Listen to the New — and Very Different — 'Annie' Soundtrack on Spotify
Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhané Wallis in Annie
Planning on singing along with the upcoming Annie movie? You’ll need to learn some new songs. The full soundtrack to Annie, starring Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx, and Cameron Diaz, is streaming now on Spotify, and fans of the Broadway musical (or the 1982 film, for that matter) may be surprised to hear just how different the new score is. The film contains 12 full songs, eight of which were adapted from the original 1977 Broadway show. Of those, only three — the show’s signature ballad “Tomorrow,” Annie’s opening song, “Maybe,” and the foster-kid chorus “It’s a Hard Knock Life” — are largely unchanged, except for the addition of modern beats and Auto-Tune. As for the other five songs — “Little Girls,” “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here,” “Easy Street,” and “I Don’t Need Anything but You” — they’ve all been dramatically rewritten, the familiar hooks augmented with new melodies and lyrics. There are also four new songs written for the film, which counts Jay Z and Will Smith among its producers.
Some rewriting, of course, was inevitable, since the new Annie updates the Great Depression-era story of a social-climbing orphan (played by Wallis) for the year 2014. References to hobos and Herbert Hoover were obviously destined for the cutting-room floor. But even the beloved 1982 film version of Annie, which kept the story in 1933, made substantial changes to the score, cutting six Broadway songs and adding others like “Sandy” and “Let’s Go to the Movies.” (None of the songs written for the 1982 film appear in the 2014 remake.)
The revamped Annie soundtrack was created by singer-songwriter Sia and producer Greg Kurstin. “It was my favorite musical growing up,” Sia said in a radio interview about Annie. “I must have watched it about 150 times.” In addition to doing the rewrites and arrangements, Sia performs three songs on the soundtrack — notably, the upbeat original track “Moonquake Lake,” a collaboration with Beck. Listen to it using the embed above, along the rest of the soundtrack. Just brace yourself for the sound of Cameron Diaz singing, because unlike in The Mask, she doesn’t use a stunt voice. Annie arrives in theaters Dec. 19.
Watch the trailer:
