"Love Lies Bleeding" Soundtrack Lyrics

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"Love Lies Bleeding (Original Score / Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)" – Album Guide to Tracks and Key Scenes

Overview

How do you score a queer crime-romance that’s half sweaty gym movie, half desert noir, half body-horror hallucination? Love Lies Bleeding answers with a split personality soundtrack: Clint Mansell’s muscular, 80s-inflected synth score on one side and a crate-digger’s run of queer club cuts, library oddities and vintage standards on the other.

The core score album, Love Lies Bleeding (Original Score), is all Mansell: throbbing bass arps, metallic percussion, rubbery synth leads and long cues like “Louville” and “Pain Is Weakness” that flex and strain like muscles under too much weight. Then there’s the broader OST configuration – A24’s 2xLP Love Lies Bleeding Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – which folds in tracks by Gina X Performance, Shiho Yabuki, Harald Grosskopf, Throbbing Gristle, Colourbox, Martin Rev and more, turning the film into a jukebox of queer-adjacent, underground and library music.

On screen, the split is clean: Mansell scores paranoia, obsession and violence; the needle-drops score sweat, sex and weirdness. Gym scenes thump with Nona Hendryx and Patrick Cowley, the Vegas competition pulses to Colourbox, and the nastiest body-horror beats ride on Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady,” which several critics single out as a brilliantly vile choice. Meanwhile, the score’s title track and closing cue “I Fucking Love You, You Idiot” bind Lou and Jackie’s relationship to one specific synth language, so every time those sounds return, you feel the story tightening around them.

Genre-wise, the soundtrack is a tangle of pulp synth score, Hi-NRG / disco and queer club music, industrial / noise, and New Age / ambient. The neon synths and arpeggios signal danger and desire; Hi-NRG and electro-disco tracks underline sex and performance; industrial and noise (especially “Hamburger Lady”) mark the film’s plunge into rot and brutality; Japanese ambient cuts by Shiho Yabuki turn steroid trips and late-night dread into something floaty and dissociated. It looks like retro needle-drop fan service from a distance, but the choices are surgical: each style maps cleanly onto a particular emotional register in Lou and Jackie’s spiral.

How It Was Made

Rose Glass’s film is a UK–US co-production from A24, Film4, Escape Plan and Lobo Films, set in 1989 New Mexico and built around gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) and bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian). The score credit goes to Clint Mansell, whose track record on Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain and Black Swan made him an obvious fit for something both heightened and psychologically gnarly. He delivers an electronic score that reviewers have described as “pulp-inflected, 80s synth,” full of lurking drones that suddenly lunge into chase music.

Music supervision is by Simon Astall, who stitches together the needle-drops: Gina X Performance’s art-disco, Kay Starr’s mid-century standard “Stars Fell on Alabama,” Patrick Cowley’s “Mutant Man,” library cuts from Extreme Music, Cavendish and Abaco, Japanese ambient from Shiho Yabuki, and cult industrial from Throbbing Gristle. One detailed song-by-song breakdown explicitly credits Mansell with the score and Astall with the song selections, and lines up the film’s key cues by timecode.

A24 Music released the digital score album in March 2024, and later pressed the expanded Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on double black vinyl: Side A/B for Mansell’s eight-score cues, Sides C/D for “selected songs from the film.” The tracklist pairs deep cuts like Grosskopf’s “1847 – Earth,” Yabuki’s “Tomoshibi” and “Energy Flow (Ki No Nagare),” and Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady” with marquee cues like “Louville” and “I Fucking Love You, You Idiot.”

Outside the film proper, the marketing leaned on Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy,” remixed for at least one trailer by Phoenician Order and used as a queer anthem hook over desert imagery and flashes of violence. That trailer cue never appears on the soundtrack albums, but it sets the expectation: this is going to be a story where queer desire sounds as big as the violence around it.

Tracks & Scenes

The list below is not a full tracklist; it focuses on placements that drive scenes or define the album’s character.

"1847 – Earth" — Harald Grosskopf
Where it plays: Used over the opening, this kosmische synth piece rides in with the first images of Lou’s world — the desert, the gym, the low-rent small-town edges. It plays non-diegetically, sitting on top of the sound design and giving the whole first stretch a slightly cosmic tilt rather than straight realism.
Why it matters: It immediately signals that Glass and Mansell want 70s/80s experimental electronics in the mix, not just genre-score synth. That one choice yanks the story into a more psychedelic, outsider music lineage, before Jackie even walks on screen.

"Transformation" — Nona Hendryx
Where it plays (≈ 00:10:00): A busy gym sequence. Lou supervises, corrects form, moves between machines; Jackie is introduced more clearly on the floor. The track blares diegetically from the gym speakers, mixing with clanking plates and breath. A woman interrupts Lou to complain about a blocked toilet, and the song keeps rolling as she trudges off to deal with it.
Why it matters: According to one scene-by-scene soundtrack guide, this is the first prominent song cue, and the title “Transformation” underlines the film’s obsession with bodies changing under pressure. It also roots the world firmly in queer, Black, post-disco lineage, not generic hair-metal gym music.

"Stars Fell on Alabama" — Kay Starr
Where it plays (≈ 00:16:00): Lou and Jackie linger at the gym after hours, the vibe suddenly softer. This 1950s vocal standard seeps in quietly from the background — diegetic but low in the mix — as Lou offers Jackie free steroids and their banter teeters on the edge of flirting.
Why it matters: The choice of an old, smoky ballad in a fluorescent gym is perversely romantic. It wraps their first real connection in a kind of borrowed nostalgia, as if the soundtrack knows they are doomed movie lovers long before they do.

"Mutant Man" — Patrick Cowley
Where it plays (≈ 00:18:00): Still at the gym, then spilling into sex. As Lou and Jackie finally hook up, Cowley’s synths surge in, turning the scene into a sweaty, hi-NRG dance track without a dance floor. The song plays as source music over speakers, but it’s mixed so loud it feels like non-diegetic score.
Why it matters: The title is on the nose, and the film knows it. With steroids already in play, “Mutant Man” hints that body modification and desire are about to fuse into something dangerous. It is also a straight line to queer club culture, which fits the movie’s genre DNA.

"Nice Mover" — Gina X Performance
Where it plays (≈ 00:21:00): In the kitchen, Lou and Jackie flirt, test each other’s limits, play at being domestic while clearly not built for it. The track’s icy German electro groove bridges that scene and the next, carrying on as Jackie works at Lou Sr.’s gun-range bar, a place that feels instantly more predatory.
Why it matters: The song is a cult classic of gender-bent, deadpan disco. Dropping it here cues the audience that Jackie’s “move” into Lou’s orbit and Lou Sr.’s world is stylish but risky, like dancing on a live wire.

"Kaddish" — Gina X Performance
Where it plays (≈ 00:27:00): Lou and Jackie talk about an upcoming trip, half-planning, half-fantasising about escape. “Kaddish” loops in from the speakers, wrapping their conversation in a chilly, ritualistic atmosphere.
Why it matters: The track’s title and sombre mood bring a hint of mourning into what should be a hopeful conversation. It foreshadows that this relationship will be shadowed by death — JJ’s, Daisy’s, or metaphorically their old selves.

"Ask Me to Dance Mr. Cowboy" — Universal Production Music / Marc Ferrari
Where it plays (≈ 00:56:00): At Lou Sr.’s gun range, a sequence built on swagger and menace. Country-bent library music crackles over the PA while Lou Sr. chats to a cop about JJ, pretending to be a straight-shooting businessman while the whole room reeks of crime and complicity.
Why it matters: The corny “cowboy” vibe is deliberate. It dresses the gun-range in the drag of wholesome Americana, even as the plot confirms this is a front for something rotten. The music is lying, which is exactly what Lou Sr. does.

"Bad Bad Man" — Extreme Music (David Rockower)
Where it plays (≈ 01:02:00): A crime scene. Police swarm over JJ’s death; the track kicks in and keeps running as the film segues into Jackie heading to a bodybuilding event. The cue is diegetic in the gun-range context but quickly feels like a commentary track as it rides over a transition.
Why it matters: Yes, the title winks at Lou Sr. and JJ. But more importantly, it links cops, crime and performance into one continuous beat. Everything in this town is a show put on for someone: the crime-scene theatre, the competition stage, the tough-guy routine.

"The Moon Is Blue" — Colourbox
Where it plays (≈ 01:05:00): Jackie’s big bodybuilding competition. Lou growls “fuckin’ get it” as Jackie steps onto the Vegas stage, and Colourbox’s dreamy 80s pop begins. It plays as explicit performance music, echoing around the venue while she poses and later unravels.
Why it matters: The song’s hazy romance clashes with Jackie’s raging, steroid-warped psyche. When her routine spills into hallucination and violence, the gap between the music’s mood and what she sees becomes part of the horror.

