The main title credits to “Top Gun: Maverick” are both surprising and confusing: “Music by Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga and Hans Zimmer. Score produced by Lorne Balfe.”
That may sound like a musical mess, but aside from Gaga, all the players have connections to the original “Top Gun” or each other through previous collaborations. Berlin-based Faltermeyer scored the original 1986 “Top Gun,” winning a Grammy for the instrumental “Top Gun Anthem,” while Zimmer scored four earlier Tom Cruise films including “Rain Man,” “Days of Thunder” and “Mission: Impossible II.”
The London-based Balfe has frequently collaborated with Zimmer on various scores (from “The Dark Knight” to “Dunkirk”), scored “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” for Cruise, and and is currently working with Cruise on “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning.” The Oscar- and multiple Grammy-winning Gaga penned the new movie’s “Hold My Hand,” already touted as an original song front-runner.
So how did their musical duties on “Top Gun: Maverick” break down?
“Each of them contributed significantly,” says Randy Spendlove, president of motion picture music at Paramount. “Harold came in and was here collaborating with Hans. And when we showed the movie to Gaga early on, she wrote this amazing song, and as that evolved, we asked her to contribute to the score.”
“Hold My Hand” plays during a bar scene when Penny (Jennifer Connelly) and her daughter are having a conversation. Cues from the song are woven into the score, and the full song is played near the end with Penny and Maverick (Cruise).
Spendlove explains that Lady Gaga had “written the love theme, which is the heartbeat of the movie. Harold’s theme is the incredible epic theme that’s always been associated with ‘Top Gun,’ and all the music in between — all those action sequences, dogfights and training sequences — was created by Hans and Harold. Lorne produced all that music from all those places.”
According to Faltermeyer, Cruise asked him to participate even before shooting began in 2018. “Let’s keep the spirit of the first one,” Faltermeyer quotes the star-producer as saying. “Thank God we had the iconic ‘Top Gun Anthem’ in our bag” the Berlin-based composer tells Variety via email. “That led to determining the tone of the entire score.”
Faltermeyer’s original theme “was the first thing we started delving into,” Balfe adds. “The audience wants to hear it, but it’s got to be slightly reinvented. There are nods to it throughout the movie.”
Faltermeyer worked with Zimmer at the latter’s Santa Monica studio off and on through 2019. “I wish we could have spent more time together,” Faltermeyer adds. “Our creative moments, one on one, were limited,” he notes, citing Zimmer’s multiple film commitments (including the James Bond film “No Time to Die,” which occupied Zimmer through late 2019 and early 2020).
Balfe remembers recording Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith for the score “three years ago” and says that the entire score was recorded in Los Angeles — “remotely,” he says, mainly because of COVID restrictions, so the key players cited in the film’s end titles (including cellist Tina Guo and electric guitarist Lexii Lynn Frazier) were performing in their own studios.
While the creative efforts began in Los Angeles, with Zimmer, Faltermeyer, and later Gaga, additional work took place in London, where Balfe resides, where Cruise was working on the next two “Mission: Impossible” movies, and where Zimmer spent considerable time during the past three years.
“Top Gun: Maverick” marks Lady Gaga’s first effort at film scoring. “Hans and Gaga worked very closely,” says Balfe. “There were quite a few writing sessions. They were working on it for a long time.”
Gaga recently said on social media that she spent years perfecting “Hold My…
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