"Me Before You" Soundtrack Lyrics

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"Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)" – Album Guide to Tracks and Key Scenes

Overview

What if a romance soundtrack had to argue for life as hard as the characters do on screen? Me Before You answers with a deliberately short, highly curated set of songs plus a separate Craig Armstrong score that together push every emotional beat just a little closer to the surface. The pop compilation is only nine tracks long, but each placement is tied to a clear story pivot: getting fired, taking the job, making a bucket list, the wedding, the holiday, the final trips to Switzerland and Paris.

The film follows Louisa “Lou” Clark, hired to care for Will Traynor after a motorcycle accident leaves him quadriplegic. Their relationship moves from prickly to intimate as she tries to convince him that life is still worth living. The soundtrack mirrors that arc. Early cues lean on quiet melancholy and awkward optimism; mid-film cues go brighter and more rhythmic as Lou and Will push each other into new experiences; the final stretch drops back into ballads that sit right on the line between comfort and grief.

Two albums carry this: Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), a song compilation built around artists like Ed Sheeran, Imagine Dragons, X Ambassadors, The 1975, Jack Garratt, Max Jury, HOLYCHILD and CLOVES; and Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Score), Craig Armstrong’s orchestral and piano-led underscore. The songs tend to handle the external milestones — weddings, holidays, montages — while Armstrong’s cues handle the conversations about pain, autonomy and choice.

In terms of style, you can roughly split the music into phases. The “arrival” phase uses indie folk and low-key alt-pop (Max Jury’s “Numb”, HOLYCHILD’s “Happy With Me”) to track Lou’s stalled small-town life. The “adaptation” phase leans into modern pop and electro-soul (X Ambassadors’ “Unsteady” remix, The 1975’s “The Sound”, Jack Garratt’s “Surprise Yourself”) as Lou starts planning adventures. The final “rebellion and collapse” phase uses heavier emotional ballads (CLOVES’ “Don’t Forget About Me”, Ed Sheeran’s “Photograph”, Imagine Dragons’ “Not Today”) plus Armstrong’s strings and piano to handle grief, acceptance and the idea of moving forward without forgetting.

How It Was Made

The song album, Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), was released in early June 2016 by Interscope Records as a nine-track compilation clocking in at roughly 35 minutes. It is officially credited to “Various Artists” and sequences the songs much like a playlist rather than a traditional end-credits-heavy soundtrack. According to label and catalog data, the physical CD carries an Interscope catalogue number and runs 34:50, with Max Jury’s “Numb” opening and Imagine Dragons’ “Not Today” closing.

Interscope announced the soundtrack in April 2016, rolling out key songs as singles or promo tracks in the weeks before the film. X Ambassadors’ “Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)” was pushed first, followed by Imagine Dragons’ “Not Today” as the second major single, and then Jessie Ware’s original ballad “Till The End”, which arrived with its own video built around footage from the film. Around the same time, Ed Sheeran’s previously released hits “Thinking Out Loud” and “Photograph” were promoted in connection with the movie, even though only “Photograph” appears on the CD configuration.

Alongside this, WaterTower Music handled Craig Armstrong’s Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Score). The score album, just over 43 minutes, gathers 23 cues such as “Me Before You Orchestral”, “The Castle”, “Lou’s Interview”, “Will’s Pain”, “Talk & Dance”, “Paris” and “Me Before You Piano”. Armstrong recorded with his usual mix of strings, piano and subtle electronics, keeping the palette restrained so it could sit next to contemporary pop without clashing.

The music team had to walk a tone tightrope. The story deals directly with disability, assisted dying and complicated consent; at the same time, it was sold as a mainstream date movie. The solution was to keep the songs grounded in radio-ready pop but deploy them carefully — no wall-to-wall needle drops, and no lyrics that undercut the seriousness of the big decisions. Reviews of the soundtrack and score later picked up on this, noting how the album is short but emotionally efficient.

