MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

The first truly buzzy film of 2024, Challengers is a sexy drama set in the competitive world of professional tennis. It stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a tennis prodigy who finds herself in the middle of a menage-a-trois with two other junior players, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), both of whom are attracted to Tashi, and who are also attracted to each other. Shockingly, Tashi’s career is ended by a devastating knee injury, and over the next few years she marries Art, becomes his coach, and transforms him from a mediocre tour player into a world-famous grand slam champion. However, to help jolt him out of a recent losing streak, Tashi enters Art into a second-tier challenger event… which brings them back into the world of the burnt-out Patrick, who is now an unknown player living out of his car, scraping by on winnings from the lower circuits, and whose presence threatens Art and Tashi’s already feisty relationship. The film is directed by Luca Guadagnino and has already been the recipient of a great deal of acclaim, but also some notoriety, both for its raw emotions, and for the sizzling sexual chemistry between its three leads.

While it may come as something of a surprise to some people, those who know me know that, in addition to film scores and 1980s rock music, one of my other favorite genres of music is 1980s synthpop, especially the music pioneered by artists like the Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Human League, and many others. I was seven years old in 1982, so I was perhaps a tiny bit young to have appreciated it at its peak, but over the next decade or so, as the sound was continually popular in the charts, I grew to appreciate the sound immensely. It’s now a huge part of my childhood nostalgia, and even today I still gravitate towards pop songs which intentionally seek to recapture the retro sound and style of that era. All of this is sort of pre-amble to explain why I feel how I feel about Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score for Challengers.

In short: I kinda love it. I think it’s absolutely brilliant. Despite my misgivings about the majority of their film music output to date, I have always been a fan of Nine Inch Nails, and I have always maintained that Reznor’s work with the band was truly groundbreaking stuff, unique and strongly artistic. While I recognize that a lot of the music Reznor and Ross have written for film since they made their debut on The Social Network in 2010 was inspired by the mostly-instrumental NIN concept project Ghosts from 2008, I actually feel that Challengers might be the closest Reznor has come to recapturing the intoxicating immediacy of what he was doing with Nine Inch Nails in the 1990s. Guadagnino’s instruction to Reznor and Ross was for them to write a score taking inspiration from ‘Berlin techno’ and 1990s rave music, and they have done just that, while also bringing in some of their own personal stylistics and flavors.

As I have said repeatedly in my reviews of their music over the years, I do not consider Reznor and Ross to be especially great film composers in the traditional sense. They don’t have the sense of drama and narrative that I usually look for in film music, and in terms of tone and approach I often find their music to be too ambient for my personal taste; c’est la vie. For Challengers, however, it’s clear that linear dramatic development and a strong internal narrative was not something that the film needed; what it was looking for instead was attitude, style, and swagger, capturing the aggressive personalities and overt sexuality of the main characters, and the music that Reznor and Ross wrote here delivers that in spades.

It also has a ton of personality, which is another thing that I have not really been able to write about a Reznor and Ross score before. I have often felt that if another composer with no name recognition had written the exact same score for The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, or whatever, no-one would have noticed. For me, those scores weren’t particularly new or interesting, weren’t particularly innovative. Dozens of other composers are writing almost exactly the same music, in the same style, with the same approach, but are not winning Oscars because their name is not Trent Reznor. Challengers, however, feels completely different. It overflows with energy. It has themes, recurring themes, and killer hooks and beats across several different tracks, each of which have a distinct flavor. It’s hot, sexy, sweaty, dirty, and a little dangerous, in the same way that tennis itself is a hot, sexy, sweaty sport, and in the same way that the three lead actors play hot, sexy characters.

Several cues stand out for me. The title cue “Challengers” is a driving, hypnotic piece that has a relentless sense of internal energy, as well as a unique vocal textural idea that sounds like someone – it’s unclear if it’s Reznor, Ross, or someone else – saying ‘bong bing bong ding dong’ over and over again, in what might be a musical approximation of a tennis ball pinging backwards and forwards over a net. The final cue, “Challengers: Match Point,” is an extended reprise of the same theme; it revisits the ‘bing bong ding dong’ vocal idea, while also adding in what sounds like some sampled electronic choral textures and a flashy orchestral string motif to give the final on-court confrontation between Art and Patrick a pseudo-epic edge.

