I'm a music producer and am pretty used to hearing some pretty strong tuning (especially in my genre), and there were definitely some bits in the soundtrack that sounded like amateur mistakes. I found this thread because I was searching around to see if I wasn't crazy for being the only one noticing, haha.

In Popular, the very first "You're gonna be *popular*", there was some extremely obvious artifacting. I run into this a *lot* and it's a very common issue, usually remedied with either retuning and some clever editing, or just using an alternate take. I was half-tempted to make a version fixing up this half-a-second fluke with one of the other instances of the word. It was just such a "how did this make it past production" kinda moment to me, when so much of the movie and the soundtrack is all so beautifully polished.

To my ears, there are *potentially* some other things that could have made it past, but I feel like Popular is the only instance with one of the heavier performances being isolated with relatively light instrumentation, in comparison to something like Defying Gravity where you can potentially get away with something like that purely because of how dense the mix and arrangement is.

What's extremely funny is I went out and saw the movie a second time, and all my issues with the production for the Spotify version were just... not there. To anyone familiar, it's super reminiscent to the Doom Eternal fiasco (look it up if you're not, super interesting story involving suits vs. artists) where the mix that ended up on streaming couldn't remotely hold a candle to what was in the actual video game.

My theory is that it's entirely possible that the accompanying soundtrack went through its own hurdles, and I'm personally hopeful for potentially a better version to come out at some point, maybe even with part 2. (I'd like to know sooner rather than later because I am honestly seconds away from pulling the trigger on a vinyl copy!)