"Je rêve de danser" — library track (Paul Bonneau / Extreme Music)
Where it plays (≈ 01:27:00): Lou, armed and wired, enters her sister Beth’s house. Somewhere nearby, this light, French-flavoured dance tune plays from a speaker. She apologises to Beth while the music clinks along, unaware it is scoring a family on the verge of total collapse.
Why it matters: The disconnect is brutal: polite, almost kitschy music over a scene full of guilt and guns. It’s one of several places where a library track functions like a sick joke about how normalised violence has become in this world.

"Whisper" — Martin Rev
Where it plays (≈ 01:37:00): The final stretch. Lou pulls the truck over, discovers Daisy somehow still alive in the bed, and calmly strangles her before dumping the body. Rev’s minimalist synth piece unfurls over this and the end credits, cool and detached rather than mournful.
Why it matters: As one breakdown notes, this is the last song we hear. Its blank, drifting quality makes Lou’s final choice feel less like a twist and more like the logical endpoint of everything we’ve watched. Desire curdles into quiet brutality.

"Energy Flow (Ki No Nagare)" — Shiho Yabuki
Where it plays: Dropped into one of the film’s more trance-like passages, this Japanese ambient / New Age piece stretches over images of the desert and bodies in motion, turning everyday spaces into something slightly unreal. It plays non-diegetically, like a slow exhale over the chaos.
Why it matters: The cue widens the soundtrack’s palette and underlines how much of the film is about altered states — steroid highs, dissociation, the moment when adrenaline tips into hallucination.

"Tomoshibi" — Shiho Yabuki
Where it plays: Used more sparingly than “Energy Flow,” “Tomoshibi” surfaces as a textural bridge in quieter scenes, lending glassy synth tones to moments when characters are in transit or stuck between decisions.
Why it matters: On the vinyl OST it sits alongside the Grosskopf track and the main score cues, signalling that these Japanese electronic pieces are part of the film’s core sound, not incidental wallpaper.

"Hamburger Lady" — Throbbing Gristle
Where it plays: Mid-film, during one of the most disturbing sequences, as the violence and body horror around Lou Sr.’s operation spike. The track’s distorted voice and grinding electronics bleed into the images, making skin, blood and smoke feel toxic.
Why it matters: Several reviews single out this placement. Industrial cult classics rarely make it into mainstream thrillers; here the song’s infamous, nauseating mood mirrors the film’s interest in bodies pushed past their limits, emotionally and physically.

"Smalltown Boy" (remix) — Bronski Beat / Phoenician Order (trailer only)
Where it plays: In the main marketing trailers, especially the second A24 trailer, this re-worked version scores shots of Lou and Jackie’s relationship, the desert, guns and cars. It’s not in the film itself, but for many viewers it’s the first sound they associate with the title.
Why it matters: As a queer anthem about flight and violence, “Smalltown Boy” is thematically perfect. Using a remix in the trailer sets an expectation that the movie later fulfils with its own, more idiosyncratic musical choices.

"Louville" — Clint Mansell
Where it plays: The opening and recurring main score cue. Electronic atmospheres build into a tense workout pulse over early shots of the gym and Lou’s routine, then reappear whenever the story circles back to the Louville gun range and its orbit of debt, loyalty and danger.
Why it matters: One review of the score notes how “Louville” lurks before it erupts, coiling like the violence in the story. It’s effectively the film’s theme: whenever those synth figures come back, you know Lou’s world is about to close in.

"Turn Up the Heat" — Clint Mansell
Where it plays: Over training, driving and escalating confrontations. The cue layers pounding percussion and grinding synth patterns, often across montage where bodies strain, guns are handled, or plans are made and unmade at speed.
Why it matters: Critics have compared its cascading crashes to “showers of lava.” It’s the sound of the film tipping from thriller into something hotter and more unhinged, and it’s a highlight on the standalone score album.

"Pain Is Weakness" — Clint Mansell
Where it plays: Around some of the most intense sequences — an audio counterpart to the “Pain is weakness leaving the body” posters that line the gym. The track stretches over stalk-and-fight moments, its synths surging and receding like repeated waves of adrenaline.
Why it matters: An essay on 2024’s best scores calls this cue particularly “bracing and scary.” It literalises the film’s fixation on pain as currency: you can push through it, or it can break you, but either way it marks you.

"I Fucking Love You, You Idiot" — Clint Mansell
Where it plays: Near the end, shadowing the emotional peak that gives the cue its title line. After an explosion of violence and escape, Lou admits her feelings in the truck; the track rides the aftermath into something between triumph and doom.
Why it matters: As one score review points out, the piece emerges from “Pain Is Weakness” and reaches for resolution before plunging into darker territory again. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the film’s tone: romantic, but corrosive.

