The film's soundtrack was released by Emperor Norton Records on September 9, 2003.[89] It contains 15 tracks, largely from the shoegaze and dream pop genres of indie and alternative rock. The soundtrack was supervised by Brian Reitzell and contains songs from artists and groups including Death in Vegas, Phoenix, Squarepusher, Sébastien Tellier, and Happy End. The Jesus and Mary Chain's song "Just Like Honey" and "Sometimes" by My Bloody Valentine featured, and four original tracks were written for Lost in Translation by the latter band's frontman, Kevin Shields.[90] Other tracks produced for the film include two co-written by Reitzell and Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and one by Air.[90] Songs featured in the film that are not in the soundtrack include karaoke performances of Elvis Costello's cover of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" and the Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket". A further performance by Murray of Roxy Music's "More Than This" is included as a bonus track.[note 14]
During the screenwriting stage, Coppola spoke to Reitzell about the "moody" and "melancholic" qualities she wanted the music to convey in the film, as well as what Reitzell understood to be the "strange, floating, jet-lagged weirdness" that would define the central characters.[52] Coppola said she wanted the soundtrack "to be less like a score" and more like the dream-pop mixes Reitzell made to assist her writing of the film.[24] While Shields had released little music since the release of Loveless in 1991,[91] at Reitzell's suggestion, he and Coppola enlisted him to help write original music for the film;[92] Reitzell believed Shields "could capture that droning, swaying, beautiful kind of feeling that we wanted."[52] He then joined Shields in London for some two months[93] of overnight recording sessions, and they used the screenplay and dailies from production as inspiration while they worked on songs for the film.[52] Shields commented on the challenge he felt in songwriting for a film, saying "I was barely aware of the language of music that's not essentially just for your ears. ... In the end, just the physical movement of the film, that was a delicacy. And I suppose that's why I ended up doing stuff that was so delicate."[90]
King argues that music often plays the most significant role in setting mood and tone in the film, writing that it is substantial "in evoking the dreamy, narcotised, semi-detached impressions of jet-lag" as well as broader feelings of alienation and disconnection, "making what is probably the largest single contribution to the widespread understanding of the film as a 'mood piece'."[94] He points to the use of "Girls" by Death in Vegas, featured in the early sequence in which Bob is driven from the airport to the hotel, arguing that it "plays a role equal to if not dominating that of the visuals ..., creating a drifting, ethereal and somewhat dreamy quality that precisely captures the impressions of temporal and spatial disjunction".[95] He also points to the use of "cool and distant" tracks like "Tommib", used in the extended sequence featuring Charlotte observing Tokyo while seated in her hotel room window, as playing a significant role in establishing feelings of isolation and disorientation in the character.[96] In King's view, some sequences feature combinations of music and visuals so as to function as "audio-visual set pieces", which offer distinct points of appeal in the film for its target audience.[97]
