Elements Don’t Mix.

June 17, 2023

Thomas Newman Scores ELEMENTAL for Pixar Studios

In the new movie from Pixar Animation Studios, ELEMENTAL, a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common. For the ELEMENTAL score, filmmakers called on a tried-and-true member of their musical family: Thomas Newman. Newman’s Pixar credits include 2003’s FINDING NEMO, 2008’s WALL•E and 2016’s FINDING DORY – the celebrated composer was nominated for an Oscar® for his work on both FINDING NEMO and WALL•E.

Director Peter Sohn capitalized on Newman’s experience and artistry to amplify the story’s emotional core. According to Sohn, Newman’s score brilliantly captures the unexpected connection between Ember and Wade, Fire and Water—opposites by all accounts. Not only that, says the director, but it eloquently accompanies the story’s deepening relationship between father and daughter. “As a fan of Tom’s scores,” says Sohn, “one of my favorite aspects of his work is how he finds a way to present the inner thoughts of characters through music and present more sophisticated energy to an emotional moment. This was something that we were very excited to have Tom help out with and I am so moved by the work he created for the film.”

Newman’s edict was to create music that spans the film’s emotional spectrum. “You have the utterly ludicrous all the way to deeply profound,” he says. “As a composer, you always want to help tell the story: ‘Elemental’ is full of puns that are there for laughs; at the same time, there are some really deep issues.”

The music also conveys the unique cultural undertones of the story—without leaning on any existing cultural hallmarks. “From Fire, Water, Earth and Air, how could we create something that was unique to the world of the film and wasn’t going to appropriate anything from our human world?” asks Sohn. “Through Tom’s amazing breadth of experience, we believed in his skill to create something very unique for the different communities of our film. The surprise for me was how he was able to unify the different cultures through our main character. How we could feel the music of the Fire culture through Ember, and then feel what she was going through when leaving her comfort zone and enter a city that wasn’t built for Fire.”

When it came time to find the perfect song for a key sequence in the film, Pixar filmmakers teamed up with multi-Platinum chart-topping singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Lauv, who worked with Newman and songwriter Michael Matosic on the film’s original single, “Steal the Show.”

According to Newman, that was the best part. “The most fun is discovering the vocabulary and different musical colors,” he says.

The soundtrack was released digitally on June 16 by Walt Disney Records and is available to stream/download on all major digital music services.

Watch the trailer for ELEMENTS: