Starting with dialogue, the song comes as Mia auditions for the role of a lifetime. Stone’s voice is raspy but sincere at the a cappella onset, which gradually builds into a poignant ballad about the joy and sorrow of pursuing your dreams. As might be expected from its title, “Mia & Sebastian’s Theme” acts as the core of La La Land. Director Damien Chazelle's La La Land is an unapologetic musical that hearkens back to Hollywood's glory days of song and dance. The passion and grandeur of the musical numbers might make you La La Land - City of Stars: Seb (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) sing about dreams and love in the "City of Stars."BUY THE MOVIE: La La Land exploded onto movie theater screens across the world in 2016 with vibrant colors, exuberant musical numbers, and a devastating love story destined to fail.It introduced us to Ryan The debates around La La Land (2016) tell us a great deal about the state of jazz today and perhaps even in the near future. Many critics have charged that the film has very little real jazz, while others have emphasized the racial problematics of making the white hero a devout jazz purist while characterizing the music of the one prominent African American performer (John Legend) as all glitz “City of Stars,” one of the most memorable songs from La La Land, is a reflection of the movie’s themes and the characters’ emotional journeys. The song explores the dual nature of Los Angeles as a place where dreams can come true or be crushed, mirroring the challenges Mia and Sebastian face in pursuing their ambitions. Damien Chazelle is the writer/director of Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, Whiplash (from 2014) and this year's La La Land, an exuberant and exciting musical that is my #1 movie of the year. La Ryan Gosling reportedly played all the piano parts from the Oscar-nominated film La La Land himself but we're not buying it. Here's how we imagined the p Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in ‘La La Land’ (Photo: Lionsgate) When the most hummable song in your Los Angeles-set movie musical is “City of Stars,” there’s no way you can avoid making a First name (Required) Last name a musical has to boast at least one notable song. La La Land accomplishes this. Oh, "City of Stars" won't ultimately achieve the classic status of, say L2drh.