Joseph Shirley headshot by Lili Peper
While film composer Joseph Shirley’s career in Hollywood has been picking up a tremendous amount of steam over the past couple years, he’s been working in that field for over a decade, contributing to short films and acting as assistant to his friend and mentor Ludwig Göransson.
Now Shirley has taken over for Göransson as the main composer for the music in the third season of the live-action Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian. And today I was absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with him via Zoom about his work on the show, his score for last year’s The Book of Boba Fett, the new movie Creed III, and his love of the Star Wars franchise.
Watch Interview with "The Mandalorian" and "Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett" Composer Joseph Shirley:
Mike Celestino, Laughing Place: What was your relationship with Star Wars growing up?
Joseph Shirley: I was a major fan as a kid, for sure. I keep [Star Wars] action figures in the studio all the time– they sit at the top of my desk overlooking the work that I do, to make sure that it’s okay by their standards. [laughs] I would collect these little action figures as a kid. My folks would bring me to the flea market– I’m from Jackson, Mississippi, and there’s a flea market there, and there was this one lady who always had random old action figures, and I would immediately just track straight to her and see if she had any new ones, whenever we showed up, as the months went on. I was always crazy about getting the originals. I was [also] a big baseball-card collector back in the day, and as soon as I saw Star Wars, I was like, ‘I want all those action figures.’ But I really wanted the originals– probably my favorite one is C-3PO. I just thought it was so cool. But yeah, I watched Star Wars as a kid and just fell in love with it. It was just a mind-blowing story, mind-blowing world. The music drew me in so much, as it does for everybody– it’s some of the greatest stuff ever. I was just totally taken by it. That’s where my love for the Star Wars universe started, for sure.
LP: How did you get interested in and involved with composing music for film? Was John Williams a big influence on you early on?
Shirley: John Williams was definitely a big influence. When I first watched Star Wars, I didn’t know why I was feeling certain ways. When you’re that young, you don’t know why you feel a certain way, but as you grow older, for me it was like, ‘Oh my God, not only are the stories and the characters so strong, but it was the music.’ The music made you fall in love with this world so much, and added so much to the world-building of the whole idea, and the whole universe. I mean, it takes these weird aliens and robots and humanizes them in a certain way that you truly care for R2-D2. You truly care for this puppet on screen. That’s where the seed of me loving film music started, was watching Star Wars, and then similarly watching Rocky and just falling in love with those themes. As a kid, you just soak everything up. But I was always playing piano, always writing. I played more by ear than I did reading music, though I did take lessons all the way through college. I think I’ve gravitated more towards trying to write, because I loved playing by ear and trying to figure things out.
But when I was in high school, I was in a creative writing class– a poetry class- and the teacher was my aunt, actually, a brilliant English teacher, and she tasked us with making a school project. Somehow it related to the creative writing task at hand, but she allowed us to make a movie. We were dealing with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I wrote a musical that dealt with that story, with a bunch of songs. I had my friends come in and we recorded their vocals, just on the family computer at my house at the time. [laughs] It was really crappy, I’m sure, but it was a really fun experience to write this music and then go out with a camera and shoot it, and have my friends sing their parts on screen. So we made that as a class project, and it definitely opened my mind up to, ‘It is so fun to write music for a visual medium.’ I just fell in love with it, so I was constantly writing and composing, and went on to get my composition degree in New Orleans and continued to write. That was the track for me.
LP: You’ve also been credited as ‘score programmer’ on movies like Ryan Coogler's Black Panther and ‘music arranger’ on Christopher Nolan's Tenet. What do these roles mean and how do they contribute to the finished score for a movie?
Shirley: Well, I worked for Ludwig Göransson, who is a friend and my mentor, for a long time. Basically, he hired me on as an assistant when he was almost done with Creed. That was my first movie working for someone here in Hollywood. The ‘score programmer’ credit really was me assisting Ludwig [with] whatever he could potentially need, and also helping those projects get over the finish line– the technical aspects of it. When you’re making a film score, there’s a lot of work that goes into it with the orchestral sessions– any type of recording session, I was there with him helping out in any way he would need. Something like ‘music arranger,’ that was after several years of me being there with Ludwig and going through many different projects and TV shows with him. That would be the next step as a bit more of a creative [role] in my relationship with him, while still working for him. For [Tenet] and in similar cases, he would have written a theme, and I would take that theme, put it into a scene in certain ways, and then we’d go through a notes process– I’d get his feedback, and obviously after he was good with it we’d get feedback from the directors and producers. But yeah, as far as my years with Ludwig, it started out in a more technical standpoint and then it progressed over time to being a little bit more creative while working with him.