Notes & Trivia

• The film credits Mansell as composer and Simon Astall as music supervisor; detailed song articles confirm that split between score and needle-drops.
• A24’s double-vinyl edition is a hybrid: Side A/B is pure Mansell score, C/D is a curated subset of the songs, not every track heard in the film.
• The official A24 playlist on streaming platforms goes wider, mixing the score with Grosskopf, Yabuki, Throbbing Gristle and several library cues.
• “Hamburger Lady” is such an extreme needle-drop that multiple reviews mention it by name, framing it as a kind of horror-cred flex.
• The opening track “1847 – Earth” predates the film by decades and comes from Harald Grosskopf’s kosmische catalogue, but it fits the New Mexico desert eerily well.

Music–Story Links

The soundtrack splits its work between body and mind. Gym-floor cuts like “Transformation,” “Mutant Man,” “Nice Mover” and “Kaddish” all play from speakers in spaces where Lou and Jackie are literally changing their bodies or negotiating who has power in the room. In those scenes, music is part of the air — something you sweat to, flirt over, or try to ignore while you’re being sized up.

Mansell’s score, meanwhile, tends to arrive when the characters cross lines they cannot uncross. “Louville” and “Turn Up the Heat” are there when crimes are planned, carried out or discovered. “Pain Is Weakness” seems to answer the motivational poster on the wall by showing what happens when you actually believe that slogan and live by it.

The needle-drops also trace Jackie’s arc. At the Vegas competition, Colourbox’s “The Moon Is Blue” works like an anthem for the version of herself she thinks she’s becoming — glamorous, admired, in control. When the film cuts to noise and panic, the music becomes part of the disconnect: the groove says “showtime,” the images say “psychotic break.” Later, industrial terror from “Hamburger Lady” and the cold drift of “Whisper” map onto the final, pared-down violence of Lou’s decisions.

Even the library tracks function as character markers. Country-ish cues and cheeseball “Ask Me to Dance Mr. Cowboy” stuff stick to Lou Sr.’s domain, fake-wholesome and macho. Cute dinner-party music plays over gun-in-the-house scenes with Beth. By the end, when we finally get that score cue called “I Fucking Love You, You Idiot,” it feels less like a romantic payoff and more like the soundtrack acknowledging that love here has always been bound up with damage.

Reception & Quotes

Critics have been notably kind to the music. Film coverage pieces flag the “pulse-pounding” nature of the score and the way the songs deepen the film’s 80s desert-noir aesthetic rather than just decorating it.

“The erotic thriller features a pulse-pounding score composed by Clint Mansell, plus a host of songs that keep the tension simmering.”

— Radio Times, soundtrack feature

“The score is propulsive, pulsing with an unrelenting energy … Love Lies Bleeding demonstrates his diversity, as the timbre shifts to pulp-inflected, 80s synth.”

— a closer listen, album review

“At other times, Mansell’s original score is bracing and scary … an OST strong enough to join the year’s best original scores.”

— Loud & Clear, 2024 score roundup

One review notes the “judicious use of Throbbing Gristle’s deeply disquieting ‘Hamburger Lady,’ adding more 70s grime” to the film’s already gritty surface.

— The Wee Review, film review

Among soundtrack-focused outlets, the score album has been praised as a stand-alone electronic record, while broader film criticism often mentions specific song drops — especially the Colourbox competition cue and the Throbbing Gristle placement — as part of what makes the film’s tone so distinctive.

Interesting Facts

• The A24 vinyl art uses an original painting by Amanda Ba, leaning into the film’s bodybuilding imagery rather than classic poster art.
• The OST combines Grosskopf’s “1847 – Earth” and Yabuki’s pieces on the same disc as Mansell’s cues, effectively canonising them as part of the “official” sound world.
• Some viewers first met the film through the “Smalltown Boy” trailer remix and were surprised when that track never appears in the feature or on the albums.
• Several songs come from production-music libraries (Extreme Music, Cavendish, Abaco), but their placements are so specific that many viewers assumed they were bespoke tracks.
• A24 maintains an official streaming playlist that merges the score and songs, making it easier to reconstruct the full in-film sound than the LP alone.
• The score’s eight core cues total roughly 35–40 minutes, but Mansell’s writing dominates far more of the runtime than that, thanks to how often his textures underpin quieter scenes.
• Because the film is set in 1989, the music supervision leans heavily on tracks that either come from, or convincingly evoke, late-70s to late-80s underground scenes.
• The film’s slogan “Pain is weakness leaving the body” shows up both on gym posters and as a track title, which almost never happens this literally in genre cinema.

