La La Land is a 2016 American musical romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a struggling jazz pianist and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. The supporting cast includes John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, and J. K. Simmons.

Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.

The songs and score for La La Land were composed and orchestrated by Justin Hurwitz, Chazelle’s Harvard University classmate, who also worked on his two prior films. The lyrics were written by Pasek and Paul, except for “Start a Fire”, which was written by John Legend, Hurwitz, Marius de Vries and Angelique Cinelu. A soundtrack album was released on December 9, 2016, by Interscope Records, featuring selections from Hurwitz’s score and songs performed by the cast.