LP: Let's talk about The Book of Boba Fett. How did that come about for you as the main composer for the series and what was your initial approach to the project?
Shirley: It was a thrill, I’d say that. I was just so beside-myself excited. Ludwig wrote a great theme, we had some discussions– I had chats with him, and then we had a meeting with [Executive Producers] Jon [Favreau] and Dave [Filoni]. Those guys are just so trusting of their collaborators. They put a lot of trust in Ludwig, too, but luckily they trusted me with taking the reins as far as the underscore for that show. It was just such a joy, to be honest. I have always loved working with Jon and with Dave on these last couple seasons, and now Rick [Famuyiwa], and Robert Rodriguez on The Book of Boba Fett. These guys are so fun to work with, I have to say. But as far as the approach, Ludwig wrote a great theme, and then I took that and helped.
I did additional music on season two of The Mandalorian, so I was very much involved with that season, and when Boba Fett first showed up, that was a new sound that we gave to him. I was familiar with that material, and I took some of that stuff and I took Ludwig’s new main theme and used it in certain ways throughout [The Book of Boba Fett] to hopefully help clarify the timelines. It was so back-and-forth, like a present-day and a past– we were getting the whole backstory of him coming out of the Sarlacc Pit. There were multiple timelines to address, so we tried to address those musically in some way. I love getting under the hood on music theory and arrangement, and if Ludwig provides a theme that has that much to break down and play with, it’s extremely fun for me to find new ways to present that material, but hopefully still make it feel like it’s all part of the same texture and sound. I just had so much fun on that show.
LP: In The Book of Boba Fett’s finale, we got lyrics to the theme song over the end credits. Whose idea was that?
Shirley: It’s funny… how much can I divulge? [laughs] Ludwig’s original main theme did include lyrics, the first iteration. And then the idea was presented, ‘Well, why don’t we remove some of the lyrics and still have that choral throughline?’ That became essentially the theme for most of the season, and then just as a little surprise at the end we threw in the lyrics version. We were excited about it because it was such a little Easter Egg hidden into the end of the season just to spruce things up. Hopefully people noticed and had fun with it, but Ludwig definitely provided both of those versions– that’s him singing in there. [With] the underscore cues, there were times where he and I both were singing together, and then we obviously hired a baritone chorus– nine brilliant singers here in L.A.– to support and also to take lead in certain areas. The vocal element of that score really was something we were trying to highlight a little bit more.
LP: Now you're the main composer for The Mandalorian, one of the biggest pop-culture properties out there at the moment. What were your first thoughts about composing for this series?
Shirley: Just pure excitement– gratitude and excitement, and hope to add to this amazing and iconic series. [It’s] pure joy to be able to work with these guys– truly, Jon, Rick and Dave are just geniuses. It’s very apparent when working with them that they’re very smart and clever world-building type of artists, and just so creative with what they do. I was just stoked to be invited back into the family. I immediately started writing, had some early exploratory sessions with some new musicians to try to spice things up a little bit for season three. But having been there with Ludwig on season one and doing additional music on season two, it was almost just nice to get back on the bike and start riding again. It felt like a smooth transition to hop into The Mandalorian and reacquaint myself and reacquaint everyone working on the show with these themes, and try to dress them up in different clothes and find new arrangements– push the music a little bit further into the universe for this season.
LP: Season three of The Mandalorian is diving further into the mythology of Mandalore, but as we saw last week's it's also expanding to include the goings-on in other parts of the galaxy during this era. How has this season been both challenging and rewarding for you as a composer?
Shirley: That’s the tone that Jon and Dave so expertly crafted in The Mandalorian and with [The Book of] Boba Fett. The show kind of takes little left turns that inform and support the ‘A’ storyline in certain ways that [are] really unexpected at times. It takes the audience on a journey around the galaxy that further gives the show some variety and fun. The episode on Coruscant was just so cool, because that carries on and informs what is happening there, almost like the prequel trilogy. It’s dealing with times and places that inform other pieces of art that are part of this whole universe that we’re in. I just think it’s cool how it all supports each other. We can reference that, and we can support that in different ways. We can throw people off in certain ways. But I would say the challenging thing for this season was kind of the fun part.
This storyline– essentially at its heart, at least to me, and something that Jon illustrated in our first meeting– was that this season is about setting aside differences and working together. Without saying too much, it is about new characters setting aside their differences and working towards one common goal. And musically, what was fun was trying to find a way to unite different people from different quote-unquote religious backgrounds or mythologies– unite them musically in certain ways. There are times where we’re talking about the Mandalorian… this is season three… we need to play that Mandalorian theme. And one fun way I tried to utilize that was using that theme to unite different groups of Mandalorians. So as the season progresses, you’ll find that that theme comes back a little bit more, and by the end of it, I think it comes back in a really exciting way that people hopefully will appreciate and have fun with.
