New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ UMe) The film AMERICAN HONEY is awash in great music � and no road trip is possible without a carefully crafted song selection. UMe announce the soundtrack from AMERICAN HONEY, an unforgettable melding of country, Southern hip-hop "trap" music and American radio classics featuring music from E-40, Rae Sremmurd,
Lapsley MadeinTYO, Sam Hunt, Mazzy Star and Lady Antebellum. The soundtrack will be available to download and stream from
September 30th across all partners.
The film features Star (Sasha Lane) as a free-spirited teenager on the brink of adulthood who leaves her troubled home in the American Midwest and hits the road with a "mag crew," itinerant laborers who peddle publications door-to-door for long hours during the day and party hard at night, never certain where the job will lead next. Led by hard-driving manager Krystal (Riley Keough) and her seductive enforcer Jake (Shia LaBeouf), the 15-strong 071 Crew becomes a surrogate family to Star, offering hope, possibility, love � and the freedom that comes from being on the road.
For her first feature set and filmed in the U.S., writer-director
Andrea Arnold (FISH TANK, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and Academy Award-winning short "Wasp") offers an electrifying depiction of American youth living on the margins and yearning to belong in an unforgiving landscape of strip malls, chain hotels and suburban sprawl.
Arnold crossed paths on her travels with an actual "mag crew" in California, embedding herself in its fold, sleeping in the same cheap motel and observing the daily rituals of its young sales team, many of whom were away from home for the first time. She discovered that being part of a crew is less a job than a lifestyle, and the crew itself less a group of business colleagues than a kind of wild, surrogate, alternative family.
Many of the mag crew kids Arnold traveled with favored trap music, a strain of Southern hip-hop that originated in the early 1990s in the Southern U.S. Memorable tracks in the AMERICAN HONEY soundtrack include songs by Rae Sremmurd, MadeinTYO, Sam Hunt, Mazzy Star and Lady Antebellum. Arnold went to great lengths to choose songs that were authentic to the world of her story and the emotions of her characters and cast members, herself included. On the road during her research phase she listened to songs on endless repeat, and queried members of the mag crew she traveled with on which songs they listened to on the road.
The songs in AMERICAN HONEY serve as everyday poetry, a touchstone for characters (and a film crew) wandering aimlessly through life, love and work — but finding strength and community in the moment.
"Music is a huge part of my life but it's also a huge part of the mag crews' life," Arnold admits. "It's a way of communicating and expressing emotion — and massively important because it's so truthful to their world."
Arnold's visionary and propulsive fourth feature is a generation-defining cinematic experience that locates unexpected beauty between the cracks of a fractured—yet defiantly hopeful and resilient— nation where a new day can bring anything.
A24 presents AMERICAN HONEY in select theaters in NY and LA on
September 30, and will expand in October. UMe will release the AMERICAN HONEY - Motion Picture
Soundtrack digitally on
September 30.
Quigley - Beginning Of Anything
Madeintyo - Uber Everywhere
E-40 - Choices
Ciara - Ride ft. Ludacris
The
Raveonettes - Recharge & Revolt
Rae Sremmurd - No Type
Carnage - Bricks ft. Migos
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You
Lapsley - 8896
OG Maco - U Guessed It
Lady Antebellum - American Honey
Raury - God's Whisper
Razzy Bailey - I Hate Hate
