Hans Zimmer Says 'Inception' Score Created From 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien'

Composer Hans Zimmer has revealed his score for Christopher Nolan's blockbuster movie 'Inception' was born from Édith Piaf's 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.' The song appears in the reality-twisting movie as a warning to the characters to wake up from their dreamlike state but is also the basis for all the music which features in Zimmer's score.

The connection with 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien' was recently made public online after a viral video comparing the 'Inception' theme with a slowed down version of the Charles Dumont-written song was posted on YouTube. An excited Zimmer spoke to the New York Times, "I've seen it. I've seen it. I was surprised how long it took them to figure it out. It was meant to be a secret."

According to Zimmer the idea came from director Christopher Nolan, "He had the Édith Piaf always written in the script, the 'da-da, da-da'. It was like huge foghorns over a city, and afterwards you would maybe figure out that they were related."

He continued "All the music in the score is subdivisions and multiplications of the tempo of the Édith Piaf track. So I could slip into half-time; I could slip into a third of a time. Anything could go anywhere. At any moment I could drop into a different level of time."

'Inception' Music Comparison


The challenge of constructing the score from a single manipulated beat was one which the Oscar-winning German clearly relished, "I had to go and extract these two notes out of a recording. I love technology, so it was a lot of fun for me to go and get the original master out of the French national archives. And then find some crazy scientist in France who would actually go and take that one cell out of the DNA."

As reported by Spinner earlier this month, Zimmer drafted in former Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr during recording after the composer heard a sound in his head while working on the score, "I couldn't figure out the sound that I was chasing and I realized it was Johnny Marr."