The Story Behind The ‘To All The Boys: Always and Forever’ Soundtrack
Whether you’re experiencing the worst part of heartbreak or feeling the thrill of falling head over heels, there’s a love song for every moment which is exactly what the To All The Boys: Always and Forever soundtrack shows us. Following the release of Netflix’s fan-favorite Valentine’s day movie, artists Ashe, Leah Nobel, Jordan Suaste, Peter Manos, and The Greeting Committee came together in conversation with Universal Music Group’s °1824 to discuss their experiences with love, the music behind the movie, and how they go about writing a love song.
“What was your experience with love like in high school?” Amplify Her Voice asked each artist.
Jordan Suaste: Horrible. Any time I liked anyone – Nothing, and then I dropped out of high school when I was sixteen because of all the anxiety from it all, so no one liked me in high school. I was the kid in the corner, but now I’m thriving. Now we love love. We love loving everyone.
Peter Manos: I got dumped in high school pretty bad so that was my experience but I’m over it now.
Ashe: You seem like you’re over it.
Leah Nobel: I had sort of a similar experience to Lara Jean and Peter, not in the way they met and the way their relationship initially was but my senior year of high school, I had to decide if I wanted to stay with my high school boyfriend in college and I chose a different route than Lara Jean and Peter do in the movie, but that was nostalgic for me watching that.
Pierce Turcotte of The Greeting Committee: I had a relationship in high school that almost tore the band apart.
While not everyone experiences love the way Lara Jean and Peter do in high school, it’s evident that feelings surrounding love and heartbreak are universal in the same way the songs written about those feelings are. Songs give us sounds that we hear and translate to feelings. Movies give us images that we see and translate to feelings, and these artists gave us the thrill of experiencing both at the same time.
Leah Nobel
Storytelling is one of the only creative tools that can turn fleeting feelings of love into a permanent moment, which is what multidimensional artist and songwriter, Leah Nobel, did when she wrote the song that would later encapsulate Lara Jean and Peter’s entire relationship. “Beginning, Middle, End,” was written with Nobel never having seen the movies or knowing what song her movie would be for. Working with a few keywords like “rom-com,” and “teenage love,” she explains how the track that tied into the movie so well was made. “The part where I just decided to fill [the song] in with realness that felt applicable to us was what ultimately absorbed into the storyline.”
The Greeting Committee
To All The Boys: Always and Forever cinematically showcases the power of music multiple times, but the moment where it might be most influential is when Lara Jean hears the track for the first time by seeing The Greeting Committee perform it at a rooftop in New York City. Lead vocalist Addie Sartino recounted how honored the band was to cover a song written by Nobel and how they were able to make it their own while shooting the scene for the film. “We were told it was supposed to be very indie band-esque which is easy because we’re an indie band so we just tried to make it as authentic to our sound as possible,” Sartino says. “We’d done covers of songs before, but not something to this extent and I think we wanted to respect Leah’s writing but also ourselves and our fan base because we didn’t want to put something out that was gonna feel ingenuine, so I think we were able to get a really good compromise.”
Peter Manos
Loss, warmth, hope, and loneliness - all things that you might find shown on screen throughout Lara Jean and Peter’s entire love story - are also concepts that drive Peter Manos’s music. His song “In My Head,” which brings emotional, soulful music to the movie, is played during the film’s scenes at Lara Jean and Peter’s prom night. Originally a song he wrote himself, the song made its way into the film via slow dancing and an important, intimate moment.
Jordan Suaste
Known most famously for his track “Hookup Culture,” which provides a bittersweet perspective on modern dating, it was fitting that Jordan Suaste’s artistry was tied into a film about pure love and how to keep it. His track, “If The World Ended Tonight,” also set the scene for a memorable high school moment between the two main characters in the film. Reflecting on the creation of the song, Suaste recounted that the end of the world would prompt most people to want to spend their last moments with those they love – not just romantically, but also platonically, bringing his song to acknowledge love in all forms.
When Amplify Her Voice asked the artists, “What is the hardest thing you encounter as musicians and songwriters when writing songs about heartbreak?” LA-based singer-songwriter Ashe revealed a lot about her songwriting process between her hit song “Moral of the Story,” which was featured in the second film in the series, To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You.
“I feel like it’s one of those things that you have to forget that anyone’s gonna listen to it,” she explained. “You have to pretend that you’re going to put [a song] out into the world and that no one will care because you’re singing about your own life and your own experiences. In my experience with “Moral of the Story,” in the second movie… It’s in a high school, teenage rom-com but it’s about my divorce, and writing about heartbreak is the most important thing. I needed to. It was like therapy for me and something I knew I needed to write about, but I had to pretend like no one was going to hear it [...] and then it was in this film and I was so glad I didn’t know when I was writing it that people were gonna like it.”
Ashe
While Ashe is no stranger to writing about heartbreak, her latest release, “The Same,” which is also featured in the film, brings to life the same universal thread between love, emotion, and self-reflection that everyone - from people like Lara Jean to people like Peter - can somehow always relate to.
To All The Boys: Always and Forever (Music From The Netflix Film) is available now for streaming on all music platforms. Watch To All The Boys: Always and Forever streaming now on Netflix to see how these artists bring love to life through music on screen.