Will Jennifer Lawrence top the Billboard charts?

Hunger Games actress Jennifer Lawrence's rendition of 'The Hanging Tree,' for the soundtrack of Mockingjay - Part 1, premiered at number 14 on the UK charts and is headed for a repeat in the United States, Billboard reports.

Hunger Games series film fans may ask Jennifer Lawrence, "Are you, are you coming to the top of the Billboard tree? Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be, if Katniss went to number one for singing ‘The Hanging Tree.’"

The haunting, a cappella performance rendered by Hunger Games actress Jennifer Lawrence for the film "Mockingjay - Part 1," which premiered on Nov. 10 at the Odeon cinema in London's Leicester Square, has made the top 20 in the UK and is headed for a repeat here in America, according to a Billboard announcement.

Written by Suzanne Collins, who wrote The Hunger Games book series, and The Lumineers' Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz. "The Hanging Tree," took root at No. 14 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart Sunday.

Lawrence (in character as Katniss Everdeen) croons the song in the film, à la Lorde’s version of the film’s other hit song, Yellow Flicker Beat.

But Lawrence, in contrast to Lorde achieves an understated and slightly chilling smoky quality that all the Autotune in the world can’t provide. The addition of a choir and an orchestra that seep in at the end only deepen the effect.

In the dystopian world of The Hunger Games, the sackcloth-and-ashes presentation of the song appears to have outshone all the glitz that usually accompanies a film score hit. It’s about as far as you can get from Whitney Houston singing “I Will Always Love You” for "The Bodyguard" in 1992.

While it’s not new to have a film score hit the top of the charts, as did "The Guardians of the Galaxy" soundtrack which rose to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, it has been a while since multiple film soundtracks hit No. 1 on music charts.

Before "Guardians," you'd have to go back to 2009, when "Hannah Montana: The Movie," "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" and "Michael Jackson's This Is It" rose to the top of the charts.

"Guardians of the Galaxy" wins for an entire movie soundtrack composed of songs that had been previously released but found new life thanks to the movie boost. A case in point is Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" with 197,000 downloads sold, according to Billboard.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Will Jennifer Lawrence top the Billboard charts?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2014/1202/Will-Jennifer-Lawrence-top-the-Billboard-charts
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe