Last month, Netflix shared the first full trailer for Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, showing two small-time astronomers (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) on a hopeless mission to warn Earth’s inhabitants about their impending doom.
Now, Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi have shared their soundtrack for the apocalypse, a pop ballad (and desperate plea to “get your head out of your ass”) titled “Just Look Up”, which has been tipped as a best original song contender at the Oscars.
Both musicians will make cameo appearances in the forthcoming disaster comedy, which also features performances by Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, and Cate Blanchett. The president and her chief of staff — who dismiss the astronomers’ claims about an approaching comet in a teaser released in September — are played by Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill, respectively.
“This guy was the grossest blast I’ve ever had,” Hill wrote of his slimy, badly-dressed role earlier this year. “I thought, what if Fyre Festival was a person and that person had power in the White House.”
In a statement on the newly-released Don’t Look Up track, Moonlight and Succession composer Nicholas Britell says: “It was a privilege to collaborate with Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, and Taura Stinson on our song ‘Just Look Up’, a love song that transforms into a rallying cry.”
“Many of the projects that I’ve worked on with Adam McKay are, in their own way, explorations of tone as a central topic — they’re all a unique blend of gravitas and absurdity.” Previous collaborations between McKay and Britell include the acclaimed features The Big Short and Vice.
Don’t Look Up, he adds, captures “a sense of ever-increasing astonishment at how crazy things really are.”
Watch the official lyric video for “Just Look Up” below, and revisit the Don’t Look Up trailer here.