Spirit Untamed (soundtrack)

Spirit Untamed (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the

Amie Doherty was hired to score for the film in early 2021. She was recommended by Mike Knobloch, President of Music and Publishing at NBCUniversal for the film, after she previously scored for the DreamWorks Animation's short film Marooned (2018), as a part of Universal Composers Initiative.^[3] Doherty liked the original film and the songs and score by Bryan Adams and Hans Zimmer, when she was 15, and had a significant impact. However, while scoring for the film, she did not refer to Zimmer's themes from the original, and worked on a fresh score, with the approach being organic.^[4] While consisting of largely orchestral music, the instrumentation ranges from acoustic guitars, nylon guitar and vocal harmonies, to give a partly western feel and mostly orchestral moments to "encapsulate the breadth of the stunning landscapes on screen".^[3]

She composed and wrote an original track "Fearless", a lullaby number which was used when Lucky's mother Milagro (Eiza González) sings to her young daughter.^[5] She used the melody from that track to weave into the themes of the film score.^[5] In her first songwriting stint, Doherty while writing this track, avoided themes that were female-centric including "beauty" and "girl things" and felt that "it could be sung to any child". The song was written within an hour, with words that reinforced the importance of embracing one's roots.^[5] Stating to an interview to Variety, she said "I wrote this melody and added placeholder lyrics, and everyone had discussed they would bring on a lyricist. But in the end, they used the song with those lyrics".^[5] "Fearless" later used three times in the film — the second instance, where Lucky singing it to herself for motivation and her father Jim (Jake Gyllenhaal) singing in the end.^[5] On Gyllenhaal's singing stint, Doherty said that it was "very funny and endearing", while adding that "she had 50 or 60 takes of him going way out there and then like bringing us all to tears with a super sweet version".^[4]

The score was recorded by blending contemporary folk rock with traditional music.^[6] She further used Spanish guitars to tie Milagro's Mexican culture with the Western American setting,^[5] and further combined the symphonic sound of the orchestra with mariachi trumpets, bluegrass fiddles and nylon/Spanish guitar, so as to represent "the mixture of cultures in this particular time and place".^[3] Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes provided vocal harmonies for the score along with Eiza González. Both Doherty and Elaine Mogan were fans of Fleet Foxes and the former felt that working with Pecknold would give a "modern addition to the film score", though his involvement was undisclosed, before he was officially onboard for the film.^[3]

In addition to the traditional, modern and orchestral versions, Doherty learnt to use spaghetti music in the "Fantasy Sequence" as "the scene steps outside the “norms” or “rules” of the film in many ways, both visually and in sound design", resulting Doherty to have the score being reflected in a similar way. She used traditional spaghetti western sounds by blending opera, male choir, percussions, tremolo baritone guitar and harmonica, while the sequence also inspired use of power chords to give a "fantastical, punchy, exciting feeling".^[3] For a sequence where, Lucky first tries to ride Spirit, Doherty explained about scoring the sequence saying "The trick to scoring the “dance” was to find the right tempo to hit their footwork. It starts out quite tentative, and as Lucky begins to learn and Spirit begins to trust, the music becomes more rhythmic and stable, and concludes with a variation on Spirit’s theme as they edge closer to each other."^[3]

Release

The first of two singles from the film, titled "Fearless (Valiente Duet)", written by Doherty and performed by