Tracks & Scenes

Below are key songs — both from the official soundtrack album and additional film-only cues — with scene placement and story function. Timestamps are approximate, based on the common 110-minute cut.

Song Album Highlights

"Numb" — Max Jury
Where it plays: Early on, just after Lou is fired from the café, she walks home through her small town, coat pulled tight, trying not to cry. “Numb” plays as a non-diegetic overlay; we see her squeeze past familiar shopfronts that suddenly feel hostile.
Why it matters: The song’s weary vocal and simple piano progression tell us who Lou is before Will: stuck, underused and quietly heartbroken. It sets the emotional floor the rest of the film has to climb above.

"Happy With Me" — HOLYCHILD
Where it plays: Around the middle of the first act, during the montage of Lou trying on increasingly risky outfits before starting work at the Traynor estate. She spins in front of the mirror, pulls faces, rejects safe choices, and finally lands on her quirky combinations.
Why it matters: Sonically it is bright, fizzy electro-pop. It underlines Lou’s playfulness and willingness to reinvent herself for the job, and it keeps the film from drowning in misery too early.

"Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)" — X Ambassadors
Where it plays: Mid-film, when Lou starts building the “adventure list” for Will. The song kicks in over a montage of her researching trips online, booking small outings, and carefully pitching ideas to him. The remix is more atmospheric than the album version, with echoing claps and a bigger low end.
Why it matters: The lyric “hold on” lands hard when cut against a story about deciding whether life is worth holding onto. The track marks the moment the film shifts from basic caretaker plot into a deliberate, time-boxed project to change Will’s mind.

"Till The End" — Jessie Ware
Where it plays: At Alicia and Rupert’s wedding, specifically during their first dance. The camera alternates between the newlyweds, who are unaware of the emotional shrapnel they’re causing, and Will watching from his chair while Lou tries to keep the mood light.
Why it matters: It is the film’s original love song, written expressly for this story. Here it functions less as a triumph and more as a knife twist, because the lyric about staying “till the end” clashes with Will’s very different plan for his own end.

"The Sound" — The 1975
Where it plays: Still at the wedding, later in the reception, as the dance floor gets busier. It runs under dialogue when Lou and Will talk at the edge of the party and when Patrick’s jealousy spikes in the background.
Why it matters: Glossy, hook-heavy indie pop here stands in for a world that keeps spinning while the central moral dilemma tightens. The song’s repetition mirrors how often Will and Lou circle the same argument without resolving it.

"Surprise Yourself" — Jack Garratt
Where it plays: When Lou and Will arrive at the foreign holiday destination (shot in Mallorca, standing in for an island resort). The track carries them through airport halls, boat rides and the first night, continuing into the dramatic lightning storm sequence where Will watches the weather from the balcony and Lou stands beside him.
Why it matters: The lyric about stepping out of your comfort zone is almost on the nose, but the arrangement — a slow build from fragile to anthemic — fits Will’s attempt to enjoy a few days of “normal” life despite his condition.

"Don't Forget About Me" — CLOVES
Where it plays: On the trip home from that same holiday. Lou, Will and Nathan ride back through the countryside, exhausted. Conversation is minimal; the song covers the gap as the reality of what Will still plans to do sinks in.
Why it matters: Its sparse guitar and heavy reverb make it feel like it’s coming from the inside of Lou’s head. The title echoes the question the ending poses: what to do with a love story that does not end in staying together.

"Photograph" — Ed Sheeran
Where it plays: Late in the film, when Lou arrives in Switzerland to see Will one last time. We see trains, mountains and anonymous clinic corridors while “Photograph” runs over the images, connecting back to earlier moments they shared at the castle and on the trip.
Why it matters: The song already had a life as a standalone hit; here it gets repurposed as a memory reel. It also softens an ethically fraught stretch of story with something familiar, which some viewers found moving and others manipulative.

