For the closing song of The Last Showgirl, Andrew Wyatt and Lykke Li wrote “Beautiful This Way” with Miley Cyrus. In the Roadside Attractions film, Pamela Anderson plays a veteran showgirl confronted with her future when her show closes.
Though Cyrus is more than 25 years younger than Anderson, Wyatt felt her journey from child star to adult recording artist gave her a relevant perspective.
“It felt very much something that she could speak to because even though she’s so young, she still has all this experience and these layers to her voice,” Wyatt said during a conversation at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Film music showcase. “This is about people who’ve been through quite a lot of phases in their life.”
Given that the movie is about a female dancer and he was enlisting another female singer, Wyatt knew he could not reflect on their perspectives. But Wyatt had independently been having similar reflective conversations with his friend Li.
“We’ve worked together in so many different dimensions, been friends for so long, had conversations, ‘Hey, we’re not kids like when we first met,’” Wyatt said. “Life is in a totally different phase now so we used to talk about that.”
Li is in her 30s but could recognize she’s come far enough that her life is different now.
“I was obviously in the stage of life where we all get to where once we were young and now we are aging into something else,” Li said. “It’s not so much aging I find, also the melancholy, the time passing. I wanted to find the symbol for female beauty in a way. That’s when we came to the rose. A rose is very vital, romantic, but it also withers.”
For the actual sound of the song, Wyatt looked to musicians of the past.
“I wanted it all to sound a little bit like music from another time trying to hold on and be part of your life now,” Wyatt said. “I wanted it to have a little bit of a Patsy Cline thing or something with this. When I started thinking about Miley, and thought about the world this movie and the characters in the film, I started thinking this would be a good direction to go with the music.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
