Is there anything that Anya Taylor-Joy can’t do? In addition to being ascendant Hollywood royalty at the age of 25, the Queen’s Gambit and Last Night in Soho star is also apparently a very talented singer, although she hasn’t often embraced that particular skillset in screen roles to date. That looks to change in Edgar Wright’s upcoming psychological horror film being released at the end of October, as Taylor-Joy is portraying Sandie, a young singing starlet of 1960s London. And in advance of that premiere, a music video has just been released featuring Taylor-Joy performing her own downtempo version of Petula Clark’s classic 1964 hit “Downtown,” which you can watch below.
Scoff if you will, perhaps, at yet another downtempo, minor key rendition of a pop song being used to market a big Hollywood film—it’s a trend that has been a fixture of Hollywood trailers for a decade or more at this point, and Last Night in Soho is just the latest example. But be impressed by Taylor-Joy’s performance as well, as she more than demonstrates the necessary chops to handle Clark’s song and make it her own. The performance, meanwhile, is interspersed between shots of the orchestra in the recording process, and clips from the film, which begin to hint as the song goes on at the two timelines and psychological horror elements present in the story.
Last Night in Soho is scheduled to hit theaters on Oct. 29, 2021 and stars Taylor-Joy, Thomasin McKenzie, Matt Smith, Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg. Check out Taylor-Joy’s pipes in the video below while you wait for Wright’s latest.