"Not Today" — Imagine Dragons
Where it plays: Over the final Paris sequence and into the end credits. Lou reads Will’s letter in a café, steps out into the street and walks with new purpose through the city as tourists swirl around her.
Why it matters: This is the official closing song and the last word of the compilation. Lyrically it sits in an odd place — it acknowledges pain but insists that healing is still ahead, just “not today” — which lines up with the film’s choice to end on Lou’s future rather than on Will’s absence.

Additional Film Songs

"Thinking Out Loud" — Ed Sheeran
Where it plays: Around the 55-minute mark, during Alicia’s wedding ceremony and reception. It scores both the couple’s formal moments and the crucial dance where Lou helps Will stand briefly and sway, surrounded by other couples.
Why it matters: This is the pure wish-fulfilment scene, and the song is a cultural shorthand for “this is the big romantic moment”. The fact that the relationship cannot actually end in marriage makes its use more bittersweet than in a typical wedding montage.

"The James Bond Theme (From 'Dr. No')" — The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
Where it plays: Over the silly “Wild Willy” birthday video Patrick puts together, parodying Bond credits with Will’s face. The theme blasts from the TV while everyone laughs — everyone except Will, who has to watch himself as an action hero he cannot physically be anymore.
Why it matters: Using a hyper-familiar piece of macho iconography here underlines how cruel optimism can feel from Will’s perspective. It is a joke that lands differently for each character.

"Big Man" — Chase & Status feat. Liam Bailey
Where it plays: After the disastrous horse race outing. Will, soaked and humiliated, retreats to his room and listens to music on his headphones. “Big Man” plays under the scene as he shuts everyone out.
Why it matters: The title is pointed. The track lets Will have a private, angry moment that the others can’t hear, while the audience does. It is one of the rare scenes where his frustration is allowed to be loud.

Notes & Trivia

• The song album and Craig Armstrong’s score were released as separate digital and physical titles, just two days apart.
• The commercial soundtrack runs under 35 minutes, unusually short for a modern studio romance but close to a classic pop LP length.
• “Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)” and “Not Today” were both pushed as singles ahead of the film, each with videos that folded in shots from the movie.
• Jessie Ware’s “Till The End” was commissioned specifically for the film; contemporary coverage described it as a soft-focus, easy-listening ballad built from finger snaps and hushed harmonies.
• The CD configuration in some territories includes “Photograph” but not “Thinking Out Loud”, even though both Ed Sheeran tracks are prominent in the movie.

Music–Story Links

The soundtrack traces Lou’s agency as much as it traces the romance. “Numb” sits under her life collapsing; “Happy With Me” and the “James Bond Theme” push her into a new environment where she is constantly performing a role for other people. Once she starts designing the adventure list, the songs begin to mirror her action rather than her passivity: “Unsteady” for planning, “Surprise Yourself” for travel, “Don’t Forget About Me” for the emotional hangover.

At the wedding, the trio of “Till The End”, “The Sound” and “Thinking Out Loud” compress a whole history of relationships into one event: Will’s lost future, Lou’s strained partnership with Patrick and Alicia’s choice to move on. The songs are fashionable and upbeat, but the scenes over them are full of compromise.

The final act is noticeably more song-heavy than many similar dramas. “Photograph” takes care of the Switzerland journey, “Not Today” handles the Paris epilogue, and Armstrong’s score fills the spaces between with cues like “Will’s Wish”, “Talk & Dance” and “Paris”. Together, they make the last 20 minutes feel like a single extended music sequence even when the dialogue is doing the ethical heavy lifting.

One quiet structural trick: almost every major song is attached to a place shift — home to castle, castle to wedding, UK to holiday island, holiday island back to home, home to Switzerland, Switzerland to Paris. The soundtrack is effectively a map of everywhere Will manages to go after his accident, and everywhere Lou will keep going without him.

Reception & Quotes

Critically, the song soundtrack drew mixed but generally warm responses. As one Bustle piece put it, the tracklist is short but “effective in evoking the emotions of the film”, especially when the film leans on Ed Sheeran and Imagine Dragons rather than anonymous library cues. Pop culture sites framed it as a ready-made breakup playlist more than a traditional score release.

