Most of my previous games have had a soundtrack at their core. In the case of family, the soundtrack contained homages to the bands of the late 80s UK indie scene - The Smiths, Elvis Costello, Tears for Fears etc. In Rivals, the style was that of country and alt-country, taking in groups like Wilco, Son Volt, The Shins and Grizzly bear. While Echo Beach had been more varied and focused on a pop sound, Riley & Rochelle was a return period pieces, which would encompass the breadth of the 90s.
Rochelle's Music
Rochelle's music represented the biggest step outside of my tastes yet. In other ways, the music was not particularly difficult to conceptualise. After all, I was a child of the 90s - growing up with stars like Celine, Whitney, Mariah, Toni and many others. Another thing was that the UK Britpop I grew up listening to was inherently melodic. As such, I've always had a taste for strong tunes, which the divas had in multitudes.
Early on, I decided that I wanted to base Rochelle's early music closely on that of Celine Dion's. By the mid 90s, Celine had settled into an established template, but her early work exhibited much more variety - experimenting with new wave pop, as well as more traditional balladry.
We see Rochelle progress from classical-lite pageantry (Richelieu), through euro pop-rock (Couer Brise) to her first big hit 'Strong'. This is a wide range of styles straight off the bat and required a very capable vocalist. I found Colombes Ran, an Madagascan singer, who also spoke fluent French and sang Celine Dion like the lady herself. We were very nervous waiting for our recording of Strong to come back. When it did, we immediately knew we had nothing to worry about.
I think one of the reasons I didn't find writing Rochelle's work particularly taxing is because it was so biographically driven. I knew the beats that Rochelle's character followed and wrote songs that either fit or the story could be altered to. In particular, a lot of movies feature in Rochelle's career, allowing me to have fun with over the top ballads.
The one anomaly is Stay, written by Rochelle, but sung by popstar Brandon Boynton. This had come from a closely preceding project, in which I wanted to make a game similar to Family but involving the 1990s Swedish Pop Sound (Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, Britney, Christina). One can clearly hear the song's lineage from these mid-90s radio hits.
Riley's Music
Writing Riley was quite a different proposition to Rochelle. His songs were more incidental to his story beats, but were rather meant to be tied to personal development. I wanted to hear a real evolution in his sound - from indie DIYer to hitmaker to auteur.
Luckily, I had no doubt who would voice Riley. Riley Catherall had worked with my on Rivals and Echo Beach and had the perfect singing voice for the role. In fact, I had around this time considered making a game for just the Riley character, based more closely on Elliott Smith, which had generated some of the material.
Riley's music also had specific influences - Elliott Smith, Radiohead, REM, Neutral Milk Hotel. However, he also represented more of a general type and so I wasn't as concerned with nailing a specific artists' style and only one or two are distinctively homages (try and guess).