Hoppers (soundtrack)

Although Mothersbaugh worked in several animated feature films and television productions from various productions, Hoppers was his maiden composition for a Pixar full-length animated feature who considered it to be "lucky to have picked him". He previously composed the Toy Story Toons short Hawaiian Vacation (2011) and several Cars Toons shorts for the studio.^[2] On his working relationship with Chong, Mothersbaugh said "The first time you work with a director, they'll say, 'I want this to be dark,' or 'I want this to be sad,' and you have to guess what they mean by those words. You start giving them sketches and listen to their responses, and it always makes the second film easier because when they're saying things like 'make it romantic,' or 'make it scary,' you know what those things mean."^[1]

Mothersbaugh worked on the film score on and off for six months while touring with Devo utilizing on the downtime between concerts.^[1] He took a laptop and keyboard during the touring so that he could write the score at his hotel room. Mothersbaugh said that the style of constrained music writing process where he would write the score, discuss with the musicians and then record it which could be used in the film, which was the tradition since the 1990s but after COVID-19 pandemic as people were not coming to the studio, the timelines extended to six to nine months and a lot of back and forth happened though at times not benefitting the music, where "sometimes it makes the films better, but sometimes you come full circle, and they go right back to the music you wrote in the beginning, and that's what you end up putting in the film."^[1] He recalled his experience on a weekly basis he worked in Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986–1990) where he would get an episode tape, writing the music based on it, recording it and sending that music to the producers in time for them to put the music into the episode before it aires on Saturday morning, considering it to be "exciting" compared to what he worked on Devo, spending months writing and recording an album.^[3]

Mothersbaugh was first tasked to write themes for the couple of the main characters which could be used in the rest of the film, since the temp tracks did not work together as opposed to one scene at a time, Mothersbaugh convinced Chong to have a recurring theme appearing throughout the film. He emphasized on the use of orchestral music, especially in animation films and hence a 90-piece orchestra was responsible for recording the score at the Newman Scoring Stage.^[1] Though Mothersbaugh composed a lively, dramatic music for the film, he considered an important sequence between Mabel and her grandmother was one of his favorites as they share a lovely bond, while sitting at the mound looking at the glade and was a quiet before the music plays bringin that scene to life.^[1]

The end credits featured the original song, "Save the Day" written, co-composed and performed by SZA,^[4][5] with additional music production and composition by Rob Bisel and Ben Lovett.^[6][7] The song was released as a single on February 20, 2026.^[8][9][10] The album featuring 26 tracks was released under the Walt Disney Records label on March 6, 2026.^[11]

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it a "spirited" score.^[12] George M. Thomas of Akron Beacon Journal called it a "complementary soundtrack from Akron native and DEVO frontman Mark Mothersbaugh".^[13] Christopher Connor of The Upcoming wrote "Mark Mothersbaugh, no stranger to animation, having worked on the Lego Movie series and Mitchells vs The Machines, provides one of the most memorable Pixar scores in a few years, leaning into jazz more than their usual scores in a refreshing way."^[14]