Arcade Fire have contributed a couple of original songs to the soundtrack of The Hunger Games, which saw theatrical release this week. We already heard “Abraham’s Daughter,” which was a more traditional Arcade Fire song – “Horn of Plenty” is something else entirely. The song doesn’t have any lead vocals and is instead a grandiose anthem seemingly built exactly for this movie – and that’s because that’s exactly what it is.
Win Butler says of the song
“We were interested in making music that would be more integral in the movie, just as a mental exercise. And there’s an anthem that runs throughout the books, the national anthem of the fascist Capitol. So as a thought experiment, we tried to write what that might sound like. It’s like the Capitol’s idea of itself, basically. It’s not a pop song or anything – more of an anthem that could be playing at a big sporting event like the Games. So we did a structure for that, and then James Newton Howard made a movie-score version of it that happens in several places in the film.”
As someone who has neither read nor seen The Hunger Games, it seems like they did a pretty good job to me. But, what do you think? Check it out below.