Labrinth, the British singer and songwriter whose ethereal vocals have served as Euphoria’s musical identity, will not feature in Season Three of the HBO hit, Rolling Stone has confirmed.
Hans Zimmer serves as sole composer, creating a lush, Western-inspired score that reveals itself over eight episodes. When the Oscar-winner’s involvement in Euphoria was first announced last summer, it was positioned as a musical collaboration between Zimmer and Labrinth.
Creator and executive producer Sam Levinson is tight-lipped about the split, which Labrinth posted about publicly on March 12, writing on social media, “I’m done with this industry. Fuck Columbia. Double fuck Euphoria. I’m out. Thank you and goodnight.” Asked to explain what happened, Levinson tells Rolling Stone, “I don’t know,” adding, “He’s an incredible collaborator and someone who really built the foundation of the sound of Euphoria.” (A rep for Labrinth declined to comment.)
Levinson is unambiguous, however, about why Zimmer was the right call, crediting the two-time Oscar-winner’s scores for their influence on his vision for the screen. “On Euphoria, each character’s storyline is like its own film in a way,” Levinson says.
The show jumps forward five years for its latest iteration, with the characters confronting adult (in every sense of the word) issues in their lives. “In general, I was less interested in needle drops and more interested in something that guided us through this world,” says Levinson. “They’re out of high school, so the pop roots of it have faded away. At the same time, because of how I imagined it visually, I wanted to lean into an old-fashioned Hollywood Western score.”
Zimmer, one of the most decorated and recognizable composers in Hollywood, has scored more than 150 films, including Interstellar and True Romance, which Levinson listened to as he was writing Season Three.
