don't look up

the part

riley bina is a globally famous pop musician whose very public relationship dominates news coverage that should be about an approaching comet. the satire is not subtle and is not meant to be: the film's argument is that the attention economy will always prefer a break-up to an extinction event, and she is the instrument of that argument.

casting an actual pop star to play one is the obvious move and also the risky one, because the performance has to be recognisably a version of the thing while still being a performance. she plays riley as considerably less self-aware than herself, which is the correct choice and not an easy one.

just look up

the song exists twice: as a scene in the film, performed at a benefit concert, and as a soundtrack single released in december 2021. it opens as a ballad about a relationship and pivots into a direct instruction to the audience to listen to the scientists — the pivot being the joke, and the joke being that a pop song is the only format the film's world can hear a warning in.

where it sits in the career

december 2021, which is the same month she finished her season of the voice — she and cudi performed just look up on the finale the week before the film's netflix release. it is the last thing she did before wicked began shooting.

and it is the first grown-up film credit on the record. the earlier screen work is television and voice roles; this is an ensemble feature with leonardo dicaprio, jennifer lawrence, meryl streep and cate blanchett in it. two years later she was cast as glinda, and the through-line is not hard to trace.

how it was received

the film divided people sharply and her part of it did not. the performance was one of the few things reviewers agreed on across the split, which is a useful signal when a film is otherwise being argued about on political grounds rather than on craft.