Inside the Messy Music of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’: Lady Gaga Gets First Scoring Credit, but Song Selection Goes Sideways

variety.com:

Top Gun: Maverick” are both surprising and confusing: “Music by Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga and Hans Zimmer. Score produced by Lorne Balfe.”That may sound like a musical mess, but aside from Gaga, all the players have connections to the original “Top Gun” or each other through previous collaborations.

Berlin-based Faltermeyer scored the original 1986 “Top Gun,” winning a Grammy for the instrumental “Top Gun Anthem,” while Zimmer scored four earlier Tom Cruise films including “Rain Man,” “Days of Thunder” and “Mission: Impossible II.”The London-based Balfe has frequently collaborated with Zimmer on various scores (from “The Dark Knight” to “Dunkirk”), scored “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” for Cruise, and and is currently working with Cruise on “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning.” The Oscar- and multiple Grammy-winning Gaga penned the new movie’s “Hold My Hand,” already touted as an original song front-runner.

So how did their musical duties on “Top Gun: Maverick” break down?“Each of them contributed significantly,” says Randy Spendlove, president of motion picture music at Paramount. “Harold came in and was here collaborating with Hans.

And when we showed the movie to Gaga early on, she wrote this amazing song, and as that evolved, we asked her to contribute to the score.”“Hold My Hand” plays during a bar scene when Penny (Jennifer Connelly) and her daughter are having a conversation.