Olivia Rodrigo has shared “Can’t Catch Me Now,” her contribution to the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Check it out below.
Opening with a lone acoustic guitar, “Can’t Catch Me Now” blossoms into an arrangement clad with silky strings and rich harmonies, but the real star of the show is Rodrigo’s vocal performance. The first portion of the tune gives her a platform to deliver some appropriately Hunger Games-esque lyrics, like “But I’m in the trees, I’m in the breeze/ My footsteps on the ground/ You’ll see my face in every place/ But you can’t catch me now.”
Then, the energy picks up a bit, as Rodrigo belts “You can’t, you can’t catch me now” over cinematic orchestral padding. After reaching a grand climax, the tone drops down again, and she closes out the tune with an allusion to the plot of the film itself. “Yeah, sometimes the fire you founded/ Don’t burn the way you’d expect,” she sings, before delivering the final line over an open, unresolved cadence: “Yeah, you thought that this was the end.” Listen to the song below.
Rodrigo is the only artist featured on The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes soundtrack apart from composer James Newton Howard, who is returning to score the new film. Set decades before the original entries in the Hunger Games series, the prequel stars Tom Blyth as a young Coriolanus Snow, who connects with District 12 tribute Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler).
Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins wrote the script for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes alongside screenwriter Michael Arendt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3) and Michael Lesslie (Assassin’s Creed). Francis Lawrence, who helmed three of the four original Hunger Games movies, returns to direct. The film hits theaters November 17th.
Get Olivia Rodrigo Tickets Here
Rodrigo released her sophomore album, GUTS, in September. Looking ahead, she’ll share a Record Store Day vinyl version of the LP complete with four bonus tracks, and take the project on a lengthy world tour that begins in February. Grab tickets to a show here.