“August Moon from The Idea of ​​You Gives Us the Boy Band Boy We Deserve.”

Did a romantic comedy Your idea leave you breathless? Like you could dance before you go? Do you want to get “closer” to love and get a better “taste” of what life has to offer? If so, there’s only one possible explanation: you’ve been mooned.

Exactly, you’re a moonhead now, a fan of Your ideais the fictional boy band August Moon. In the film, 24-year-old August Moon singer Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) falls in love with 40-year-old art gallery owner Solène (Anne Hathaway). And wherever their love goes, boy band boys will surely follow.

Your idea features several original August Moon songs, including the sweet, jangly “Closer” and the lively, sassy “Taste.” And let’s not forget “Dance Before We Walk,” Hayes Campbell’s anthemic solo debut about new beginnings. These songs – and the many others that appear everywhere Your idea – feel ripped straight from the radio in the golden years of a boy band. They’re begging for fans to scream along to a sold-out stadium tour. For the team behind it Your ideathat sense of credibility was crucial.

“We wanted the music to feel grounded, like this was a band that was accessible.” Your idea Music supervisor Frankie Pine told Mashable in a video interview. “The accessibility of this band was also part of the story… If they were too flashy, normal people like us wouldn’t go up and talk to them. But when they’re accessible, it allows us to be the normal.” Making the audience feel like we can go and have that conversation with them. That was probably the most important sellable aspect we needed because we needed a real connection between our two main characters.

This sense of accessibility meant that there was no room for pastiches or parodies in the film’s music. “I treated August Moon and Hayes Campbell like real people and a real band,” music producer Savan Kotecha told Mashable in a video interview. Kotecha, who has written songs for artists such as Ariana Grande, Britney Spears and The Weeknd, produced the songs for Your idea and wrote it together with Carl Falk.

Kotecha and Falk also co-wrote One Direction’s hit “What Makes You Beautiful,” a notable connection considering Robinne Lee, author of Your idea, cited Harry Styles as inspiration for the character of Hayes. However, One Direction was not the musical inspiration for the songs Your ideaThere were no other big boy bands either.

“When ‘Dance Before You Walk’ came out, people said, ‘That gives me a One Direction feel,’ and I thought, ‘That’s probably because it’s me and Carl Falk and we’re having fun doing these pop songs.’ “‘” Kotecha explained. “But it’s great to hear, and I hope people feel nostalgia and it reminds them of those times.”

Nostalgia also shaped August Moon’s sound and performance style. There would be no intervention in trends that would immediately date the music upon release, no flashy tricks or intense dance breaks.

“The trick wasn’t to make all the songs feel super current,” Kotecha explained. “My personal theory about boy bands, even thinking back to New Kids on the Block, is that they shouldn’t sound like what’s happening on the radio now.”

So the guideline for August Moon was: “Guilty-pleasure pop songs.” And with his years of experience in the music industry, including writing with boy bands, Kotecha found it helpful to create a chronology for August Moon’s discography, including songs that could fit on each of their albums.

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The teenybopper ballad “I Got You,” in which the boys of August Moon tell a listener not to worry about “comments” or what she sees on her “timeline,” serves as August’s first major single Moon from their debut album. Kotecha imagined it as a song that a record label would give to a boy band that was just starting out. In fact, he had “I Got You” in his back pocket for a while before he found a place for it Your idea.

August Moon’s second album features sexier—but still fairly boy band-clean—songs like “Taste,” with tongue-in-cheek lyrics like: “I’ve got dinner on the plate/It’ll have to wait/Because I’m going straight to my dessert.” For August Moon’s third album, Kotecha envisioned the band actually writing their own songs. The result? Bangers like “Guard Down,” which explores the pitfalls of fame and features guitar riffs and drums that fit perfectly Your ideais the crowd-pleasing August Moon Coachella performance.

The film’s musical centerpiece remains “Dance Before We Walk,” where a newly solo (and single) Hayes sings about how he’s “from the moon and I’m hitting the ground like a rocket.” We hear snippets of it throughout the film as Hayes plays it on piano and guitar and Solène encourages him to write it. For Kotecha and Pine, it remains their favorite song from the film and the song most representative of Hayes’ journey to find himself outside of August Moon.

“It proves that Hayes is more than just a cute face in a boy band,” Pine said. “He’s got depth, he’s got things he wants to say, and I loved showing the progression of what that’s like as a songwriter.”

When it came to actually recording the songs, Kotecha and Pine each praised Galitzine. First of all, his voice was key to understanding what form August Moon’s songs would actually take in the end. “For example, if they had hired a great R&B singer, that would have changed the direction we took in music,” Kotecha said. “But Nick has a great, rich pop tone, which told us which track to play on.”

“Nick is a professional and brought so much to the table vocally,” Pine said. “Usually when you have an actor, singing can be something completely new for them, so you tell them how to sing a line and they just sing the line. But Nick was really prepared and knew exactly how.” Hayes Campbell would have sung this song.

Due to the tight recording schedule, there was not enough time to get all the August Moon actors into the studio. Galitzine leads every song, with Kotecha taking the second lead role. “He did in three days what we would normally do in three weeks,” Kotecha said of Galitzine.

In addition to running an Instagram page for the band, Your idea released three August Moon singles in advance of its release: “Dance Before We Walk,” “Closer,” and “Taste.” For Kotecha and Pine, the reaction was exciting.

“I was at the screening in LA [of The Idea of You] “There were August Moon fans outside the theater the other day,” Kotecha said. “It was just so much fun to see people with August Moon shirts and bracelets and posters that they made.” Hopefully it just keeps going.

“There’s nothing like getting a fictional band to actually hit the charts,” Pine said.

You heard them – stream August Moon!

Your idea is now streaming on Prime Video. Your idea The soundtrack is now streaming.