“Yeah x10” has the sassy, almost egotistical tone of someone striding onto a tennis court, who is ultra-confident in her game skills, and who also has the look-at-me attitude of a runway model – a perfect representation of who Tashi is at the height of her playing career. This sound is reprised later with equal attitude in “Stopper,” although it does change to something darker and more dramatic in its second half to represent the aftermath of Tashi’s career-ending injury.

“L’Oeuf” is a darkly romantic piece for a wandering piano backed by moody synth textures, and is wonderfully atmospheric in a way that is somehow ominous and seductive at the same time (there’s a fun piece of tennis-related word play here; the reason we say ‘love’ for zero is because it’s an adaptation of l’oeuf, the French word for egg). This piano riff comes back later in the first half of the subsequent “Final Set,” before it is quickly joined by a lazy, chilled-out, fuzzy-sounding groove and, later, a Reznor-style approximation of old-school hip-hop record scratching.

“The Signal” and “The Points That Matter” are a pair of fantastic disco-style tracks that contain a variation on the funky bassline riff from Michael Jackson’s 1982 banger “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”. Then both the “Brutalizer” tracks and the subsequent “Pull Over” are pounding high-energy pieces that have an almost trance-like beat, featuring fast and complicated electronic layers that are occasionally interspersed with more mellow, psychedelica-inspired chords.

I will say that I found the way a couple of tracks ended annoying – “Challengers,” for example, ends with an iPhone alarm sound, as if waking someone up from a dream – and a couple of tracks, notably “I Know” and “Brutalizer,” have sampled tennis match sounds in them that is a little distracting. I understand why they did it but, honestly, I have always disliked it when soundtrack albums allow movie dialogue or sound effects to bleed into them, and this is no different.

Also included on the album is a performance of the lovely “New Year Carol” from Benjamin Brittain’s 1933 work “Friday Afternoons,” a collection of twelve song settings. This particular song is a British folk song of Welsh origin traditionally sung in New Year celebrations, and which is heard in context during an encounter between Tashi and her former partner Patrick; the second part of this sees Reznor taking Brittain’s melody and transposing it to his synths in a fascinating, unexpected collision of styles.

The whole thing is rounded out by an original song, “Compress/Repress,” which is performed by Reznor with whispered background vocals by his wife, singer/songwriter Mariqueen Maandig. The song is excellent; it has a sultry overall atmosphere, a killer piano riff, and a memorable vocal performance by Reznor, who here seems to be channeling his inner Dave Gahan for all he’s worth. I can see this song heading for the Oscars next year.

In addition to the regular soundtrack album, there is also a separate ‘remix’ album by German electronic music record producer, songwriter, and DJ Alexander Ridha, aka Boys Noize. For this album Ridha remixed nine tracks, including the Benjamin Brittain classical piece and the “Compress/Repress” song, adding in even more layers of rhythmic electronic beats, creating a dance-club atmosphere that at times reaches almost euphoric levels. It’s also excellent, and I highly recommend it as a worthwhile companion piece to the score.

I really can’t overstate how much I enjoyed Challengers, and how much I surprised myself by doing so. With this score, Reznor and Ross clearly understood exactly what the film needed, what director Guadagnino’s instructions were, and how to translate that into a fantastically retro electronica sound that perfectly emulates the 80s synthpop vibe while also giving it a Nine Inch Nails spin. This is not a film that needed an orchestra, or traditional thematic content; this film needed a score which captured the dark, sexy, intoxicating world of these three beautiful people, and Reznor and Ross provided that with an ace. Game, set, and match.

Buy the Challengers soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• Challengers (1:25)
• I Know (2:18)
• Yeah x10 (2:38)
• L’Oeuf (3:59)
• The Signal (3:11)
• Brutalizer (3:01)
• Stopper (1:42)
• Brutalizer 2 (1:58)
• The Points That Matter (1:49)
• Lullaby (0:38)
• Final Set (3:06)
• Pull Over (2:48)
• Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: A New Year Carol – Part 1 (written by Benjamin Britten, performed by the Choir of Downside School, Purley, feat. Viola Tunnard) (2:06)
• Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: A New Year Carol – Part 2 (written by Benjamin Britten, performed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) (1:14)
• Challengers: Match Point (5:02)
• Compress / Repress (written by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Luca Guadagnino, performed by Trent Reznor feat. Mariqueen Maandig) (3:49)

Milan G010005267096N (2024)

Running Time: 40 minutes 50 seconds

Music composed and performed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Recorded and mixed by Jacob Moreno. Edited by Roberta d’Angelo. Album produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.