Custom Album for Mattel. Produced by Kickstart Entertainment and Bentonville Studios
Music for: a world of Creativity, Competition, and Fun!
American Girl — The Great American Girl Challenge
The Challenge
Mattel’s The Great American Girl Challenge required a musical identity that could carry an entire season by balancing youthful energy, emotional storytelling, and episodic flexibility. The music needed to feel cohesive across 15 episodes while remaining adaptable enough to support a wide range of moments, from competition to reflection, silly to intense.
The Approach
Pulling inspiration from the American Girl anthem “Welcome To The Star Squad,” we built a custom album that extended the chord progressions, melodies, and musical themes of the original song into a broader musical world with high energy synths and marching band inspired percussion.
Rather than treating each cue as a standalone piece, we developed a system of themes, textures, and stems that allowed the music to evolve with the narrative while giving editors the ability to shape tone and pacing without losing cohesion.
The result was a unified sound that could be reconfigured moment-to-moment, aligning seamlessly with the storytelling.
The Sound
Select samples from the album
In Context
The Client Perspective
“We were able to fully customize every moment of each episode to harmonize the music and visuals. Not only would I absolutely work with Edit/Score again — I’d prefer to.”
— Joel Rubin, Director, Mattel
Outcome
A fully realized custom album used across the series, giving the editorial team flexibility, speed, and a cohesive musical voice that elevated the storytelling from episode to episode, while staying true to the brand.