have woken them up in the middle of the night and they knew these songs like the back of their hands.' After writing multiple songs and helping with the shoot (including the complex musical choreography of that space-time-shattering set piece), Göransson was now faced with the daunting task of writing a score. Weaving around the many period-rich diegetic songs, he took a 1932 Dobro resonator guitar — the same one that Caton's character, Sammy, plays in the film — and channeled his father's blues-loving DNA. Joined by a lyrical harmonica and Caton's vocals, it's music that almost lets the audience smell the cotton fields and country roads and smoke-filled hoodoo huts. Reflecting the historical continuum explored in the story, he then plugged into his Metallica love and wrote gleefully fun, neon power chords for Remmick (O'Connell) and his fanged companions, with drums authentically supplied by Ulrich. The score also cleverly exploits the pipe organ's dual connotations with religion (Sammy is the son of a pastor) and gothic horror. When the blood really starts hitting the fan, Göransson asked his wife and a string orchestra to help escalate the drama, and he had violins bend notes just like his slide guitar. 'When I hear that last section,' Coogler says, 'that's the one where I'm just like: This is really good, but I don't know if anybody outside of like me and maybe [my wife] Zinzi know how good this is.' 'I'm Ludwig's biggest fan who's, like, not married to him,' Coogler adds, his face beaming while Göransson blushes. The director, whose kids also hung out on set, has known Ludwig and Serena since they met cute at a scoring session in 2008; he officiated their wedding 10 years later. 'I love this score because I think it's infused with his love for music, his love for his dad, his love for his wife, his love for his kids. I can literally feel it in the music.' The final scene in the film, technically a post-credits scene, was actually the first one shot chronologically. Coogler wanted to show a more recent link to the story's century-old events, and he really wanted his uncle's favorite blues musician, Buddy Guy, to be involved. But he quickly learned that Guy, now in his late 80s, hadn't been to a theater since the 'fish movie,' a.k.a. 'Jaws,' and he despaired of his chances. Still, he arranged to go see Guy play in Chicago. 'I get to the show,' says Coogler, 'and his whole family is in the backstage room — his grandkids. And they're like, 'Oh, cool, we're going to bring you to see our grandpa.' And me and Zinzi go in there and sit down, and he's like, 'Yo, man.'' 'I'm not a movie guy,' the bluesman said, in Coogler's retelling of this momentous meeting, 'but my kids love your movies and they tell me that I gotta meet with you. So I'm here — whatever you need. You want me to sing? I'll sing. You want me to act? I'm on for the work. But I got you.' 'I pitched him what the movie was,' Coogler continues, 'and he told me his life story about being a sharecropper as a kid and going up to Chicago and trying to learn how to play. I broke down crying, because everything I had just written in the script, this dude lived.' 'Outside of the supernatural stuff,' Coogler clarifies.
