For anyone whose been obsessed with the Kissing Booth 2 this past summer as much as me knows that Will Post’s song Wonderlust is THE song of the summer. So of course YEM had to track him down and do an interview with the artist. And what an interview it was. I got him to spill all about how the song came to be and how it ended up on the small screen. If you haven’t seen it yet then you’re missing one of the most epic scenes of Summer 2020. Go watch it now.

Young Entertainment Mag: Was Wonderlust created specifically for Kissing Booth 2?

Will Post: Wonderlust was written back in the fall of 2017 when I was going through a big transition. I was searching for new meaning in my life and the song is about being okay with the searching – being okay with not knowing exactly what will happen and trusting that you can make it work, no matter what.

Will: I was contacted back in March of 2019 by my good friend and music supervisor Melissa Chapman at Groove Garden Music in Chicago. After initially hearing about it and then not hearing back for a good six months later, I just assumed that they weren’t going to use it. I got confirmation the song would be in the movie in March of 2020, though I had no idea how much of the song would be used or where in the movie it would be used or any of that. Much to my surprise it was really heavily featured. 🙂

YEM: Was that you in the film or was someone else singing your song? If it was you what was it like being in the film (did you get to chat with the cast about the tone of the song and how it should be played?)? And when did you find out?

Will: Hah no that was not me in the movie. They hired an actor, Sean Barenblatt, to lip-sync during that scene.

Will: As far as the song being in the movie, I had very little information. It was very much in the background of my mind until the movie came out, then it’s been front and center of my reality recently! For the actual song, it took about a year to go from writing to the release. It went through a lot of different versions and iterations and production.

Will: I was super excited to see how it would end up in the film. I didn’t want to get my expectations too high so I just assumed not much would come out of it. When I woke up the day the movie was released, however, I had already gained a ton of new followers on instagram and youtube, etc, and there were already 3-4 lyric videos of the song made just in the past few hours. That’s when I knew the song was really hitting people.

Will: Wonderlust was written in collaboration with my good friend Wallace Tallman. He’s an amazing singer songwriter and the whole album that Wonderlust is on was co-written with him. I work a lot with Elijah Noll and Steven Hackman, I’ve done mixing work for Chance the Rapper and Dana Williams, and have produced and worked on a ton of other material with friends.

Will: I love epic and cinematic music, so that’s usually what I tend to write. At one point I called it ‘cinematic-pop’ but that definition doesn’t always work for me. Usually I describe it as being voice and piano centric with epic and orchestra type sounds.

Will: Oh that’s a good question. Does playing Borderlands 3 and re-playing Portal 2 count as my craft? 🙂 I kid I kid, kind of. Yes there was a lot of video game playing at the beginning of quarantine. Now I’ve been getting back into the groove of working on music at home, which is what I’ve always done. So in a way it’s not that different from my normal life.

Will: I don’t know if I can narrow it down to one, but one of the things that really lights up my heart is when people tell me they’ve loved and listened to that song and then gotten into my other material as well. I love how moments like this can be a gateway for someone to discover all my other material that I’m really proud of.

Will: I’ll be releasing more music and doing a few different versions of Wonderlust. Also, the song “She” on my album Panthenon I’d recommend people check out if they liked Wonderlust. To me they have a very similar feeling.