'A Star is Born' vs. 'Coco'. Why one musical sucks and what it can learn from the other.

A look into how/why certain movie songs work and others don't. (Spoilers for both films).

Having recently rewatched A Star is Born I came to a realisation as to why the ending felt a little flat to me. It was the final song of the film. In this blog post I’m going to outline why I feel like the ending song of A Star is Born doesn’t really work for me and comparing to the ending of Coco and why the song ‘Remember Me’ (Coco) is a better ending than the song ‘I’ll Never Love Again’ (A Star is Born). (Spoilers for both films obviously).

At the end of A Star is Born we see Ally (Lady Gaga) sing the song ‘I’ll Never Love Again’ in remembrance of her now dead husband Jackson (Bradley Cooper) a moment that should bring us all to tears, and definitely did bring many to tears, but it felt emotionally flat for me. I believe the crux of my issue with this ending is that the final song did not feel earned in any way shape or form. As an audience, we understand the emotional importance/significance of the song ‘Shallows’. It was the first song they sang together and was Ally’s first attempt at making it in the world of songwriting. We understand the importance of her performance as we have been with her on the journey to that moment. We don’t get this for ‘I’ll Never Love Again’.

We get a few sparse moments of seeing Jackson writing some song but we never get to hear what it is until the end. This prevents audiences from understanding why this song is important to Jackson himself. Personally this just leaves me with more questions than answers. This song feels like it’s a song about loss, which makes sense if Ally wrote it, but if it was written by Jakcson… What is he losing? He begins writing the song when they are together, or so we assume because we don’t get a good understanding of what song he is ever writing at any given point, so he hasn't lost Ally. And it doesn't make sense for him to write the song in fear of losing Ally because she makes it so clear, by investing in his recovery, that she will go to great lengths to help him recover. The song was badly set up and seems to come out of nowhere; almost as if the writing team made the song first and then wrote around it, rather than having a song that organically forms out of the story. This movie could learn a thing or two from Disney, in particular Coco.

The 2017 hit film Coco gave us bangers upon bangers, Un Poco Loco, The World es mi Familia and, the subject of this half of the post, Remember Me. When the movie starts we are introduced to a party version of Remember Me, an uplifting, yet intentionally generic, upbeat version of the song that would feasibly be on the radio over and over. Later on we learn that Ernesto De La Cruz stole the song from his former songwriting partner Hector; who wrote the song for Mama Coco. This song is an example of why writers NEED to have their music come organically from the film, rather than attempt to reverse engineer the story to help fit a song. Ernesto’s version of the song represents him, unoriginal, commercial and only existing for the materialistic things in life. Whereas Hector's version not only represents him; but the overall moral of the story. One being never to forget or ignore the ones you love and another being never to choose something materialistic over the ones you love.

Furthermore, the movie then uses all of this story and emotional weight to crescendo at a beautiful moment. In a house where Mama Coco is no longer active and music is banned, this one song, written for only her, brings life back to the whole house. The song was set up, emotion was added to it, and it helped tell the story of the film. Beautiful.

I’m not trying to argue what film has better music here, I love the songs in A Star is Born, they are amazingly crafted and genuinely make the rotation on my spotify shuffle, but as a part of the film, aside from Shallows, they all fall flat and feel uninspired. This is made obvious by the fact that Shallows is the one song that audiences seem to always remember as it’s the only one that feels like it came from the story of the film. Say what you want about Disney feeling ‘paint by numbers’ these days, all their music springs organically from the films themselves. Do I think A Star is Born is a bad movie? No not at all, but I also believe that the movie could have had just one song and been fine. Heck I wouldn’t even mind if they just copied Coco and did a sad version of Shallows at the end. At least it would feel more inspired.