Widows (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Album review

In the early ‘80s, Hans Zimmer was an assistant for the British composer Stanley Myers, who wrote the soundtrack of the TV series Widows, broadcast between 1983 and 1985 on ITV. 35 years later, the student has become the master! Zimmer was called in to write the soundtrack for the remake of this program, featuring four women whose husbands-cum-thugs are killed in a robbery. The husbands had heavy debts to repay and so the widows set about to finish the work that they had started. The tracks are rather intimate in this new collaboration between the German composer and director Steve McQueen (after 12 Years a Slave in 2013), marked by the melancholic and mysterious presence of strings, both legato (Money, The calm before the storm, My son) and tremolo (Marcus). It doesn’t feel too far from Ennio Morricone...

Zimmer's score plays with contrast as it also includes more tense moments which are dominated by nervous rhythms and anxiety-inducing electronic sounds (The Job, Race Against Time). But even these pieces aren’t strictly speaking "action music" because, according to the composer of the Gladiator and Interstellar soundtracks, this burglary film appeals more to the mind than to the muscles. Zimmer's music focuses on the heroines’ plan to get the money (played by Viola Davis and Michelle Rodriguez, among others). Widows' soundtrack also includes an already-existing song (Wild Is The Wind by Nina Simone) and two original songs: Dice Game by Hip Hop duo The Cool Kids and the ballad The Big Unknown by Sade, who is, it seems, a big fan of the original series. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz