Coco
This score proves that the same melody can be heard as a lullaby, as a song for the stage, and as a family's harmony.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people behind it ⏳🌊
- ComposerMichael Giacchino
Reuniting with Pixar after Up and Ratatouille, he scored the music for Coco.
- LyricsKristen Anderson-Lopez·Robert Lopez
The married songwriters behind Frozen, they wrote several of Coco's songs, including its signature number, Remember Me.
- ComposerGermaine Franco
She wrote the music for several songs, including Un Poco Loco.
- ScreenplayAdrian Molina
Co-director and screenwriter, he also helped write the lyrics and led the research into Mexican culture.
- DirectorLee Unkrich
He spent several years developing and directing a story built around the Day of the Dead.
- Lead roleAnthony Gonzalez
The actor who provided both Miguel's speaking and singing voice; he was a boy at the time of recording.
I. Coco and Giacchino
(Pitch) Director Lee Unkrich spent several years developing a story built around the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), and he entrusted the score (background music) to Michael Giacchino. (Giacchino) He had already worked hand in glove with Pixar on “Up” and “Ratatouille,” and he is known for his command of the orchestra and an idiom at once warm and playful. (Division of labor) The songs were shared among the married duo Kristen Anderson-Lopez·Robert Lopez, Germaine Franco, and Adrian Molina, while Giacchino concentrated on the underscore that links one scene to the next. (Research) The filmmakers traveled again and again to Oaxaca, Guanajuato, and Mexico City to see and hear the holiday's sights and music firsthand. The result seeped into the entire score as an ensemble sound built on a mariachi framework. (Balance) Giacchino brought back the theme melodies introduced in each song and transformed them within the score, so that the songs and the underscore never drift apart but are woven into a single story.
II. Forbidden music
(The village) Miguel, a boy living in a small Mexican town, grew up in a family of shoemakers. Ever since an ancestor several generations back abandoned the family to chase music, even mentioning music has been taboo in this household. (Talent) Miguel secretly plays the guitar and hums songs, idolizing the legendary singer Ernesto de la Cruz. His room is filled with hidden photographs of his idol and old records. (Melody) In these scenes the score paints Miguel's inner longing with a short, buoyant string melody. This melody becomes Miguel's theme, returning many times later in different guises. (Contrast) Alongside it, heavy, resolute chords in the low register, standing for the family's ban, appear in alternation, foreshadowing in sound the tension between the boy's yearning and his family's prohibition.
A song for the scene in which Miguel freely unleashes the talent he has honed in secret, capturing the giddiness of a boy itching to break the taboo.
- The bouncing guitar rhythm of the opening lays bare the exuberance Miguel has been rehearsing in secret.
- The sudden key change midway through sounds as if it were painting a character's mind leaping, for an instant, in another direction.
- Since the film's release, the song has been performed often in live concerts and has become one of Coco's signature numbers.
III. The night of crossing into the afterlife
(Festival) On the night of the Day of the Dead, Miguel defies his family and sets out to enter the song contest in the town plaza. Here a lively mariachi-style number fills the air with festive excitement. (Clash) After a quarrel with his grandmother, Miguel sneaks the guitar out of de la Cruz's mausoleum and plays it, and in that instant he is cursed for stealing from the dead and crosses over into the Land of the Dead. (Landscape) The Land of the Dead is drawn as a city stacked in layer upon layer of colored light, and the score layers percussion and woodwinds so that the place sounds mysterious and majestic, yet never frightening. (Encounter) Here Miguel meets Héctor, an unfamiliar skeleton in shabby clothes, and the two agree to trade what each of them needs as they set off in search of his idol, de la Cruz.
A song Miguel sings along to on his guitar while playing de la Cruz's old films in his attic hideaway, pouring the boy's longing for his idol into an upbeat tune.
- Miguel's voice and guitar overlap with de la Cruz's singing on the screen, letting us hear the heart of a boy singing along with his idol.
IV. Journeying with Héctor
(Companionship) Miguel and Héctor travel together across the Land of the Dead, forging an unexpected friendship. (Shadow) But Héctor carries a story he cannot tell, and it gradually emerges that his name is being forgotten in the world of the living. The score for this scene strips away the lavish festival sound, leaving only a single, unadorned guitar melody. (Clue) Confronted with old objects and photographs tied to de la Cruz, Miguel begins to sense that something differs from the story he thought he knew. (Variation) Here, unlike before, Miguel's theme leans into the minor as it flows, quietly signaling that his longing is wavering.
V. On the stage, a truth turned upside down
(The stage) In the scene of de la Cruz's dazzling theater performance, score and song reach their peak. A large orchestra, chorus, and firecracker-like percussion combine to inflate the idol's glamour to the fullest. (Crack) But behind that glamour Miguel confronts a decisive scene and faces the moment when everything he has believed begins to shake. This passage is better left unrevealed. (Contrast) A booming song aimed at the audience and a low string figure flowing quietly beneath it are set side by side, so that the music alone lets us feel that onstage and backstage are telling different stories. (Choice) From this moment on, Miguel must decide for himself what to protect and what to reclaim.
