City of Stars
Song Meaning

“City of Stars” is about the push and pull between hope and doubt that comes with pursuing dreams in Los Angeles, both romantic and professional. Composer Justin Hurwitz wrote it as a song of yearning for Sebastian, who is falling for Mia early in their courtship but remains cautious because he’s already had so many dreams not work out 2. The song’s shifting major and minor key changes were designed to mirror this tension between life’s great moments and its less great ones 1. It functions as the emotional heart of the film alongside the main love theme, tying Sebastian and Mia’s romance directly to their competing ambitions 2.

The meaning

At its core, “City of Stars” is a song about yearning, the ache of wanting something (love, success, a life that finally works out) without knowing if it will actually happen. Hurwitz has said it was written for the moment early in Sebastian and Mia’s courtship, right after he asks her out: “He’s excited but also very cautious, he’s had so many dreams that haven’t worked out for him. So it has that hopeful, optimistic sweetness, but also a sadness” 2. That tension is right there in the lyrics, when Sebastian asks the city, “Is this the start of something wonderful and new? Or one more dream that I cannot make true?” The question is never resolved in the song itself, which is the point.

Musically, that same uncertainty is built into the composition. Hurwitz explained that the song “goes back-and-forth between cadencing in major and cadencing in minor, because I think that’s kind of what the song is about. You have these great moments and then you have these less great moments in life and in Los Angeles” 1. The whistled melody and wandering harmony aren’t just atmospheric, they’re the emotional architecture of the song, hope and melancholy trading places line by line.

The song isn’t only about romance. Hurwitz noted that he loved how it “addressed both the relationship and the professional ambition,” which is part of why it felt like the film’s second emotional core alongside the central love theme 2. Director Damien Chazelle has said the number was placed deliberately “to chart the crossroads moment when Mia is committing to her play and Sebastian is committing to the new band” 2, meaning the song sits at the exact point where both characters start choosing their careers, not just each other.

That double meaning is what gives “City of Stars” its lasting resonance on repeat viewings of La La Land. Hurwitz has pointed out that Chazelle always wanted it to feel like “the most romantic song in the movie” on a first watch, but “the second time you see the movie, you see it’s where the characters begin to diverge. It’s sort of the beginning of the end for them” 2. So a song that plays as a hopeful love theme is, in hindsight, foreshadowing the couple’s eventual separation, once you know how their story ends.

Lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul echoed the same read when they first heard the melody, describing it as “full of longing and melancholy but also hope” and full of embedded storytelling 2. That’s ultimately what “City of Stars” means: it’s less a straightforward love song than a portrait of ambition and romance intertwined, where wanting something badly enough to chase it always comes with the risk that it won’t work out.

Last updated 2026-07-21