The function of music, and indeed the entire soundscape, in the film is obvious as it is a song and dance film.

The significance of sound effects in La La Land. The first occurs when Mia meets the actress in a café to purchase coffee. She is transfixed as she watches the attractive idol walk out of the café when a quick beep pulls her out of her reverie: she has an audition. A simple analogy that exactly describes Mia’s situation: a young lady with big goals who works part-time in a café to make ends meet and auditions for jobs in her spare time.

The second time is when Mia and Seb are standing in front of a bench after a tap dance, and just before the moment of kissing, Mia’s phone rings with Greg, the boy she has been dating for some time; this abrupt interruption is used at least two times in the film, and is a setting often used in popular romance films, perhaps most famously in the 1934 Frank Capra won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1934 for “It Happened One Night”.

Aside from this minor sound effect, the film’s theme song is more than just a theme song. The restaurant encounter scene, which appears three times at the beginning and end of the film, and the moving melody, arranged by Justin Hurwitz, is as enlightening as it is in the film, making Mia or Seb realise what they really want every time it appears.