LP: ‘Chapter 19 – The Convert’ had some fun musical Easter Eggs that fans have been celebrating over the past week, like the inclusion of a carnival version of John Williams' "March of the Resistance" and a couple others. Can you tell me about the decision to adapt these familiar themes for this episode and the process of accomplishing that?
Shirley: It was actually really funny– it just became sort of a joke that we had fun with when we were making it. But basically, if we all went to Disneyland, you’ll hear really rousing and cheerful themes being played on the speakers as you’re walking into [the park], or onto a carnival ride or something like that. If you go to a legit fair– maybe not a Disney fair, but just your local carnival– a lot of the music that you would hear is played on organs, and a lot of times it would be of the American songbook. Here in the States it may be the National Anthem or ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’– those types of old American songbook themes. I pitched to Jon, ‘What if the Resistance theme was almost like hearing the National Anthem at a carnival? You would hear a funny arrangement of that.’ So I decided to take a stab at it, and luckily they thought it was pretty cute and fun. We did need to get that sort of thing vetted from a timeline standpoint– ‘Does this actually make sense?’ It seemed like it was a clever-enough fun idea to include in that sort of way. I think the internet is kind of funny– it’s a fun idea; we’re not trying to make a huge statement about what’s to come. It’s more-or-less a fun little device that we put in there just so that things feel connected. That was one of the tricks of that episode– to make Coruscant feel like a safe place, because at that point in time, it is. It should feel like everybody’s having a good time. The war is over; things are good. They’re walking down the street eating ice cream at a carnival, so they may hear something that’s a little bit more cheerful and hopefully in that sort of setting.
LP: We’ve talked about building upon and expanding what both Williams and Göransson have contributed to the Star Wars franchise, but what about making the music your own? How do you make your mark on the score without deviating too far from the established path?
Shirley: Well, as a musician, I think any time you sit down at the piano [and] play anything, it will be– in a certain, essential form– something that is from you. In a lot of ways, there are so many great themes that Ludwig and obviously John Williams have provided for this universe that even placing them in certain ways throughout the show would be in essence an idea that I would have of how to use this theme– in what way, in what arrangement. And that is the fun part. That is sometimes the very challenging part, but also the fun part: figuring out how these puzzle pieces fit together. But it’s providing new themes, too. There are new characters that pop up this season that I’ve addressed in certain musical ways. They’ve got their own texture, they have their own flavor of the sound that fits within this world of The Mandalorian.
It feels a little bit fresh and new, and how those different themes come together by the end of this season was a fun task, really, because these are iconic musical themes now that I’ve been granted the permission to arrange and orchestrate in certain ways. That is always so much fun. For instance, I think the last cue of episode two of this season [‘The Mines of Mandalore’], I was quoting the Mandalorian theme but I had fun with taking the pieces and layering them on top of each other. Essentially, you’ll hear in the strings that I’m quoting the opening recorder while you hear the melody on top of it. It became a new flavor of that sound that harkens back to some of the sounds of season one, but it feels like a ceremonial, religious, very reverent moment there by the end of the episode. I just have fun trying to put my own spin on these building blocks that are already there, and that was a particularly fun one that I had a good time with.
LP: Another big project for you recently was Michael B. Jordan's Creed III, which released earlier this month. Tell me about that score. Would you consider this your biggest accomplishment on the big screen so far?
Shirley: Definitely. I mean, I’ve worked on other movies, and there are movies that I was assisting Ludwig on that certainly made huge cultural impacts. But this was definitely one that I was very excited about, and it’s just been so nice to watch the reaction and what people resonate with. Michael put his own stamp on this movie in such a way that it makes the whole [Rocky] franchise– even me, being a fan and knowing these movies really intimately, and knowing Creed and Creed II as well– he put his own spin on it, so we found ways to make it feel fresh musically, and make it feel new, while still honoring what has come before. But that was a wild experience– showing up to screenings and speaking with people from the studio, and then having so much time with a director like Michael was just such a treat. I was definitely in a position that I had never been in before, and just had an absolute ball with it. It was so cool. I was working on it for the better part of last year– all the iterations that we went through, and all the things we experimented with. I think we landed on a sound that really worked for that movie and gave it a bit of a new flavor, while still honoring what Ludwig did and obviously what Bill Conti did originally. Yeah, it was awesome. It was a lot of fun.
New episodes of The Mandalorian are released Wednesdays via Disney+, and The Book of Boba Fett is available to stream there as well. Creed III is currently playing in theaters.