Conjuring the fictional pop star Mother Mary for his new film of the same name, director David Lowery immersed himself in modern pop music, from Taylor Swift and Lorde to James Blake and Aldous Harding. To tell the cursed love story between a singer with a cult audience (Anne Hathaway) and her estranged best friend and stylist (Michaela Coel), he was chasing a certain mood—one that felt equally haunted and ecstatic. The seven songs of the film’s soundtrack, released on A24 Music, were sung entirely by Hathaway, who used Tori Amos as a reference as she worked with Jack Antonoff to explore her vocal range and make intuitive tweaks to the lyrics. Alongside Antonoff, Charli xcx wrote the majority of the soundtrack with help from husband George Daniel of The 1975, resulting in gothic, ethereal synth-pop centred around themes of desire and obsession: “This black suit fits like a glove/I was born to be the widow of love,” Hathaway sings on “Burial”. The one exception is “My Mouth Is Lonely for You”, an after-hours anthem from FKA twigs that was left over from the EUSEXUA sessions.