So, how much thought have you given to the Hunger Games soundtrack? Did you just kind of note that Arcade Fire and the Decemberists and Kid Cudi (sure) are on it and then move on with your music life? Or did you pore over the track list and try to assign bands and songs for each crucial scene? For the record, Vulture definitely has not spent any personal hours doing this, but if we did, we’d probably have guessed that Arcade Fire would write some giant Arena number to play while Katniss runs through the woods killing things. Not so much. “Abraham’s Daughter,†the first Arcade Fire contribution to the movie, is certainly about killing things (kids, naturally), but in a more thoughtful, unsettling way. Explains Win Butler: “Our whole approach was to get into the world and try to create something that serves the story and the film,†he continued. â€There’s something in the story of Abraham and Isaac that I think resonates with the themes in the film, like sacrificing children. So we made a weird, alternate-universe version of that, where it’s as if Abraham had a daughter — kind of a metaphor for Katniss.†Meanwhile, Butler says that Arcade Fire’s other Hunger Games song is a national anthem for Panem, basically, which raises all sorts of questions about whether we will even be allowed to enjoy it. The Hunger Games: so complicated!
Stream “Abraham’s Daughter†over at EW.