The Suicide Squad (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack album for the film of the same name. The album was released on August 6, 2021, by Troll Court Entertainment and WaterTower Music. The album features several songs from different artists, which were personally selected by the film's director James Gunn, who has called the album his "curated mix tape".[1] A single for the soundtrack called "Rain" by Jessie Reyez and Grandson was released on June 22 as part of the soundtrack.[2] A separate film score album, titled The Suicide Squad (Score from the Original Picture Soundtrack), was also released by WaterTower Music on the same date with John Murphy as the composer, replacing Gunn's frequent collaborator Tyler Bates who was originally to be the film's composer.[3] A single for Murphy's score "So This Is The Famous Suicide Squad", was made available on July 8.[4]
Tyler Bates was originally pitched to be the film's composer, due to his frequent collaboration with director James Gunn.[5] During pre-production, Bates wrote music for Gunn to use on set as he had previously done for Gunn on the Guardians of the Galaxy films. However he left for unknown reasons and in May 2020, British composer John Murphy replaced Bates.[6][7] For the soundtrack, Gunn personally choose the songs that he would be introducing. Gunn picked "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash as the first one.[8][9] He also revealed that he also planned to use other songs, like "Modern Love" by David Bowie, but decided that they would not be used. He created a Spotify playlist containing several songs that he almost used in the film and named it "Not-In-The-Suicide-Squad playlist".[4] Shortly prior to the film's release, Gunn revealed that he used the songs that better fit in a scene by commenting: "I write all of the songs into the screenplay, and then those songs we play on set as we do the scenes".[10]
