Here’s a novel way to sell a soundtrack album: the score for Deadpool 2 is being ballyhooed as the first score album ever to receive a parental advisory warning.
It is certainly a first for Sony Classical, the label that saw huge success with such Oscar-winning soundtracks as Titanic, The Red Violin, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The Deadpool 2 album was released last Friday; the film starring the irreverent superhero opens this Friday.
The offending phrases appear as choral passages in composer Tyler Bates’ massive and muscular score. In classic Deadpool fashion, they range from “you can’t stop this motherf—er” to “holy s— balls!” — sung with deadly seriousness by a 38-voice Hollywood ensemble.
Bates is no stranger to high-profile comic-book movies. He scored Watchmen and both Guardians of the Galaxy installments. This marks his third film for director David Leitch (after John Wick and Atomic Blonde), and he invited the filmmaker to attend the recording sessions on March 23 at 20th Century Fox.
The choir was performing “one of the bigger, more aggressive vocal cues,” with meaningless, faux-Latin phrases, Bates told Variety. He invited the director to consider writing actual lyrics to replace the nonsense phrases he was hearing.
“Dave had some ideas, and following the rhythm that they were singing, put pen to paper,” Bates said. With the help of choral contractor Sally Stevens and orchestrator-conductor Tim Williams, the new lines — written during a 20-minute break in the middle of a three-hour recording session — were incorporated into the score.
“It was pretty funny,” Bates said, “between the men singing the word ‘f—‘ in harmony, and getting the cadence of ‘holy s— balls’ to really work with the music. It wasn’t merit-less debauchery, it was just fun. It’s very rare that we can work on something at such a high professional level that embraces the irreverence of Deadpool.”
Sony Classical released the album on Friday with the warning “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content.” Added Bates, tongue-in-cheek: “That’s one of the finer accomplishments that I have managed in my career in this business.” Parental Advisory Warning
