‘The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Album)’ to Feature Ella Langley, Tyler Childers, Stevie Nicks and More

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‘The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping’ artwork Courtesy MCA

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Album) will arrive Nov. 13 on MCA with 29 songs inspired by the upcoming film. The album features artists across rock, country, Americana, pop and other genres.

Ella Langley contributes “Here Then We’re Gone.” The lineup also includes Stephen Wilson Jr. with “First in Line,” Stevie Nicks with “Doing The Best That I Can (Arena Mix),” Tyler Childers with “Old Money,” The Smashing Pumpkins with “Black Stars” and Noah Kahan with “Draw You Out.”

“We got to live the fantasy league of dream artists we wanted to work with,” Grammy-winning executive producer Dave Cobb tells Billboard. “And the through line of all of it is honesty. I think people listen to music in such a varied way. So this is really all the things we love about great artists and great music.”

The Lionsgate film Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, directed by Francis Lawrence, will open in theaters Nov. 20. Set 24 years before the original Hunger Games trilogy, it follows 16-year-old Haymitch Abernathy of District 12. The story begins on the morning of the reaping for the 50th annual Hunger Games and follows Abernathy as he attempts to stop the games from inside the arena.

“The record has so many layers. It has triumph, sadness, and it has loss and it has love,” Cobb says. “I think that’s the way we looked at everything, songs that would fit every emotion that the movie has. Definitely, we talked to some of the artists about what we were looking for. Most of the artists, they loved the franchise already. They’d read the book. It was incredible to see how excited people were.”

Some artists, including Noah Cyrus with “Ash and Snow,” drew inspiration from specific characters. Cobb says Gigi Perez was the first to send in a song for the project, “Favor.”

“Gigi Perez was the first person we got a song back from, and she had been such a massive fan [of The Hunger Games], knew every detail,” Cobb recalls.

One of Cobb’s highlights was The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Black Stars.”

“We talked about the feeling, and it was really cool — because he called Butch Vig, who produced [the Pumpkins’ 1993 sophomore album] Siamese Dream and the stuff that got me into Smash Pumpkins,” Cobb says. “It was nice to have them all back together. It was the band back together with the original producer on the records that defined The Smashing Pumpkins, for me at least.”

The album also features Kacey Musgraves and The Cure alongside emerging artists Madeline Edwards and Carter Faith.

“When Madeline’s hitting those big notes in that song, it’ll just shake you to the core,” Cobb says. “And Carter’s such an incredible singer, there’s so many magical moments on this.”

Cobb has worked with artists including Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell and Ashley Monroe. His film soundtrack and film-adjacent work includes 2022’s ELVIS, 2018’s A Star Is Born and the previous Hunger Games installment, 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

Cobb says soundtrack work lets him create beyond the confines of a traditional album.

“Every one of them is different,” he says. “When I did A Star is Born, you’re writing for characters, which is really great. Elvis was fun because I love Elvis, and getting to try to recreate some of that stuff was fun. And this is a totally different thing. This is also getting to live in a character. You get to go be in somebody else’s mindset for a little while.

“I think people wrote their truths into the Hunger Games universe on this,” Cobb adds.

The full tracklist for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Album) is below: