The KATSEYE member's take on the 1987 classic drops the same weekend the group makes its Saturday Night Live musical debut on the season 52 premiere.
Sophia Laforteza's got a cover on a major studio soundtrack, and the timing couldn't be busier for her.
The KATSEYE member performs "Never Tear Us Apart," the INXS song from 1987, for DreamWorks Animation's Forgotten Island. Her version sits on the film's official soundtrack, which came out on September 18, a week ahead of the movie's September 25 theatrical release. Mike Elizondo produced the track, with Sophia handling both lead and background vocals. It's streaming everywhere you'd expect, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, TIDAL, plus a listening link through Back Lot Music.
She's not the only Filipino or Filipino American act on this thing. BINI shows up with "A Parallel World," SB19 delivers "Mga Kababayan," and H.E.R. And Liza Soberano, who voice the film's two leads, close things out with the end-title song "BRB." That's a soundtrack leaning hard into representation, and it tracks with the film itself.
Forgotten Island follows two lifelong friends, Jo and Raissa, voiced by H.E.R. And Liza, who fall into a world pulled straight from the stories their Filipino families used to tell them. The stakes are simple and a little heartbreaking: get home before they forget each other entirely. Composer Nathan Matthew David wrote the original score, and Lea Salonga appears across several of those cues, which is the kind of casting detail that'll get noticed by anyone who grew up on her voice.
As for Sophia, picking a nearly four-decade-old rock song for an animated family film is an interesting call. "Never Tear Us Apart" isn't the obvious choice for a DreamWorks tie-in, but soundtracks for these movies have leaned into left-field covers before, and it gives her a chance to show range outside the group's usual pop lane.
And the timing lines up with something bigger for KATSEYE as a unit. The group was booked to make its debut as musical guest on Saturday Night Live's season 52 premiere the same night the soundtrack news broke. Two big visibility moments, one weekend, for a group that's been building momentum through exactly this kind of cross-platform push, film tie-ins, streaming syncs, late-night television.
Whether "Never Tear Us Apart" becomes a talking point on its own or stays a soundtrack deep cut probably depends on how Forgotten Island performs at the box office over its opening weeks. For now it's out there, alongside BINI, SB19 and the film's own end-title track, part of a soundtrack that's clearly trying to say something about who gets to tell these stories and who gets to sing them.
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