February 1, 2019
Brian Tyler’s WHAT MEN WANT Soundtrack Coming Up from Lakeshore
Next week, Lakeshore Records will be releasing the soundtrack to the fantasy-comedy WHAT MEN WANT, a kind of gender reversal of the 2000 Mel Gibson comedy, WHAT WOMEN WANT.
Directed by Adam Shankman (A WALK TO REMEMBER, HAIRSPRAY) and WHAT MEN WANT Taraji P. Henson, Aldis Hodge, Richard Roundtree, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Tracy Morgan, the movie follows a female sports agent who has been constantly boxed out by her male colleagues until she gains an unexpected edge over them when she develops the ability to hear men’s thoughts.
“For this score, initially [director] Adam Shankman and I talked about doing something that was quite different,” Tyler said in an interview posted in a recent Soundtrax column. “We were thinking that it probably would be closer to a CRAZY RICH ASIANS style of score, but it actually ends up being a cousin of that. The main character, she’s very strong but also very vulnerable at the same time; she’s struggling with a lot of life decisions when she happens upon this crazy supernatural ability to hear the thoughts of other people. But it’s told in a way that is really relatable. The vibe that I went for ended up being a kind of throwback quartet jazz with saxophone, piano, upright bass, and jazz drums, but much more pared down than CRAZY RICH ASIANS was. This was more of a soloistic type of thing within a jazz idiom. It also goes into a lot of funk and throwback soul music that’s really from the ‘70s as well as a bit of throwback to the 1990s in the style of the music. Some of it we recorded as if we were making a record from the ‘70s or the ‘90s. In that way we weren’t going for the traditional orchestral Hollywood score, this has a different twist on it, a very different vibe, musically. I’ve never done anything like it.”
The soundtrack will be released digitally on February 8, the same date the film is released via Paramount. The score album is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
The comedy will be released by Paramount Pictures nationwide on February 8.
Watch the film’s trailer: