Released January 27, 2014 Genre Pop, EDM Label WaterTower | Format Music download Length 2:43 | |
Writer(s) Shawn Patterson, Jo Li, The Lonely Island | ||
"Everything Is Awesome" is the theme song to the 2014 Warner Bros. Pictures film The Lego Movie. It was written by Shawn Patterson, Jo Li, and The Lonely Island. The single and pop version featured in the end credits of the movie was produced by Mark Mothersbaugh and performed by Tegan and Sara in collaboration with The Lonely Island.
Contents
- Production
- Music video
- Commercial performance
- Critical reception
- Oscars performance
- Awards and nominations
- Appearances in other media
- References
The version of "Everything Is Awesome" featured in The Lego Movie scene, official trailer, TV spots, video game, and featurette was produced by Bartholomew and performed by Bartholomew and Lisa Harriton under the name Jo Li.
A third version appears in The Lego Batman Movie, performed by Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine.
On January 26, 2014, the song received its first US radio airplay via Anything Anything with Rich Russo on WXPK-FM, WRAT-FM and WDHA-FM.
Production
Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara said in a Billboard interview:
We want to be a "serious" musical band, while also being humorous people, but this was so adorable, and the movie looked great, and the opportunity to do something with Mark Mothersbaugh and the Lonely Island ... it was sort of a no-brainer, and it's turned out to be this really cool moment. We feel like it was a win-win.
In an interview to Fox News, Mark Mothersbaugh says the song "was supposed to be like mind control early in the film. It's totally irritating, this kind of mindless mantra to get people up and working."
Music video
The music video features Lego versions of Tegan and Sara as well as The Lonely Island's Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone. Parts of the video were made using brickfilming.
Commercial performance
"Everything is Awesome" debuted at No. 7 on the Dance/Electronic Songs chart, with 34,000 downloads in its first week (Nielsen SoundScan) and 11 on the Irish Charts. It also charted 35 on the Canadian Hot 100. The song charted 17 on the UK Charts and charted 3 on the UK Indie. In the US Billboard Hot 100, the song charted 57. As of June 2014, the single had sold 418,000 copies in the United States.
Critical reception
International Business Times described the song as a parody of creeping fascism, saying that the song "seems little more than an infectiously catchy parody of watered-down radio pop, right down to the faux-dubstep breakdown. There’s a lot more happening under the surface, however."
Oscars performance
As one of the songs nominated for Best Original Song at the 2015 Oscars, "Everything is Awesome" was performed as a large-scale musical number featuring not only Tegan and Sara and The Lonely Island, but also on-stage appearances by Mothersbaugh (paying homage to his 1970s group Devo by wearing a LEGO version of the distinctive Devo energy dome), DJ Questlove, and comic actor Will Arnett dressed as Batman (in the film, Arnett provides the voice of Batman and sings the mocking heavy metal composition "Untitled Self Portrait", an excerpt of which was incorporated into the "Everything Is Awesome" performance). According to LEGO Movie co-director Christopher Miller, for this on-stage appearance, Arnett wore the Batman costume originally worn by Val Kilmer in the 1995 film Batman Forever. Arnett also lip-synced to the song on the Reality TV Show Lip Sync Battle, while dressed as Emmet, the character voiced by Chris Pratt in The Lego Movie.