Finn Wolfhard’s favourite movie soundtrack: “It’s wall-to-wall really cool”
They’re an annoyingly talented bunch, those Stranger Things kids. Or rather, grown-ups now, of course, but they were kids when it all kicked off back in 2016.
There’s Maya Hawke, who plays Robin and has a side career as a successful singer-songwriter. There’s Joe Keery, or Steve, who moonlights as a million-selling DJO. And there’s Finn Wolfhard, Mike, who also released his first solo album earlier this year.
Wolfhard might have made the most of his worldwide fame to push the music a bit, but this isn’t a new development; he was the singer, guitarist and songwriter for a band called Calpurnia as far back as 2017, the band releasing an EP called Scout and appearing in a music video for Weezer before splitting up less than two years later.
He then formed another group, The Aubreys, who released a couple of singles and then an album called Karaoke Alone in 2021, before he went solo a few years later with the album Happy Birthday, which landed back in June. It picked up very decent reviews, with many critics acknowledging the fact that the influences present on the record were obviously the product of someone with a strong knowledge and appreciation of artists like Elliot Smith and Daniel Johnston.
Wolfhard evidently has a deep understanding of music in general, and he’s certainly starred in the right show where soundtracks are concerned. Right from season one, Stranger Things featured musical moments that stopped you in your tracks, memorably using the string-laden Peter Gabriel cover of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ at the climactic point of the opening run. Season four also used Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ to repeated effect, leading to the ‘80s classic topping the charts once again.
Wolfhard referenced another famous soundtrack when talking about his own favourite pieces of on-screen music, saying: “Paul Thomas Anderson’s (1999 film) Magnolia has a soundtrack by Aimee Mann, but it’s Jon Brion who did the score, and he might be one of my favourite living composers. He’s a regular PTA collaborator (he also did Punch Drunk Love), and he’s amazing. Magnolia has such a grand score with these huge arrangements that are so beautiful and so lush and weird and really incredibly dramatic, but highly listenable at the same time.”
In a similar fashion to the use of Kate Bush’s song in Stranger Things, Mann’s music is pivotal to Magnolia; indeed, Anderson’s script was often directly influenced by her songs. One moment even features the ensemble cast, each breaking out into singing one as they go about their day.
Wolfhard added, “Aimee Mann does a bunch of songs for the movie, and the movie opens with her amazing cover of ‘One’, which is a Harry Nilsson song. It’s just so classic, so good. It’s perfect for the opening of the movie. But it just has these big grand cues and then also these great folk songs. It’s wall-to-wall, really cool.”
Now that Stranger Things has come to an end, Wolfhard is turning his attention to other projects, including an upcoming comedy about amateur small-town stuntmen called Crash Land, and an animated series named New-Gen that also features the voices of Luke Wilson and The Witcher’s Anya Chalotra. The final Stranger Things episode will be released on Netflix on January 1st, 2026, at 1am.
