Exploring Jennifer Lawrence’s eclectic music taste
It seems like only a short time ago that Jennifer Lawrence burst onto our screens. The actor began her career in the world of television, appearing in shows like Monk and Medium before landing her breakthrough film role in the 2010 thriller Winter’s Bone – marking the beginning of a dizzying career that saw her star in some of the biggest film franchises on the planet, including X-Men and the Hunger Games trilogy.
Shortly after appearing as Katniss Everdeen for the first time, Lawrence was invited to discuss all things music with Spin. It proved to be a very revealing conversation indeed, with the actor opening up about the first album she bought with her own money: “I think it was the first Spice Girls CD,” Lawrence recalled. “It was my everything. I would come home from school every day and play it as loud as I could. My room was right next to my brother’s, so it drove him nuts. Then he told me about this really cool trick that involved taking a pin and scraping the underside of the CD. I’ve never forgiven him for it. I don’t even give him Christmas presents.”
By the time Lawrence was 19, her early infatuation with girl power had blossomed into a passion for the great Joni Mitchell, whose 1970 album, Blue, saw the folk singer throw off the flowery image she’d been assigned by her male contemporaries. “I love Joni Mitchell,” Lawrence declared. “I heard Blue when I was 19 or 20 and I thought it was the most beautiful album in the world. She’s an interesting character. I hear she’s not very nice, which would be really fun to play.”
Lawrence’s music taste is nothing if not eclectic. Having revealed herself to be a fan of both ’90s girl groups and philosophical ’60s folk, the actor went on to confess that she’d developed a penchant for dubstep during the filming of Hunger Games: “Josh [Hutcherson] introduced me to dubstep, which I hadn’t even heard of before. He started playing Skrillex and Bassnectar. It made my brain short-circuit in this great way. I would’ve never thought that I’d like that, but I loved it.” That taste for churning LFOs and glitched-out drum samples makes Lawrence’s love for “timeless band” Mumford & Sons all the more surprising.
When it came to selecting the song she’d want to be played at her funeral, however, Lawrence was sensible enough to choose something a little more tender: “I had an idea,” she said of her choice, “But I can’t do it now because it was in Love Actually. There’s a funeral and they play [the Bay City Rollers’ version of] ‘Bye Bye Baby.’ Hopefully, by the time I die, nobody will remember Love Actually and they’ll be like, “Oh my God, what an original idea.”
You can check out a list of all the artists Lawrence mentioned during her interview below:
Jennifer Lawrence’s favourite artists:
- The Spice Girls
- Joni Mitchell
- The Beatles
- Queen
- Skrillex
- Bassnectar
- 98 Degrees
- Bay City Rollers
- The Black Keys
- Destiny’s Child
- Mumford & Sons
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