Jennifer Lawrence has an unexpected Top 20 hit on her hands with her haunting rendition of The Hanging Tree from the The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1. She has already won an oscar, she is one of the most powerful celebrities in the world and now she can add just one more string to her bow. Is there anything she can’t do?
(To listen to this video in Creation 5, just tap here.)
The Hanging Tree, which appears on the movies official soundtrack, was arranged by John Newton and is currently sitting at Nº17 on the UK charts and at Nº8 on the UK’s midweek iTunes chart, despite the fact that it hasn’t even been released as a single yet! As we write this (November 29) it continues to climb the charts.
In this track her singing voice sounds like her speaking voice – its not a soaring vocal performance, but that’s exactly the point. “It shouldn’t sound like a professional,” said director Francis Lawrence. “It should sound like a real girl singing. So she did it. She did it all day. And she has a really cool sound to her voice. There’s kind of a raspy texture to it. So it was not terrible in the slightest.” Earlier this month, on the David Letterman Show, Jennifer had described her voice as a “tone deaf Amy Winehouse” and she was really anxious about having to perform the song, saying to the director that she would prefer Lorde to sing it.
“I knew she didn’t love the idea of singing, but I didn’t realize how nervous she was until when we started the first take, and she was in tears. Not totally broken down, but she was unhappy,” the director said in a recent interview. “She would have much rather we used somebody else’s voice. I think she said she wanted Lorde [who sings the movie’s theme song] to do it!”
