Songwriting career just keeps going up
Oakland native cracks code for key number in ‘Don’t Look Up’
What would the end of the world sound like?
That was the question songwriter Taura Stinson and composer Nicholas Britell asked themselves when they set out to write a song for “Don’t Look Up,” the Netflix film about a looming apocalypse.
Their answer resulted in “Just Look Up,” an Oscar-buzz-generating pop song performed by Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi, who also appear in the movie as alternative versions of themselves, that functions on two levels. The number is about rekindling a broken relationship but also serves as a literal plea to look up — because in the film, there’s a comet, a not-so-subtle metaphor for climate change, hurtling toward Earth.
For Stinson, who grew up in Oakland, the track is just the latest in a career full of eclectic collaborations, including work with Destiny’s Child and fellow Oakland native Raphael Saadiq.
Stinson began writing songs in her East Oakland bedroom as a child and said she still remembers penning lyrics about Rick James being sexy in her composition notebook. When her older cousin found it, it made its way to her uncle, and she assumed she would be in trouble.
“I thought for sure, ‘This is over, this is not going to end well,” Stinson told The Chronicle in a recent video interview from her home in Los Angeles. “But instead, he was very intrigued and inspired by my little 8-year-old self. He gave me a cassette recorder … and said, ‘Keep this beside your bed at night when you hear melodies.’ He told me that melodies are the sounds that words make in music. That started me off on my journey to really explore songwriting.”
As a teen, Stinson played with the idea of becoming a journalist until an encounter with Saadiq sent her on a different path. As part of a class assignment at Fremont High, students were asked to interview local celebrities. Stinson’s mom, a cosmetologist, did the hair of Saadiq’s then-girlfriend, so she made the connection.
Then the musician flaked on the interview.
“He called me maybe a month later. He was like, ‘I’m so sorry! I forgot I had a show, but I’m going to make it up to you,’ ” Stinson recalled.
It turned out that Saadiq had taken time to read her writing. “I do think that you’re a phenomenal writer,” she remembers him saying. “You should think about writing songs.’”
From there, the Tony! Toni! Toné!
singer became a close collaborator, working with Stinson on songs for Kelis, Mary J. Blige and more. The two even earned an Oscar nomination for their song “Mighty River” for the 2017 Netflix movie “Mudbound,” starring Blige.
“I’m just so inspired by so many people from the Bay,” Stinson said, adding that growing up here gave her a “beasty work ethic.”
That work ethic is a big part of why Britell tapped her to contribute to the writing of “Just Look Up.” After meeting on a panel in 2017, the two bonded over their love of hiphop and film scores. Four years later, he asked whether she’d be interested in working on something with a quick turnaround: a believable pop ballad that ends in tragedy.
“Taura Stinson is absolutely incredible,” said Britell, who is based in New York. “She’s a brilliant singer-songwriter, and we were really lucky to have her as part of this project.”
In his scores, Britell often evokes feelings of fear, love and hopefulness. His resume includes emotional, scene-heightening music for Barry Jenkins’ films “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” as well as the opening theme to the HBO hit series “Succession.” So creating sounds for a world where everyone has to die because of a comet was different.
Britell’s initial idea for the song was to convey the feelings of panic, anxiety and hopelessness — feelings one might experience when thinking about the constant disasters happening around us because of climate change. But he also wanted to sonically evoke feelings of deep respect for science and higher aspirations for humankind.
Before director Adam McKay even started shooting the film, Britell wrote a musical piece called “Overture to Logic and Knowledge,” which was eventually used at the start of the film as scientists first spot the comet on a telescope.
As for “Just Look Up,” Stinson described the songwriting process as “lyrical sparring.”
“It was a very tricky process to figure out how the song … would work tonally,” said Britell, who also currently works with San Francisco Symphony Music Director EsaPekka Salonen as one of his collaborative partners. But he credits Stinson with making it look easy.
“Taura figured out a way for us to have a set of lyrics that did both of those things without the song breaking and falling apart,” he said, adding that “she did it on her very first pass.”
Writing for film offers an artistic freedom Stinson said she appreciates, noting that one of her first big breaks in the industry was working on the Destiny’s Child song “Killing Time” for the 1997 film “Men in Black.”
“I’m able to explore all of me,” she said. “I’m able to explore the me that loves a little bit of ratchet music, and the me that loves classical, or the me that loves Nirvana, or the me that loves Radiohead, and the me that loves Too Short. That’s the part about writing for film that I like because it’s more character-driven.”
In “Just Look Up,” she also had to consider the film’s message: that we have to listen to scientists, and that the consequences could be serious if we don’t.
“The line ‘fighting against all odds, and soon against ourselves’ encompasses both the (characters’) relationship and our state of the world,” Stinson said. “There’s climate change and all these things that are right in our face that we just are ignoring, and we are doing it to ourselves. So we’re the problem.”