A grand version sung in the scene of de la Cruz's theater performance, in which the theme melody running through the whole film first emerges in full.
- With orchestra and chorus fully mobilized, this version shows that the spectacle itself is one layer of the story.
- If you listen knowing that the same melody will return later in an entirely different scoring and mood, the glamour of its first appearance strikes you anew.
- The song won Best Original Song at the 90th Academy Awards and remains a frequently cited example in the history of film music.
VI. Memory and return
(Return) Back in the land of the living, Miguel lays out before his family the truth that had been hidden all along and what he has learned. In this scene Miguel's theme returns to its original buoyant major key, but sounds again in a firmer, calmer arrangement. (Lullaby) In particular, one quiet song sung again here gently tells the whole family, and the audience as well, what it means to remember a person. (Merging) In the final scene the family embraces music once more, and the two melodies that had parted ways — the family's harmony and Miguel's theme — overlap into one. (Afterglow) The score that carries on through the end credits returns to vibrant festival rhythms, yet lets the quiet theme melody pass beneath them one more time, leaving a lingering resonance.
Sung again before the family at the story's close, this version shows how many different meanings the same melody heard earlier on the stage can hold.
- With the orchestra and chorus gone, leaving only a voice and a single guitar, the scoring seems to hint that the song's true home was never the stage.
- A harmonic progression that moves between major and minor creates a mood holding longing and tenderness at once.
- At the time of release, this reprise was the passage most often cited by audiences and critics alike as the film's emotional peak.
Playing again at the ending, this version brings the story to a close as family, festival, and Miguel's theme all overlap.
- The passage where several characters' theme melodies are played over one another shows musically that the strands of the story, which had flowed separately until now, have come together as one.
- The final climax, in which the mariachi ensemble and the orchestra blend together, sums up the sonic identity of the entire film.
Lesser-known stories
Early in production, Disney tried to trademark the phrase “Dia de los Muertos” but withdrew the application after fierce backlash from the Mexican American community and artists. Afterward, the filmmakers reportedly assembled a new cultural advisory team, including the cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, and reexamined the script, art, and music from top to bottom. When recording the score, rather than imitating the mariachi sound with synthesizers, the filmmakers reportedly brought in Mexico City musicians who actually play traditional instruments such as the guitarrón and the vihuela. This means the finished score contains more live playing than is widely known. The theme song “Remember Me” was rewritten several times under a design that called for arranging a single melody as a rousing stage number, a quiet lullaby, and a family harmony. This approach of making one melody carry the emotions of very different scenes was a strategy set in place from the very start of composition. The painter Frida Kahlo appears briefly in a scene where she rehearses her own performance in the Land of the Dead. It does not stand out in the overall flow, so it is easy to miss unless you watch closely.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Leading motive (leitmotif)
(Meaning) The German word Leitmotiv means 'leading (Leit) motif (Motiv).' The term came into wide use after the opera composer Richard Wagner attached a short melody to each character or object to guide the story. (In film and musical-theater music) A technique in which a single short melody is assigned to a particular character or emotion and brought back, slightly altered, each time that character appears or their feelings stir. It is much like always calling a friend by the same nickname — just as hearing the nickname tells you who is meant, hearing the melody lets you guess whose story it is.
Score (background music)
(In film and musical scores) Unlike a song with lyrics, this is orchestral music that flows behind the picture, painting in sound the mood of a scene and the feelings of its characters. Just as a cheering song plays in the background during gym class, it lets you know through music alone whether a moment is sad or thrilling, even when no one on screen says a word.
Mariachi
(In film and musical scores) The signature ensemble of Mexico, in which violins and trumpets blend with the guitarrón (a large bass guitar) and the vihuela (a small guitar) to produce a lively, vigorous sound. The music of Coco builds on this ensemble and adds an orchestra to capture a distinctly Mexican color.
Arranging (arrangement)
(Meaning) Pyeongok (編曲) means to weave (編) a piece (曲) anew. (In film and musical scores) The same melody can feel entirely different depending on which instruments play it and how. It is like a children's song you once sang with your classmates: played quietly on a single guitar, it sounds like a completely different piece. In Coco, a single theme returns again and again in new arrangements, from an exuberant fiesta version to a hushed lullaby.
Tonality (major and minor)
(In film and musical scores) Stack the same notes brightly and you get a major key (a bright feeling); stack them darkly and you get a minor key (a dark feeling). Simply slipping the same melody from major into minor can turn a cheerful song, in an instant, into a lonely one.
Reprise
(Meaning) The French word reprise comes from the sense of taking up again, of repeating. (In film and musical scores) A technique in which a song heard earlier is sung again late in the story, revealing how the situation or a character's heart has changed since then. The same song can carry an entirely different meaning when sung again at the end than it did the first time.