Tydirium

@Michael G. It's becoming more and more apparent that—the more that Disney gets involved in oversight of the production of them—these live-action shows are being made primarily for brand slave/consoomer normies, the kind of people who love to tell you they're a "Star Wars fan," and who have a ton of Star Wars Funko Pops on their shelf behind them, and maybe even attend Star Wars Celebration events or other conventions—but at the end of the day, don't know basic facts about the lore, mislabel major musical themes/motifs, etc. Anyone who actually cares about maintaining a high level of internal consistency and overall quality of the franchise, is gradually being branded as a "hater," as someone who just can't be pleased—even though we have been plenty pleased by a lot of past Star Wars content. In some ways it feels like they're trying to rewrite history, in order to excuse a massive decline in quality and allow them to be downright lazy when it comes to production, canon continuity, etc. Either way, at this point, there are just way too many cooks in the kitchen over at Lucasfilm; Mando seasons 1 and 2 were pretty great, but I think part of the reason for that was because Disney wasn't as involved. Once they realized they had a huge hit on their hands with Grogu, all they saw were $$$, and they quickly jumped in to take control of all the shows going forward. Hence one reason why Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi are (in my opinion) so bad. Remember, Mando S2 was already written and starting to film by the time Disney realized that Mando was a huge hit, so S2 was largely untainted by them. But by the time of BOBF, they had announced a gazillion shows, and it became clear they were now going to be micromanaging everything. At this point, if you want good Star Wars, I feel like the place to find it is in the video games and animated shows. These manage to feel like Star Wars, with music that feels more traditional, and seem to be made by people who actually know what they're doing and who still care about the franchise. And because Disney doesn't seem to view animated shows as being as big of a deal as live-action shows, Disney thankfully doesn't seem to care so much about imposing their vision on the animated stuff. Which is great for the rest of us. But unless something really changes, I'm on the verge of giving up hope for great live-action SW content these days. Missed this; thank you! It's just sad, because he's had a long career of mostly doing behind-the-scenes work. But it's a great career and resume nonetheless, and if anyone deserved to get to be in the limelight and score a major Star Wars show in a John-Williams-esque style, in my opinion it was him. Natalie Holt is young, and relatively inexperienced in comparison; she's still got decades ahead of her to hit it big with a major film or show like this. There was no reason she couldn't have instead scored a different SW show, someday down the road. (Of course, this assumes that Ross would want/enjoy top composer billing on one of these shows; I guess it's possible he wouldn't, for whatever reason. But the point is, he deserves it.)

Heck, I hope to God that William Ross doesn't read the Tweets. Imagine writing so much music for a show like this, and yet seemingly everyone is praising a different composer for stuff you wrote... Ross should be getting way more credit than he is. Why is Holt getting virtually all the interviews? Where are the Ross interviews? Hardly anyone seems interested in actually highlighting him and his work for this; it's like he's just some guy whose name just happens to show up in the show's end credits and on a few tracks on the OST.

FYI, Apple Music incorrectly only lists Natalie Holt as the composer for "Dark Side Assault"; it should be Natalie Holt & John Williams (as in "Hangar Escape" and "No Further Use"), as she also uses his Obi-Wan theme in that track at 1:09.

Assuming this is her Obi theme at 0:41?

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but Apple Music interestingly lists John Williams as the sole composer of "The Journey Begins." Did JW write this cue himself, and Ross recorded it (like "End Credit")?

"First Rescue" is a great cue. Still puzzled by the title, though. Is it possible it was originally meant for the rooftop chase scene? Its placement on the album could seem to indicate. And as if there was any doubt, all the legacy themes referenced in the last episode were handled by Ross, not Holt.

Man, I just realized this soundtrack is less than an hour and a half long. I can't believe this. For Bad Batch, we got two volumes, and each one was two hours long.

Interesting. Tim Burden is pretty legit.

Is there any Holt music on the album that wasn't even in the show?

I thought so too, but now I'm not sure. The interview where I thought she was talking about two volumes for Kenobi, it was actually about Loki. Still doesn't make sense why this particular show would get one album, considering all the other recent shows' albums.

I'm struggling to understand why "First Rescue" refers to the rescue from Fortress Inquisitorius; wouldn't that be the second rescue? I thought the first rescue was when Obi-Wan rescued Leia from Daiyu a couple episodes earlier...

What's the official explanation for only offering one volume, anyways? Or for not offering way more music than this, in general? It's a digital-only release, so it's not like they had to worry about fitting it on CD. It just sort of blows my mind that a few mere months ago, when volume 1 of Boba Fett dropped, we got practically all the highlights thus far except for the catchy train conductor droid music—which was then rectified when it was released as a bonus track on volume 2. Why should a random show about Boba Fett hanging out on Tatooine get better/more soundtrack releases than the "Episode 3.5" show that features Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader? It makes no sense. Compared to this album, we were apparently really spoiled with what they gave us for Mando and Boba Fett. Heck, even season 1 of Bad Batch got two volumes...

Wait a minute… What about episode 3? Where’s the big Ross cue that covers Vader/Obi-Wan dueling, Tala/Leia running through the tunnels, and Reva searching for Leia??? Does this album really not include the music for when Obi-Wan and Vader first meet/duel again, after ten years?! I should note that this was also the first major cue that we figured out was Ross, aside from the standard variations on the Obi-Wan theme.

It sounds more like Deborah Chow was just too lazy to check whether it was fine to use his themes. That quote makes it sound like she just assumed they might not be allowed to use them.

But what they did in the franchise was still great... Also, you're assuming that "what they felt was best" would have been something other than maintaining thematic consistency—almost as though it were a chore for them to write in that style, and not something they wanted to do/felt would be good for the franchise.