The orchestral score earned a slightly different kind of praise. Reviewers who follow film music singled out Craig Armstrong’s work as classic, earnest romantic drama writing — nothing radical, but impeccably crafted. One specialist review argued that while the score would not “set the film-music world alight”, it was a top-tier example of Armstrong’s sincere, melodic style.

Not everyone liked the balance. Some film critics pointed out that the pop cues can feel over-insistent, with a Seattle-based reviewer noting that the movie sometimes “loses impact in its most serious moments by blasting a happy pop soundtrack” where silence or minimal score might have hit harder.

“The soundtrack may be short, but it’s ruthless about squeezing tears out of every key scene.”
— Summary of Bustle’s reaction (paraphrased)

“Sharrock leans on Sheeran and Imagine Dragons like emotional cheat codes; depending on your tolerance, it either works beautifully or feels shameless.”
— Critical consensus, mid-2016 (paraphrased)

“Armstrong’s score is sincere, string-laden and exactly what this kind of romantic drama needs, even if it never quite surprises.”
— Film-music review summary (paraphrased)

Interesting Facts

• The soundtrack album reached the top 15 on the US Billboard 200 and hit no. 2 on the US Soundtrack Albums chart, strong numbers for a nine-track compilation.
• In several European territories it also charted on general album lists, not just soundtrack charts, helped by the presence of Ed Sheeran and Imagine Dragons.
• “Not Today” later reappeared on the deluxe edition of Imagine Dragons’ album Evolve, giving the song a second life outside the film.
• “Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)” is technically built on a pre-existing X Ambassadors single; the remix was branded specifically around the movie and packaged with footage in its video.
• Jessie Ware performed “Till The End” live in a few promo slots around the film’s release, with interviewers explicitly framing it as “the Me Before You song”.
• Craig Armstrong’s score album is longer than many romantic-drama scores but still tight: 23 cues across about 43 minutes, with most tracks under two minutes.
• Because the film uses both the pop soundtrack and substantial score, fan “complete edition” playlists often combine the two albums plus a few licensed extras like “Thinking Out Loud”.
• Some educational discussions of the film’s disability politics mention the soundtrack directly, arguing that certain song choices soften or romanticise what is, underneath, a very bleak decision.

Technical Info

• Title (songs album): Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Title (score album): Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Score)
• Year: 2016
• Type: Film soundtrack (songs compilation) + separate original score
• Film: Me Before You – romantic drama directed by Thea Sharrock, based on Jojo Moyes’ novel
• Song album artists (selected): Max Jury, HOLYCHILD, X Ambassadors, Jessie Ware, The 1975, Jack Garratt, CLOVES, Ed Sheeran, Imagine Dragons
• Score composer: Craig Armstrong
• Song album label: Interscope Records (international CD and digital release)
• Score album label: WaterTower Music
• Song album release: early June 2016 (commonly listed as June 1; some digital stores show June 3)
• Score album release: June 2016 (around the film’s theatrical rollout)
• Song album length / tracks: ~34:50; 9 tracks on the standard CD
• Score album length / tracks: ~43 minutes; 23 cues
• Representative score cues: “Me Before You Orchestral”, “The Castle”, “Lou’s Interview”, “Will’s Pain”, “Lou Shaves Will”, “Talk & Dance”, “Paris”, “Me Before You Piano”
• Chart highlights (song album): US Billboard 200 no. 13; US Soundtrack Albums no. 2; top-30 placements in several European markets
• Notable singles tied to film: “Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)” — X Ambassadors; “Not Today” — Imagine Dragons; “Till The End” — Jessie Ware
• Primary music functions: Songs for montages, weddings, holiday sequences and epilogue; score for character conversations, medical scenes and internal decisions.

Questions & Answers

How many official albums does Me Before You have?

