Noah Kahan is opening the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping with “Draw You Out,” the first single from the project and his first new music since The Great Divide and its deluxe edition The Last of the Bugs. The song arrives Friday, Oct. 2, giving the franchise its next lead track months before the soundtrack drops on Nov. 13 and the film reaches theaters on Nov. 20.
For Kahan, the release is more than a placement. He called landing a Hunger Games lead single an insane opportunity and said he has read all the books and seen all the movies. He also said music is a massive part of The Hunger Games, which is why the assignment mattered enough to treat it like a serious job, not a novelty.
That matters because the series has long used prominent artists to launch its soundtrack campaigns, with lead singles in the past from Taylor Swift, Lorde, Coldplay and Olivia Rodrigo. Sunrise on the Reaping is a prequel in Suzanne Collins’ world, set during the 50th Hunger Games, 24 years before the original trilogy and centered on a then-16-year-old Haymitch Abernathy, who later becomes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark’s mentor.
Kahan said writing “Draw You Out” took a lot of research, but he also wanted there to be part of him in it. That is the balancing act built into the song: writing to a specific character and a specific franchise without sanding off the personal voice that makes the performance his. He said he co-wrote and co-produced the track with Aaron Dessner, and he described the result as sad rather than heartwarming, which fits the darker corner of the story it is meant to introduce.
The release starts the countdown for a soundtrack that still has weeks to go before the film itself arrives. What listeners hear on Friday will be the first clue to how The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping wants to sound, and the next clue does not come until Nov. 13, when the soundtrack drops. By Nov. 20, the story moves to theaters, with Kahan’s song already having done the work of setting the tone.
