As David Lowery, the director, was writing the fictional pop star Mother Mary for his new film of the same name, he spent a lot of time studying the last 25 years in music. He listened to Taylor Swift (whose Reputation concert film inspired the performances in the film), Lorde and FKA twigs, who appears on screen as a medium named Imogene. But as the film’s haunted love story between Mary (played by Anne Hathaway) and her former best friend and designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) emerged, his listening habits shifted.
“The pop music fell away and other music started to enter that sphere,” he says in A24’s New York offices. He’s sitting beside twigs and Hathaway the day after the trio attended the film’s premiere in the city. “James Blake and Aldous Harding really captured the emotion that I was trying to type out between Sam and Mother Mary. They began to help me channel the feeling of the movie itself.”
