It was 2009. If you weren't wearing a "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob" shirt, you were probably busy downloading songs from LimeWire or obsessing over the brooding, rain-soaked aesthetic of the Pacific Northwest. While the Twilight movies themselves often get a bad rap for their sparkly vampires and melodramatic dialogue, the music was always on a completely different level. Honestly, the soundtrack for New Moon didn't just accompany the movie; it defined a specific era of "sad girl" indie rock and paved the way for how blockbusters handle curated music today.
Alexandra Patsavas, the music supervisor who also worked her magic on The O.C. and Grey’s Anatomy, basically had a blank check for this sequel. She used it to assemble a roster of indie heavyweights that had no business being in a teen vampire flick. We’re talking Thom Yorke, Bon Iver, Death Cab for Cutie, and St. Vincent.
It was a weird, beautiful collision of mainstream teen culture and high-brow alternative music.
Why the New Moon Soundtrack Felt Different
Most sequels try to go bigger, louder, and more explosive. New Moon went the opposite way. It was quieter. It was lonelier. Because the plot focuses on Edward leaving Bella and her subsequent spiral into a deep, catatonic depression, the music had to carry that heavy emotional lifting. You can't just put a pop-punk track over a girl staring out a window for four months as the seasons change.
You need Lykke Li. You need the haunting, hollowed-out sound of "Possibility."
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The Death Cab for Cutie Lead
The lead single, "Meet Me on the Equinox," was written specifically for the film by Death Cab for Cutie. Ben Gibbard has mentioned in interviews that he wanted to capture the "celestial" feeling of the book without being too literal about vampires. It’s a driving, somewhat anxious track that sets the tone for the uncertainty of Bella and Edward's relationship. While it was the "radio hit," it’s arguably one of the most straightforward songs on an otherwise experimental tracklist.
That Famous "Months" Montage
If you ask anyone about the soundtrack for New Moon, they immediately think of the scene where Bella sits in a chair while the camera circles her to show time passing. The song playing is "Possibility" by Lykke Li. It is devastating. The lyrics—"Tell me when you hear my heart stop"—perfectly mirror the character's numbness. It’s a rare moment where a pop culture film allowed a scene to breathe for minutes at a time with nothing but a piano and a soulful, breaking voice.
The Thom Yorke Factor
Getting Thom Yorke to contribute an original song to a movie about teen werewolves was a massive flex. "Hearing Damage" is a glitchy, bass-heavy track that plays during the scene where the Cullens and the wolves are hunting Victoria. It doesn’t sound like "movie music." It sounds like an experimental Radiohead B-side. This inclusion gave the franchise a weird kind of "cool" factor that critics couldn't quite ignore. It signaled that the creators weren't just pandering to kids; they were curating a sophisticated palette.
A Tracklist That Doesn't Have a Skip
The flow of the album is surprisingly cohesive for a compilation.
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- The Killers contributed "A White Demon Love Song," a glam-rock adjacent track that feels like a fever dream.
- Bon Iver & St. Vincent teamed up for "Rosyln." This is arguably the most "Twilight-core" song in existence. It’s acoustic, hushed, and sounds like it was recorded in a damp cabin in the woods.
- Muse returned with "I Belong to You," though it was a remix specifically for the film. Stephenie Meyer is a famously massive Muse fan, so their inclusion was a given, but this track added a bit of theatrical, almost operatic flair to the mix.
- Sea Wolf gave us "The Violet Hour," which captured the folk-rock energy that was exploding in the late 2000s.
The Cultural Impact of the Soundtrack for New Moon
People forget how much these albums influenced the "indie" boom of the early 2010s. For many teenagers, the soundtrack for New Moon was their introduction to artists like Grizzly Bear or Editors. It served as a bridge. You came for the vampires, but you stayed for the complex, layered arrangements of "Slow Life."
The album actually debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. That’s wild for a soundtrack consisting almost entirely of indie rock. It sold 153,000 copies in its first week alone, which was a huge deal back when physical sales and digital downloads were the primary metrics. It proved that there was a massive market for "sad" music, a trend we still see today with artists like Phoebe Bridgers or Lana Del Rey.
Misconceptions About the Music
Some people think the soundtrack is just a collection of songs used in the background of the movie. That’s not quite right. Almost every artist on the album wrote their song specifically after watching a rough cut of the film or reading the script. This wasn't a "throwaway" licensing deal. This was a collaborative effort to build a specific sonic world.
Another misconception is that it’s all "mopey." While a lot of it is down-tempo, tracks like "Monsters" by Hurricane Bells or "Friends" by Band of Skulls bring a grittier, garage-rock energy that represents the Quileute pack and the "wolf" side of the story. It’s a balance of the ethereal and the primal.
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Analyzing the Score vs. the Soundtrack
While the "soundtrack" (the songs) gets all the glory, we have to talk about Alexandre Desplat. He took over scoring duties from Carter Burwell, who did the first film. Desplat is an Oscar winner, and his score for New Moon is much more classical and lush than the first movie's "Bellas Lullaby" vibes.
The "New Moon" theme is a recurring motif that feels heavy and weighted, like the grief Bella is carrying. Desplat used a lot of woodwinds and strings to create a sense of longing. If you listen to the score and the soundtrack back-to-back, you’ll notice they share a similar DNA—a sense of being lost in the fog.
How to Experience the Music Today
If you’re looking to revisit the soundtrack for New Moon, don't just put it on shuffle. The original CD tracklist was sequenced very intentionally to follow the emotional arc of the story.
- Listen on Vinyl if possible: The warm crackle of a record player suits the "woods" aesthetic of the album perfectly.
- Watch the "Possibility" scene again: Even if you find the movie cheesy, watch that scene with the sound turned up. It’s a masterclass in using music to convey a mental state.
- Check out the B-sides: There were several "bonus tracks" depending on which version of the CD you bought (iTunes, Target, etc.). Lupe Friel’s "Solar Midday" is a hidden gem that many people missed.
The legacy of the Twilight soundtracks is that they were better than they had any right to be. They were tastemakers. They took the "teen movie" genre and gave it a heartbeat that was sophisticated, moody, and genuinely artistic. Whether you're a fan of the Cullens or not, you can't deny that the soundtrack for New Moon is one of the most cohesive and influential alt-rock compilations of the last twenty years.
To truly appreciate the depth of this collection, find a rainy afternoon, put on some headphones, and start with "Rosyln." It’s the closest you can get to stepping into the Forks mist without actually traveling to Washington.
The next time you're building a playlist for a long drive or a quiet night in, look at the credits for these songs. You'll find that many of these artists went on to define the sound of the 2010s and 2020s. This album wasn't just a movie tie-in; it was a blueprint for the modern indie-folk movement.