The musical love fest between Justin Timberlake and Chris Stapleton has grown stronger and stronger since the two took the stage for a mind-melting performance on the CMA Awards in 2015. The duo have collaborated several times since then, and most recently, crossed paths on the soundtrack for Trolls World Tour.
Timberlake serves as executive music producer on the film’s soundtrack and enlisted Stapleton’s help, co-writing two of the songs together. The process wasn’t easy however as the two were separated by nearly the entire country.
“I wrote with Chris Stapleton just like this via FaceTime,” he shared in an interview with Apple Music. “We wrote the songs via FaceTime, he had his guitar, I have my guitar, he was in Nashville and I was in Los Angeles and we were dealing with like a two or three second delay. So every time we would try to do it together, we would try to sing the parts together, it would be a train wreck. But we would record voice notes and send them back and forth and then we got on FaceTime and finished them this way.”
The film picks up after the events from the original Trolls movie in 2016. Branch (Timberlake) and Poppy (Anna Kendrick) find out that Trolls are scattered over six different lands and each are devoted to another genre of music: Pop, Funk, Classical, Techno, Country and Rock. Because the movie covers so many different types of music, Timberlake was pushed to expand the soundtrack to cover all the bases.
“What’s beautiful about this movie and what we’re able to do with the music and where the world just is right now is everybody’s just listens to everything. We’re getting closer and closer to sort of de-genrefying music,” he explained. “I was literally having conversation with Anderson [Paak] and we were talking about what is it, and that being the conversation right now. And we were like, I don’t know man, does a slap or does it not slap? That’s it. And that’s kind of what we tried to do with this soundtrack. If I was to ask you about your playlist in a day, it’s going to go from so many different styles to the other.”
The soundtrack also features songs from Dierks Bentley, Kelly Clarkson, Rachel Bloom, Mary J. Blige and others.
Trolls World Tour was originally scheduled to be released in theaters on April 10, 2020, but will be released via digital rental due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more information, visit trollsworldtour.com.
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Trolls World Tour (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Track List: