Tina Kakadelis
On January 24th, Disney+ released a spiritual sequel of sorts to Pixar’s 1998 film, A Bug’s Life, titled A Real Bug’s Life. The original Pixar film is a sweet animated tale about the lengths a clumsy inventor ant will go in order to maintain peace on Ant Island and protect his fellow against against a mean gang of grasshoppers. As one can imagine, the animated film is not concerned with reality, but the new Disney+ series takes a magnifying glass to a whole world that exists around us that largely goes unseen.
A Real Bug’s Life is a joint production between Disney+ and National Geographic narrated by Awkwafina. The series takes viewers into nine different micro bug worlds around the world to give these creepy crawlers their moment in the spotlight. Most people have some sort of phobia or dislike for these small creatures without realizing their essential role in our ecosystems. A Real Bug’s Life is a family-friendly series with stars like a spider living in New York City looking for a home and a Costa Rican orchid bee’s first day working to make perfume.
Providing the soundtrack for this brand new world is Mark Mothersbaugh. Fellow 80s music lovers may recognize the name as the front man for DEVO. In more recent years, Mothersbaugh has become a composer of film, television, video games, and commercials. 90s children may not realize that he scored the entirety of Rugrats‘ thirteen year run and the subsequent three feature films. Mothersbaugh has over 250 composer credits that read like a greatest hits list of pop culture from the last forty years: Thor: Ragnarok, Our Flag Means Death, What We Do in the Shadows, Tiger King, The Lego Movie, Drop Dead Gorgeous, The Sims 2 video game, and the list keeps going on. On top of those contributions, Mothersbaugh is Grammy, BAFTA, and Emmy nominated composer, producer, designer and visual artist.
Now, Mothersbaugh has lent his talents to A Real Bug’s Life. For the series, he has created a soundtrack of 25 songs that will be released today on Hollywood Records. The full soundtrack is available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music. Film Obsessive has an exclusive preview of three selections from the soundtrack:
Track Listing for Mark Mothersbaugh’s A Real Bug’s Life Score:
1. Fly Breakfast
2. Pavement Ants
3. Perfect Home
4. Army Raid
5. Heaven Scent
6. As for the Bee
7. Bee Babies
8. First Flight
9. Work Is Done
10. Cockroach Skills
11. In His Sights
12. Lights Out
13. Helping Finger
14. Last of Monarchs
15. No Rival
16. Ant Lions
17. Looming Spider
18. Cockroach Intro
19. Fly’s Demise
20. Bromeliads
21. Elephant Attack
22. Best Star
23. Parting Gift
24. Bee Caught
25. Queen Bee
