Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi had shared their collaborative single “Just Look Up” from the upcoming film Don’t Look Up, which arrives in select theaters on December 10 and will be streaming on Netflix starting December 24.
The two musicians act in the film alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Timothée Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, and Ron Perlman.
“It was a privilege to collaborate with Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, and Taura Stinson on our song ‘Just Look Up,’ a love song that transforms into a rallying cry, as well as with Justin Vernon on Bon Iver’s original song ‘Second Nature,’” says Academy Award-nominated and Emmy winning composer Nicholas Britell.
“Just Look Up” matches the tone of Don’t Look Up, which follows an astronomy graduate student and her professor after they discover that a comet is going to crash into the Earth.
“Look up, what he’s really trying to say / Is get your head out of your ass / Listen to the g—–n qualified scientists / We really f—-d it up, f__d it up this time /It’s so close, I can feel the heat big time,” Grande sings.
“And you can act like everything is alright / But this is probably happening in real time / Celebrate or cry or pray, whatever it takes / To get you through the mess that we made / ‘Cause tomorrow may never come.”
Britell helmed the entire score and soundtrack for Don’t Look Up. Grande and Cudi join Bon Iver as the only featured artists on the project, out December 10 via Republic Records.
“My score runs the gamut from absurdist big band jazz to profound, deeply felt orchestral music. Many of the projects that I’ve worked on with Adam McKay are, in their own way, explorations of tone as a central topic,” Britell added.
“They’re all a unique blend of gravitas and absurdity with Don’t Look Up capturing a sense of ever-increasing astonishment at how crazy things really are.”