Technical Info

• Film title: Love Lies Bleeding
• Year: 2024
• Type: Romantic crime thriller / neo-noir with original score and compiled soundtrack
• Director: Rose Glass
• Score composer: Clint Mansell
• Music supervisor: Simon Astall
• Key score album: Love Lies Bleeding (Original Score) – digital release via A24 Music
• Expanded OST: Love Lies Bleeding Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – 2xLP (A24 Music), mixing score cues and selected songs
• Notable songs on OST/playlist (non-exhaustive): “1847 – Earth” (Harald Grosskopf), “Tomoshibi” & “Energy Flow (Ki No Nagare)” (Shiho Yabuki), “Transformation” & “Kaddish” & “Nice Mover” (Gina X Performance / Nona Hendryx), “Mutant Man” (Patrick Cowley), “The Moon Is Blue” (Colourbox), “Whisper” (Martin Rev), “Hamburger Lady” (Throbbing Gristle).
• Key score cues: “Louville,” “Turn Up the Heat,” “Love Lies Bleeding,” “Penalty = Prison,” “Family Business,” “Red Light,” “Pain Is Weakness,” “I Fucking Love You, You Idiot”.
• Release context: Film premiered at Sundance 2024; US theatrical release March 8, 2024 (A24), with the score album arriving digitally the same month.
• Labels / rights: Score published by A24 Music; many songs licensed from labels such as BMG, library catalogues (Extreme Music, Cavendish, Abaco) and independent rights-holders.
• Availability: Score streaming widely (Apple Music, Spotify etc.); double-vinyl OST sold via A24’s online shop and select record retailers.

Canonical Entities & Relations

Subject	Relation	Object
Rose Glass	directs	Love Lies Bleeding (film)
Rose Glass & Weronika Tofilska	write	Love Lies Bleeding (screenplay)
Clint Mansell	composes score for	Love Lies Bleeding (film)
Simon Astall	supervises music for	Love Lies Bleeding (film)
Love Lies Bleeding (Original Score)	is score album of	Love Lies Bleeding (film)
Love Lies Bleeding Original Motion Picture Soundtrack	is soundtrack for	Love Lies Bleeding (film)
A24 Music	releases	Love Lies Bleeding (Original Score)
A24 & Film4	produce	Love Lies Bleeding (film)
Kristen Stewart	plays	Lou (gym manager)
Katy O’Brian	plays	Jackie (bodybuilder)
Gina X Performance	perform	“Nice Mover”, “Kaddish” (songs used in film)
Harald Grosskopf	performs	“1847 – Earth” (opening song)
Shiho Yabuki	composes & performs	“Tomoshibi” and “Energy Flow (Ki No Nagare)”
Throbbing Gristle	perform	“Hamburger Lady” (industrial cue used in film)
Martin Rev	performs	“Whisper” (end-credits song)

Questions & Answers

Is there an official Love Lies Bleeding score album, or only the vinyl soundtrack?

Both exist. The digital album Love Lies Bleeding (Original Score) is pure Mansell; the A24 double-vinyl adds a selection of songs like “1847 – Earth,” “Tomoshibi,” “Hamburger Lady” and “Whisper.”

What is the opening song in Love Lies Bleeding?

The opening needle-drop is “1847 – Earth” by German electronic artist Harald Grosskopf, which plays non-diegetically over the early shots of Lou’s world.

Which track plays over Jackie’s bodybuilding competition?

The stage routine in Vegas is scored with “The Moon Is Blue” by Colourbox, playing as in-world performance music while Jackie poses and then unravels.

What is the disturbing industrial track people keep mentioning?

That’s “Hamburger Lady” by Throbbing Gristle, used during one of the film’s most unnerving sequences. It brings a 70s industrial-noise edge into the movie’s soundscape.

What song closes the film over the final drive and end credits?

The last song we hear is “Whisper” by Martin Rev, which plays over Lou’s final decision with Daisy and continues into the credits, giving the ending a cold, drifting feel.

Sources: Vague Visages, Radio Times, Film Music Reporter, a closer listen, Loud & Clear Reviews, A24 Music / A24 Shop, Spotify & Apple Music album pages, official credits and soundtrack listings.

November, 13th 2025

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