The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Music from the Motion Picture) is the soundtrack album to the 2021 film of the same name, released on February 19, 2021, by Warner Records. The film is based on the life of singer Billie Holiday, and also from the book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari. Directed by Lee Daniels, it features Andra Day performing the titular character. The soundtrack featured several compilation of songs composed and performed by Day. She also wrote the original song "Tigress & Tweed" and had co-produced the album with Salaam Remi, and Raphael Saadiq and Warren Felder. Lynn Fainchtein and Daniels were the music supervisors.
The 13-song soundtrack album is composed mostly of western, contemporary classical, pop and soul music originated from the 1930s and late-1950s, reflecting on Billie Holiday's time period. It was recorded mostly live on sets and conceptualised in late-September 2019, even before the film's shooting began, the following month. The soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media at the 64th Grammy Awards, with the track "Tigress & Tweed" being nominated for Best Original Songs at the Golden Globe, Critics' Choice Movie Award and Black Reel award ceremonies in 2021.
The original score is composed by Kris Bowers. Bowers' score was released into a separate 12-track album titled The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Original Motion Picture Score) on February 26, 2021, by Lakeshore Records, which coincided with the film's streaming release on Hulu.
The songs were recorded live on sets, and mostly used period instruments from 1930s and 1950s to capture the essence of contemporary classical music. Salaam Remi co-produced the original songs with Day, with the film's director Lee Daniels and Lynn Fainchtein jointly supervised the music. Remi and Fainchtein, in an interview to Variety, had spoken about the production of the compiled tracks. For Remi, "it was an understanding of what the original arrangements were, and how they would have done them at that time, but also how they were playing out in the movie". Both wanted the music to be as authentic to the time period, though the layers of the music and the orchestration, are more like the pop of the '70s than the jazz of the '40s or '50s. Remi stated that "On a lot of Billie Holiday recordings, you can't always hear [the detail]. There might have been one mic going straight to vinyl. I had to augment because I was recording digital at the highest possible bit rate." All the tracks were composed prior to the film's shooting, in Miami, in September 2019. Day, had sung for most of the tracks in the film, whom Remi had claimed that she "had the vocal chops and was nailing it from the beginning".
Mark Isham, Craig Harris and Christopher Gunning were previously announced to compose for the score, until Kris Bowers, was approached by the makers and recording for the background score were completed by late-December 2020.
Prior to the soundtrack release, Day's cover versions of "All of Me" and "Strange Fruit" were released as digital singles on January 13 and 21, 2021, respectively. The original song "Tigress & Tweed" was released as the third track from the album on January 27. Day co-wrote the song with Raphael Saadiq, who also composed and produced the track. The track list for Music from the Motion Picture was first released on February 1, with pre-orders beginning on the same date through the Amazon.com website. Warner Records released the soundtrack digitally on February 19, followed by a physical release on March 19, and a vinyl edition being released on July 23. Original Motion Picture Score, which contains Kris Bowers' compositions for the film score was released on February 26, coinciding with the streaming release on Hulu.
Credits adapted from Allmusic.