Diksha Sundriyal
In Prime Video’s ‘The Idea of You,’ the life of a 40-year-old art dealer and single mother changes completely after she meets a singer from a popular boy band called August Moon. The attraction between them is palpable, and both of them want to explore the possibility of a relationship, but there is a catch. The singer is 24 years old and comes with the baggage of constant media scrutiny. His fame and popularity create all sorts of challenges for the couple. Because the band is such an important presence in the movie, we see them perform a couple of times. What’s interesting is that all of the songs in the movie have been credited to them.
August Moon is Real on Paper
August Moon is a fictional band created by Robinne Lee for her novel, ‘The Idea of You,’ on which the Anne Hathaway movie is based. The band has five members: Hayes, Adrian, Oliver, Simon, and Rory, with Hayes being at the front and center. The massive fandom of the band is called Moonheads. For the movie, a fake-real band was created with original songs.
When it came to bringing the fictional band alive on the screen, the filmmakers looked towards some of the most popular boy bands of recent times. One Direction was certainly among them, but they were also heavily influenced by BTS, especially in terms of choreography. The actors who were to portray the band members were put through a boy-band boot camp, much like what happens in real life, and were given choreography lessons, while actor Nicholas Galitzine, who plays Hayes, brushed up on his singing. The actor, who has previously displayed his singing chops in Camilla Cabello’s ‘Cinderella,’ is the only band member who actually sings in the film.
To create the album for August Moon, Frankie Pine, who previously worked on the Emmy-nominated album of ‘Daisy Jones and the Six’, was brought on board. She wanted to steer clear of the “cheesy pop music” that boy bands are often associated with but was fully aware that August Moon had to feel like one. Carl Folk and Savan Kotecha, who have worked with the likes of One Direction in the past, joined the team to pen the songs.
Kotecha revealed that while creating the album, they treated it like the complete journey of the boy band, something that doesn’t appear in the movie. They wanted the audience to see that transition from the songs of their early days to the progression to the current day. So, they started with ‘I Got You,’ which Kotecha called “something sweeter and vanilla and younger,” and then upped the tempo with ‘Taste,’ and got a grittier sound in ‘Guard Down.’ Because the movie also shows Hayes eventually carving his own path as a solo artist, they wanted it to reflect in his songs, and so, ‘Dance Before We Walk’ was woven out of a much different string.
Kotecha said they wanted the whole thing to feel as real as possible, and they succeeded. In the film’s marketing, August Moon was presented and marketed like a real-life band. Singles were released on Spotify before the film’s release, racking up its monthly listener count to more than 200,000. Moonheads, though not as huge as in the film, are now a real community, and you can become a part of them by listening to the songs of August Moon here.
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