Steps Previews JENNIE’s Someone to Hold With an Animated Lyric Video

Netflix Tudum published an animated lyric video for JENNIE’s Someone to Hold on November 9, ahead of the animated feature Steps. Netflix describes the song as her first contribution to an animated film. Melon lists the Netflix Music single separately, with a November 6 release. The film itself arrives on November 20. The three dates explain what has actually changed this week. The song was already available as a track. The new material is an animated preview that connects it to the Cinderella retelling.

Four songs and an original score

The Netflix Music soundtrack listing on Apple Music is dated November 20 and has 47 tracks. It opens with JENNIE’s song, followed by EMEI, Rose Gray and Amanda Seyfried. The single’s listing identifies Justin Tranter as the writer of the song. The release has two ways to put the music in front of people. Someone arriving through JENNIE can hear a complete song before seeing the film. Someone coming to the soundtrack from the film can find the songs together with the instrumental material.

Rose Gray performs Meet Me on the Dance Floor and Seyfried sings Smile and a Song. EMEI contributes a number about being overlooked, a feeling she connects to Lilith. Kris Bowers composed the score. Netflix says the score was recorded at Abbey Road Studios. The distinction between a song and a score matters for an animated film built around a story people know by heart. The score can establish how familiar the kingdom feels. A song has time to put a feeling in words and let it stay there.

Among the score titles on the album are Welcome to Alouette and Sisters. The track list puts a place and a relationship next to each other. That is a compact description of what the score has to do in a film like this. It needs to make the kingdom legible when the characters move through it and change register when the adventure comes down to a conversation between members of the same family.

Cinderella is still in the story

Ali Wong voices Lilith and Stephanie Hsu plays Margot, with Amanda Seyfried as Cinderella and Bette Midler as the Fairy Godmother. Lilith takes the Fairy Godmother’s wand and interrupts the royal ball with Margot. Cinderella becomes Lilith’s ally once the kingdom is in trouble. The switch in viewpoint changes what the wand can do for the story. It is usually the way Cinderella gets a chance to go somewhere she has been excluded from. Here the trouble starts when another person gets hold of it and acts on a grievance of her own.

Director Alyce Tzue says she wanted to move the focus to the Asian sisters and ask why they had been left out of the magic. The trailer feature identifies Daniel Radcliffe as the Prince and Nikki Glaser as Priscilla. The casting and the story premise can coexist with a glass slipper and a royal ball. Those elements are familiar enough to orient the viewer. What changes is whose experience gives the action a reason to continue after the event most versions spend their time building toward.

In announcing Seyfried’s casting in May, Tzue said she wanted a heroine with flaws and ways of coping with them. That makes Cinderella a character whose choices still matter even after the story changes hands. Lilith needs someone to act with once the royal ball goes wrong, and that gives the familiar heroine a reason to appear beyond her place in the original romance.

The animation team behind Steps

Alyce Tzue and John Ripa directed the film, and Netflix says its teams in Sydney and Vancouver handled the animation. Amy Poehler, Jane Hartwell and Kim Lessing are the producers. Tzue previously won the animation gold medal at the 2015 Student Academy Awards for Soar. Netflix identifies Steps as a project for its Vancouver studio, whose team previously contributed to Leo. Those credits matter because the lyric video is only one way into a feature made by many departments. The film’s official trailer gives a separate look at the voice ensemble and the adventure. The November 9 feature has the animated video for JENNIE’s song.