Ready to hear what a musical about the Nativity written and produced by the people behind Glee and High School Musical sounds like?
If so, then this is your lucky day.
The complete Journey to Bethlehem soundtrack album is now available to stream or purchase, and you can listen to it by clicking on the Spotify link below:
I’m planning to review the film itself when it comes out next week, so I won’t say all that much about the songs right now. But a few points are worth noting:
The complete soundtrack album is 33 minutes and 24 seconds long, or about a third of the film’s 98-minute runtime.
The more traditional “Christmas songs”, broadly defined, take up 6 minutes and 9 seconds, or 18.4% of the album.
These include ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ (0:18) and the medleys ‘Journey to Bethlehem’ (1:47) and ‘The Nativity Song’ (4:04), though that last song includes callbacks to two of the film’s more character-based songs.
The songs in which Mary (Fiona Palomo) and/or Joseph (Milo Manheim) work through their feelings about being in an arranged marriage take up at least 8 minutes and 28 seconds, or 25.3% of the album.
These include ‘Mary’s Getting Married’ (3:34), ‘Can We Make This Work’ (2:46), and ‘We Become We’ (2:08).
You could also, perhaps, add ‘The Ultimate Deception’ (2:55) to the list, though it’s less about the marriage per se and more about Joseph’s conflicted feelings after he learns about Mary’s pregnancy.
The songs sung by Herod (Antonio Banderas) and his son Antipater (Joel Smallbone), the latter of whom wrestles with his feelings about his dad, take up 5 minutes and 51 seconds, or 17.5% of the album.
I think my favorite song might be ‘Mother to a Savior and King’ (3:54). It’s about Mary wrestling with the fact of her pregnancy and asking God “how I can be carrying your Son when I need you to carry me.” I’m also struck by the line in which she asks God to “help me have the faith you have in me.”
The Magi also get a showstopper, ‘Three Wise Guys’ (2:34), in which they seem to be offering their gold, frankincense, and myrrh to Herod—and they even compete with each other to convince Herod that certain gifts are better than others.
Add it all up, and it’s safe to say that about half of the music is rooted in fictitious character dynamics invented for the movie—the arranged marriage between Mary and Joseph, Antipater’s feelings about his father, the comic relief, etc.—while maybe a fifth of the soundtrack consists of more conventional Christmas songs and the other… three tenths?… consists of songs that flesh out the emotions implicit in the situations described by the gospels (Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph’s doubts).
It occurs to me that the filmmakers got a rapper, Lecrae, to play the angel Gabriel, and… they didn’t give him a solo. Not at the Annunciation, and not even on the night of Jesus’ birth, really; instead he gets a line or two before the choir kicks in during ‘The Nativity Song’, and that’s… pretty much it?
The studio has already released videos for two of these songs:
A clip from the film of Mary and Joseph singing ‘Can We Make This Work’.
A music video for ‘Brand New Life’ (3:27), the song performed by Steven Curtis Chapman and We the Kingdom that plays over the film’s end credits.
Meanwhile, the studio has also released a new featurette that looks at two of the married couples that worked on the film, namely co-writer/director Adam Anders and his co-composer Nikki Anders, and co-stars Joel and Moriah Smallbone:
Among other things, Nikki Anders talks about the different layers of meaning in the title to the song ‘Brand New Life’ (marriage, birth, spiritual change), and she talks about how “God has been involved in this process from the beginning. / He’s directed the steps, he’s given some of the words, and / that’s been an integral part of the collaborating in this process.” It’s always interesting when artists say that the work they did on a song or film was actually done by God on some level.
And, that about covers it for now. I assume there’ll be more publicity materials to sort through next week, leading up to the film’s release on Thursday night.
Previous videos for Journey to Bethlehem:
The teaser trailer (April 28, 2023)
The official trailer (September 14, 2023)
The ‘Heart of Journey to Bethlehem’ featurette (September 20, 2023)
The Mary and Joseph featurette (September 29, 2023)
The Mary’s sisters featurette (October 3, 2023)
The Antipater featurette (October 6, 2023)
The Fig (donkey) featurette (October 10, 2023)
The ‘Can We Make This Work’ clip (October 13, 2023)
The King Herod featurette (October 20, 2023)
The Gabriel featurette (October 25, 2023)
The ‘Brand New Life’ music video and featurette, the ‘Gift of Giving’ promo, and the Catholic and Protestant screening reactions (October 27, 2023)
The Wise Men featurette (October 31, 2023)
Other previous posts on Journey to Bethlehem:
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