OPE! Mixtape #50: The 2025 Golden Globe Music Winners

Welcome to 2025.

Welcome to OPE!, the weekly newsletter by writer and music journalist Brady Gerber. This is where I share my favorite (and new-to-me) songs and links, musings on life, and any other announcements. All typos are intentional.

Well, hello there. How are you?

Happy 2025. It’s good to be back. I hope y’all had a lovely end to the year. I hope you have much to look forward to in the new year.

Thank you to everyone who also checked in to make sure we’re OK. My area of Los Angeles is OK for now—we’re many miles inland and, as of this writing, away from the worst of the fires on the west side. But these winds are no joke, which is only making the fires worse. I sadly had a friend whose house burned down yesterday. Countless other homes are now gone too. This is heartbreaking no matter where this happens, and it’s especially surreal when the damage is so close to where you live and you now have to be ready to leave at any notice. These winds will remain strong for the rest of today; please keep LA in your thoughts throughout today.

Programming note: As of today, I added a new section to the paid section of this newsletter. Due to popular demand, each week, I’m highlighting the three most notable music industry news of the week. This is for all my fellow music nerds, current (or ex) music journalists, and anyone curious about the most important industry happenings that I often feel are being underreported, especially with all the journalist layoffs throughout the past few years. I hope y’all enjoy. Also, next week’s newsletter will go out on Tuesday, for reasons I will explain then.

But yes, the Golden Globes. I did not watch the show live, but I enjoyed Nikki Glaser’s opening monologue and saw most of the films that won. (You can check out the full list of winners here.) I’m not a big TV person, so I’m glad to know that Shogun and The Bear continue to be the only shows of 2024.

Aside from the designated “Musical or Comedy” categories that I don’t care about, the big music winners from Sunday were Emilia Perez’s “El Mal” (Best Song, Motion Picture) and the Challengers soundtrack (Best Score, Motion Picture).

Upon its initial release, I was lucky to see Emilia Perez in theatres in Los Angeles, and I hated it. I found it to be actively, aggressively bad. To be fair, I also have a love-hate relationship with most French cinema. I thought Anatomy of a Fall was the most overrated film of last year, yet I finally saw Beau Travail a few weeks ago and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen. It’s rare for me to think that a major French film is just OK. Emilia Perez is so distracting and all over the place that I can’t even over or underrate it.

Ironically, the music of this opera-based musical was the worst part of the movie. “El Mal” was the sole highlight, only because the specific scene is somewhat compelling within the context of the film. It’s the flashiest and shiniest moment. The Globes like shiny things. The song itself is just bad. It sounds like Nickleback trying to soundtrack a rap-rock Zoomer’s podcast intro music in choppy Spanish.

I’m happy at least for Zoe Saldana, who makes up for poor singing by being an excellent performer. I think she deserved her Globe. And this category’s competition wasn’t much to sing about either, so whatever.

As for Challengers: I have not seen the film in full yet. I’ve seen about 60% of it from watching other people’s airline screenings throughout all the flights I took last year. When I got to “that” scene that caused so much controversy among Twitter losers, I shook my head. If you think that scene is promiscuous and edgy, you need to leave your apartment.

But the soundtrack: It’s really great. It might be my favorite Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score yet. You don’t need to see the film to enjoy it, though I’m sure it helps. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

In terms of the other category nominees, shout out to former Yuck frontman Daniel Blumberg for his excellent score for The Brutalist (a movie I finally saw and have conflicting feelings about) and Volker Bertelmann’s pretty good score for Conclave.

So yeah, go Reznor and Ross.

But enough about all that. Here are this week’s links and songs.