The Music of ‘Turning Red’ Is an All-Star Affair Featuring Billie Eilish, Finneas and Ludwig Goransson
Jon Burlingame editor“Turning Red,” Pixar’s latest animated adventure, posed some pretty big musical challenges: it’s about a 13-year-old girl, obsessed with a boy band, whose Chinese ancestry literally looms large as she turns into a giant panda when her emotions spin out of control.It demanded a trio of world-class talents: Grammy winners Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell for the songs and Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winner Ludwig Göransson to compose the score.That such high-profile talents were available and eager to contribute to “Turning Red” says a lot about the music-friendly reputation of Pixar, which has won five music Oscars (including last year’s “Soul”) and 11 more nominations for either song or score since the original “Toy Story” in 1995. Tom MacDougall, president of Walt Disney Music, conferred with director Domee Shi — whose personal coming-of-age, mother-daughter conflict story inspired “Turning Red” — and reached out to all of them in 2019, before production on the film began.MacDougall had been a fan since Eilish’s early hit “Ocean Eyes” and was impressed, he says, “by the breadth of the territory that their songwriting and performing covered” ever since.