Hey! I haven’t posted in a year, and haven’t posted with any regularity since Star vs the Forces of Evil ended in 2019 because, let’s be real here, the SVTFOE fandom was the reason I started posting on here in the first place. But that ends now! (Well, for today, until I am legally allowed to tell you more.)

Over the past year I have been writing songs and some preliminary score for an upcoming Netflix series called Jentry Chau vs the Underworld, continuing my monopoly on animated series with “vs” in the title. It was just announced yesterday, and you can read about it here.

But if you don’t feel like clicking away, here’s the gist:

• Created by the brilliant and wonderful Echo Wu, who is also the showrunner

• Stars Ali Wong as the title character (and who is also an executive producer). Also starring Bowen Yang, Lucy Liu, Jimmy O. Yang, Sheng Wang, Lori Tan Chinn, and K-pop idol Woosung.

• Plot synopsis! “[Ali] Wong will voice Chinese American teen Jentry Chau, who, while living in a small Texas town, discovers a demon king is hunting her for the very same powers she’s worked to repress her entire life. As a result, Jentry must balance the horrors of high school and fighting an underworld’s worth of monsters. But she’ll get a little help from her weapons-expert great aunt and a millennia-old jiangshi, also known as a Chinese hopping vampire.”

From what I have seen and worked on so far, the show is amazing and unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, and I can’t wait for you all to watch and hear it. (Probably next year? Not sure.) There are a ton of original songs, and there will also be an official album release, and get ready, because we are going HARD.

Hey everyone! Last year I wrote and recorded an album of piano solos and songs. It is called Kingdoms, and is available now from all of the services you use to beam music to your ears (links here).

I wrote about twice as much material as ended up on Kingdoms, but by having so much music to work through, I could really focus on the ideas I wanted to develop and explore, and create a musical through-line that I thought would be understandable for me years from now, when I look back at this whole process. And I hope, that when my children are old enough to take notice, they will listen to this, and maybe learn things about their dad that he couldn’t tell them in person.

The stunning album art was created by @zachsleepshere, of Star vs the Forces of Evil and Owl House fame.

I am grateful to my friends, Caren and Kevin, who I first performed with 20 years ago, whose voices grace this project. They are singular talents, two of the best singers I know. And I am thankful for the people at Capitol Studios, and their beautiful 9-foot Yamaha, and engineer Steve Genewick, for making this all sound so good.

xo

Waiting for Me (full version)

So I, uh, finally did it! Here it is. I hope you enjoy.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CQuCpldHYYo/

Hey #StarVsTheForcesOfEvil Tumblr, remember how I said years ago that I’d never write a long version of “Waiting for Me”?

Turns out I was wrong!

I’m working on it now, will post it via IGTV sometime soon.

PS -- I started my Instagram over from scratch! Same handle as before, BrianWithAnH. But if you followed me before, you’ll have to follow me again, because I deleted the old account.

PANIC is now streaming on Prime Video.

And the album is available everywhere. Links to your favorite digital services here.

It’s got some blistering electronic work by me and Isabella Summers (of Florence and the Machine), and a brand new song by Tate McRae.

Turn it up.

Did you know that I have an album dropping tomorrow?

Because I have an album dropping tomorrow.

Hey friends. I’ve got a new show called Panic, premiering May 28th on Prime Video. I co-wrote the score with Isabella Summers (of Florence and the Machine). The show is wild, and the score is f--king monster. Hope you check it out.

Someone asked me a question on Twitter and I wanted to answer with this track from the episode Kelly’s World from Star vs. the Forces of Evil, and realized I had never posted it, because I wanted to post other tracks from the episode and Tumblr has a limit. But now I realize that was stupid because this is one of my favorite cues from the show and is very much my mood these days. So here it is now! Previously unreleased track!

Hey! Ridiculous talent / former co-worker / occasional friend Cobie Smulders did a piano version of “Let’s Go to the Mall” from How I Met Your Mother, and I helped her with it! Watch the vid, and donate to her charities if you can!

Of course I shut down my Instagram right before I get the greatest shoutout of all time. Womp.

Hey gang it’s been a minute since SVTFOE ended how are you all holding up

AMA is open, come ask me stuff!

From Star vs. the Forces of Evil - Cleaved.

Fun fact -- the final shot was intended to roll seamlessly into the closing credits and so the music was composed to also transition accordingly, but the network required us to separate the show from the credits, so the music got chopped. But now you can hear it all smooth and pretty.

I think the sequence from Marco and Star running to their portals onward is my favorite thing I’ve done for the show. The amount of history and emotions playing into this scene is only something that can happen when you have years of build up, and writing music to accompany the release of all those emotions is truly a gift. 

I have many more thoughts and feelings about the series that I’ll write about later, but for now, I hope you enjoy this music, and I hope you know how much I enjoyed writing it for you.

0:00 Open the Portals 1:16 One Last Realm 2:33 Evil Tom 3:07 Break the Bond 3:29 Age of Queens' End 3:58 WWSD 4:42 Going after Star 4:55 Stop the Magic 5:34 Queens of Ages Past 6:01 Crack That Sanctuary 7:02 Giant Purple Unicorn 7:18 The End of Magic 10:30 Are We on Alligators 11:31 Ideas Never Die 12:01 Moms Mess Up 13:07 Janna as a Friend 13:41 Running to the Portal 15:11 Earth-ni 16:10 Goodbye SVTFOE

... SURPRISE!

0:00 Solve All That Business 0:41 Get Globgor to the Sanctuary 1:02 Magic Eyeball Ride 2:01 No Magic No Marco 3:22 Add Marco

... it’s almost like we’re building up to something...

0:00 Lightly Used Rags 0:37 Solaria's Speech 1:02 Conviction and Love 1:32 Traitor Moon 2:07 Surrender the Crown 3:22 For Us, Globgor 4:13 Hating You for It 6:21 Arrest All Monsters

... like was there some big conversation in this episode or something...

0:00 Sorry about the Invasion 0:16 Doug Doug 0:42 I Can Get Weird Too 1:43 Moon Bird 2:12 Butterfly War Room 2:56 Get Monstertown to Safety 4:11 Star Reflects 4:40 Pig Goats 5:51 Since the Beginning 7:22 Mina Works for Me

So, yeah, lots of stuff happened today huh...

0:00 Solarian Saber 0:25 Greatest Warriors of Mewni 0:45 For Mewni 1:03 Misty Mewni Town 1:50 Parkour Man 2:25 Compendium of Magical Elements 3:45 Kelly and Pigeon Down 4:05 Show Her Your Heart 5:29 Mecha Rainbow Star Vs. Mina 6:42 The Spell That Has No Name 7:36 Starco Reunion 8:16 Mina and Her Army