What Happens When Hans Zimmer Gets Lazy

Hans Zimmer's dark jams were my theme music all through college. Before every finals season, my partner and I would cuddle up with our notebooks and dirty chais, ready to flick on the "Hans Zimmer" station on Pandora before launching into a 12-hour study marathon. Sometimes we'd stick to the Dark Knight years, but occasionally we'd listen to his ominous tones before the Batman. And I loved it all. So it pains me to say that Hans has gotten lazy lately. I don't doubt that the world of swelling minor chords might get monotonous after a while, but his latest theme song is just downright bad. Zimmer, along with his Magnificent Six, have been tasked with creating the soundtrack for The Amazing Spiderman 2 . The title track was just released, and features Pharrell (a member of the Six), Alicia Keys, and Kendrick Lamar. The song, which is titled "It's On Again," is supposed to be the theme for the entire soundtrack, and frankly, it's awful.

Apparently Hans Zimmer has fallen asleep at the wheel, because a collaboration between three talented artists sounds like a mashup made by a disco-and-guitars-obsessed teenager. The track starts with Lamar shout-rapping his hardest over the sound of painfully distorted guitar. At exactly 38 seconds, Alicia comes in, and then the song becomes a smooth-mixed R&B track backed by Pharrell's retro beats. It never really builds, Kendrick never comes back in, and it generally sounds like an intro from one song slapped on another. And this is supposed to be the cornerstone of a masterful Zimmer-led soundtrack?

The true loss is that, on their own, either part of this song could have been a great theme song for Spiderman. But since Hans decided to cram all of the big names into one track, we're left with Frankentheme.