Terence Blanchard

Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard's collaboration continues with Blanchard's score for Lee's romantic comedy She Hate Me. The film, which explores the complexities in the life of a recently fired biotech executive turned sperm-donor for lesbians -- who is also being framed for financial misdoings at his former company -- is a far cry from your standard rom-com fare, and Blanchard's score is very different than a typical soundtrack for a romantic comedy. Driven by piano and brass with some tasteful flourishes of strings, woodwinds, and guitars, Blanchard's pieces are by and large long and meditative instead of short and attention-getting. "She Hate Me" itself proceeds at a mellow pace, taking its time in fleshing out its laid-back motifs. Many of the other pieces are downright brooding, such as the darkly beautiful "Alex & Fatima," "Have You Met Lorna?," "You Are Frank Wills," and "Will o' the Wisp." However, Blanchard does include some tracks that nod to more typical comedy score fare: the painfully named "Snip" is appropriately bleak and whimsical, while "Bonin'" begins with some mischievous pizzicato strings. The lushness of many of the tracks borders on smooth jazz, although pieces like "Mafia" and "Dos Sperm," which has a droll start-and-stop rhythm, never become quite that predictable. Overall, She Hate Me may not be as challenging as Blanchard's other scores for Lee's films or his regular work (and the inclusion of Raul Midon's urban ballad "Adam 'n Eve 'n Eve" underscores the soundtrack's latent mainstream tendencies), but that's in relative terms. In its own right, the album is still an intriguing soundtrack, and works as pretty background music outside of its filmic context -- even if that isn't exactly what Lee and Blanchard intended for it. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide