How did Skrillex end up co-writing the Kingdom Hearts III theme?

Utada Hikaru is the voice of Kingdom Hearts' numbered entries: she wrote and sang Hikari and its English version Simple and Clean for the first game, and Passion and Sanctuary for the second. For Kingdom Hearts III she returned with the ending theme, Chikai in Japanese and Don't Think Twice in English. The plan for the opening was a remix of that song, and Utada asked Skrillex to make it. The two had met at a music festival in Germany in 2013 and become friends, and Skrillex, born Sonny Moore, was something more useful than a famous producer: a genuine fan, who told The Verge he had said since childhood that he wanted to do the theme for Kingdom Hearts one day.

The remix defeated him. In his own account to The Verge, he loaded Don't Think Twice into his production software again and again and could not work on it: it was hard to touch because he just liked it how it was. The collaboration stalled until the summer of 2018, when both happened to be in London. There he proposed skipping the remix and writing something new instead. He started with piano chords, and, in his words, they wrote Face My Fears in about an hour. The finished song then sat complete for a full year before anyone heard it.

Face My Fears, co-written and produced by Utada, Skrillex, and songwriter Jason Boyd, known as Poo Bear, was released on January 18, 2019, in Japanese and English versions, eleven days before the game. It made Kingdom Hearts III the first entry in the series with completely different opening and ending themes, where earlier games had built the opening from a remix of the ending song, and it reached number 98 on the Billboard Hot 100. The fan got his childhood wish, by failing at the job he was actually given.