Two. There is a nine-track song compilation on Interscope Records and a separate 23-track Craig Armstrong score album on WaterTower Music.

Which song plays during Lou and Will’s dance at the wedding?

The key wedding sequences use Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” alongside Jessie Ware’s “Till The End” and The 1975’s “The Sound”.

What is the song over the final Paris scene?

That is “Not Today” by Imagine Dragons, written specifically for the film and later added to the deluxe edition of their album Evolve.

Is “Unsteady” in the movie the same as the album version?

No. The film and soundtrack use “Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)”, a reworked version of X Ambassadors’ original single, with a more cinematic build.

Does the soundtrack include every song heard in the film?

Not quite. The compilation focuses on the main needle drops, but several cues — including “Thinking Out Loud”, “Big Man”, “New Coke” and some score passages — are only available separately.

Canonical Entities & Relations

Subject	Relation	Object
Thea Sharrock	directed	Film Me Before You
Jojo Moyes	wrote	Novel Me Before You and screenplay adaptation
Emilia Clarke	portrayed	Louisa “Lou” Clark
Sam Claflin	portrayed	Will Traynor
Craig Armstrong	composed	Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Score)
Interscope Records	released	Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
WaterTower Music	released	Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Score)
Max Jury	performed	Song “Numb” on the soundtrack album
HOLYCHILD	performed	Song “Happy With Me” on the soundtrack album
X Ambassadors	performed	“Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)” for the film
Jessie Ware	performed	Original song “Till The End” for Me Before You
The 1975	performed	“The Sound” on the soundtrack album
Jack Garratt	performed	“Surprise Yourself” on the soundtrack album
CLOVES	performed	“Don’t Forget About Me” on the soundtrack album
Ed Sheeran	performed	“Photograph” and “Thinking Out Loud” used in the film
Imagine Dragons	performed	“Not Today” for the film’s closing sequence
New Line Cinema / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer	produced	Film Me Before You
Warner Bros. Pictures	distributed	Film Me Before You
Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)	is part of	Interscope Records soundtrack catalogue
Me Before You (Original Motion Picture Score)	is part of	WaterTower Music film-score catalogue

Sources: Wikipedia (film & soundtrack), Apple Music and Spotify album entries, Muziekweb disc catalog, Discogs release data, WaterTower Music and Amazon listings for the score, Soundtrakd scene-by-scene song list, IMDb soundtrack credits, press releases and coverage on the singles “Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)”, “Not Today” and “Till The End”, plus reviews from Bustle, PopSugar, The Seattle Times and score-review sites.

Another romantic comedy. With a British accent. In which, in fact, the tragedy prevails over comedy. People have forgotten how to make real comedies – funny, stunning you with laugh every few seconds or minutes. And now, any film in which there are a couple of jokes or laughter of the main characters, always marked by distributors as a "comedy". While most love-stories are tragedies. They contain a bunch of grief, melancholy and serious moments. People have forgotten what a comedy is, and now eat any substitute as the one. Starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin – very British actors. So much British, that a third part of their prim speech is not perceived by American-language audience. Sometimes it seems to us that it is time to develop the British-American translators, because these strange accents in the UK words don’t make them look any more like a normal American international speaking. Although, maybe they specifically seek for this result, to distinguish themselves? About the same mixed feelings causes soundtrack for this film. Surprise Yourself – is a song, where you want to stop howling of pomaded neat bearded genderless fellow, sending him finally to work by hands, not by lyric. We would also like to wish the leader of the group X Ambassadors to receive more hair on the head and a lesser – on the beard, so he seemed more masculine than now. Men are looking good with beard, if they do not look like gays. No one told it to those two lyricists. Imagine Dragons sound luxurious, and the song The Sound is created as the antithesis to Numb – some boring emos sing about their some boring emo stuff. The result: this film is for young and snotty girls, and their same snotty not-yet-grown-up boys between 8 and 15 years old.

November, 15th 2025

Me Before You: IMDb profile, Official Movie Site

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