Gustavo Santaolalla, composer of the music for ‘The Last of Us’, where have you heard him before?

They have succeeded, ‘The Last of Us’ has become one of the best series on HBO Max after only two chapters, or at least that’s what the acolytes of the Naughty Dog video game defend. Joel and Ellie have come to stay and, along with them, it is worth noting the brilliant work of Gustavo Santaolalla, composer of the music for ‘The Last of Us’ and an old acquaintance for fans of the original.

Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 19, 1951. Composer, musician and music producer, the Argentine At the age of sixteen, he founded the mythical group Arco Iris, a rock band that would give us jewels like ‘Resurrection Time’in which Santaolalla signs as guitar and voice.

In the nineties he became an essential exponent of Latin rock by producing projects for Café Tacuba, Molotov, Bersuit Vergarabat, Julieta Venegas, Juanes and Jorge Drexler. With ‘Ronroco’, a new solo production, Santaolalla approaches the world of cinema thanks to Michael Mann, who includes one of his themes in ‘El dilema’ (1999).

Since then, Santaolalla has composed some of the soundtracks of the moment, including those for ’21 grams’ (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2003) and ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ (Walter Salles, 2004). That’s when academic recognition came, winning two consecutive Oscars for his scores for ‘Brokeback Mountain (En terrestrial closed)’ (Ang Lee, 2005) and ‘Babel’ (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006). ‘A Love That Will Never Grow Old’, the theme for Lee’s film, also won the Golden Globe for best original song.

It was then that he took the step to the video game industry, creating the essential soundtrack of ‘The Last of Us’the game developed by Naughty Dog that revolutionized the market in 2013. The success made him be in charge of doing the same both in its brilliant prequel ‘The Last of Us: Left Behind’, and in the sequel, ‘The Last of Us Part II’, released in June 2020 in the PlayStation 4 catalog.

Santaolalla is already an essential artist. His have been the scores of ‘Biutiful’ (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2010), ‘On the road’ (Walter Salles, 2012), ‘August’ (John Wells, 2013), ‘Wild Tales’ (Damián Szifrón, 2014), ‘The book of life’ (Jorge R. Gutiérrez, 2014), the series ‘Making a Murderer’ (Moira Demos, Laura Ricciardi, 2015), ‘Planet Earth: Are we history?’ (Fisher Stevens, 2016), ‘Narcos: Mexico’ (Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, 2018) and ‘The House’ (Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza, 2022).

Well, luck to all, at HBO Max they have been skilled enough to, in addition to having the original screenwriter reducing the differences between the series and the video game of ‘The Last of Us’, to put Santaolalla back at the baton of the soundtrack, a gift that the acolytes of the original story have been able to enjoy from their bedside.