It’s here. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping has its first single, and Noah Kahan’s Draw You Out is as depressingly beautiful as this story deserves.
Kahan has been the fan favourite to lead the soundtrack since this film was announced two years ago, and as with the impeccable casting, they’ve given us exactly what we want. Nobody does soulful yearning like him, except Haymitch Abernathy. The sad singing man is singing in the sad man movie; this is the best news ever.
The album will be released on November 13th, a week before the movie hits cinemas worldwide. We now have titles for all 29 songs, but no official confirmation of any other featured artists. Back in 2014 Lorde took on a curator role for Mockingjay: Part 1, providing the lead single and co-ordinating big-name contributors for the rest of the soundtrack. Maybe Kahan has the same job here?
Of the singers whose names are being flung around, three likely candidates have direct connections to the 29-year-old. Hozier and Lizzy McAlpine both featured on 2024’s Stick Season (Forever), duetting on Northern Attitude and Call Your Mom, while Annabelle Dinda – an indie artist whose music has genuinely changed my life – spent the summer opening for his tour. Though Dinda’s biggest claim to fame is 2025’s The Hand, which went viral on TikTok earlier this year, her song Blunt Force and Bomb Dog also gained some traction online from a Hunger Games animatic.
Music databases including Genius have Hozier registered as the singer of No Destination, while McAlpine – who ruined our lives with her fourth album, Angel, just a couple of weeks ago – seems set to do it again with The Wheel.
Another huge artist could be closing the album. The 29th and final song on the tracklist is a live track called Alone – performed in Berlin in 2022. Legendary rock band The Cure released Alone – the lead single for their 2024 album, Songs of a Lost World – in 2024, however it first appeared on a 2022 tour which stopped off in Germany’s capital. Too much of a coincidence?
As the title suggests, the song has the exact kind of existentially miserable vibes we’ve come to expect for poor Haymitch. It’s a banger. It’s also seven minutes long, and heavily instrumental – perfect for when the credits roll and we have to come to terms with what we’ve just witnessed.
There is also a genuine possibility that this album features music from every leading lady in the Hunger Games series. First, the obvious one: McKenna Grace, playing Maysilee Donner – and her twin Merrilee – has a million monthly listeners on Spotify. Having made music for her own films before – she’s on the soundtracks of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, PAW Patrol, and Scream 7 – it’s entirely possible that she was asked, and lord knows she’d say yes.
Rachel Zegler’s Lucy Gray Baird haunts the narrative of the whole Hunger Games saga, and this film should be no exception. Zegler is all over The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ soundtrack, including a performance of funeral song The Old Therebefore, which will be reprised in Sunrise on the Reaping. (Spoilers! People die!) Will they use Zegler’s version? Maybe she’ll turn up elsewhere? Lucy Gray has the lungs of a Broadway star, the voice of an angel, and lore implications like nobody else; if that voice appears at all, there will be tears.
Finally, could Jennifer Lawrence make a musical appearance? The prevailing theory is that she will reprise her role as Katniss Everdeen in the film’s epilogue. But given the parallels between Haymitch’s story and her own, maybe she will be more involved than that. She sang a version of Deep in the Meadow at the end of Mockingjay: Part 2, which also featured on the original Hunger Games’ companion album. The District 12 lullaby is listed on the new soundtrack. Cinemas would absolutely erupt at Lawrence’s voice, let alone her face.
Noah Kahan has done this beautiful story justice. I couldn’t be more confident that everyone else will too. Bring the tissues.
Designed by Evelyn Brown
