Some favourite recent film scores

Monday is movies, and sometimes TV. Today it's both - but actually it's music too. Movie and TV soundtracks. Recent favourites. Enjoy!

Once I opened myself up to the fact that it was worth listening to film scores even if you hadn’t seen the film – and also if you had seen it and hadn’t liked it much – I started to find some really great music to listen to.

Today, I thought I’d share a few of my favourites from the across the last couple of years. In some cases, I absolutely loved the film or TV series. But just as often I felt a bit let down by the filmed product, maybe in its final moments. Still, I listened to the music and found something magical. Sometimes it was because it was a favourite composer already, other times it was just genuinely surprising, or peaceful, or both – and it was nice to find something new.

I’ve mentioned this before – usually as part of a Friday newsletter I suppose – but over the last few years my main ‘genre’ if you like has been Soundtracks. OSTs. Movie Scores. I guess it’s a genre. But of course, it combines several genres. Diegetic (or source) music. Score composed especially for the film. Score that has been taken from other films and repurposed (Tarantino has been masterful with this in his post-Jackie Brown films in particular) and good old compilation soundtracks that pile up the hits of the era (The Big Chill is a classic example).

Anyway, here’s some of the soundtracks I’ve loved from the last couple of years. You can click on the link to read full reviews. You can sample the music from the Spotify embed. I’m keen to know if you’ve found any great scores from across the last few years. And if you hear anything here that you really like too…

Daniel Pemberton, Slow Horses (Season 1) I actually loved the first season of Slow Horses, and maybe anyone could have scored it, but I sure was glad that it happened to be Daniel Pemberton that got the gig. He’s made so many great scores of late, even when I haven’t liked the film or show, if Pemberton has been the one making the music then I’m listening to the score after. Must watch season two of Slow Horses…

Nicholas Britell, Succession (Season 3) Every season of Succession has been great, and Britell has scored them all – randomly season three is the score I found most memorable. But I’ll be listening to the season four score in isolation after the show finally ends.

Brian Tyler, Those Who Wish Me Dead Brian Tyler has been a dependable name in film scoring across the last decade or so, and across a range of sub-genres. This movie was great, I thought. A real throwback to 90s action-thrillers. Shit name though. Not sure what else it could have been called, but I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. And same goes for the score – not necessarily the sort of film score I would seek out. But I really dug it. And still do.

Marco Beltrami and Miles Hankins, Nine Perfect Strangers Nine Perfect Strangers was, ultimately, a dud. A half-realised TV show that got the nod because of its writer. They were all hoping for another hit and it had a pretty stacked cast. But yeah, by the end, it limped over the line for barely a pass-mark. However, the score was so great that I started listening to it while I was still waiting for each episode to drop. Beltrami and Hankins worked together on the scores for A Quiet Place (1 and 2) and separately they’ve done plenty of film work, particularly the very prolific Marco Beltrami.

Thomas Newman, The Little Things This film was a beguiling failure. Decent cast, good idea, but just an absolute dud. Bad direction, bad script, stilted performances, but certainly none of that was the fault of the music. Thomas Newman has made at least a half-dozen film scores that I absolutely love and could not be without (The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, The Green Mile, The Road to Perdition, WALL-E, Revolutionary Road and 1917 – see, truly, at least a half-dozen) and now I add The Little Things to that list too. But honestly, skip the film.

Clark, Lisey’s Story I forgot to finish the series, even though it started decently. I haven’t read the book, even though I love Stephen King. But I got so into this score, and it gave me a new favourite composer. I got so into Clark’s non-soundtrack work as a result of digging in on this.

Christobal Tapia de Veer, The White Lotus (Season 1) My posts about White Lotus would have mentioned, in passing, my love for the music. Not just the bonkers-but-brilliant credits sequence. Season two went broader, with lots of (great) Italian music too but this season one score remains my favourite.

Alexander Taylor, Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street Such a great doco! It’s all about the campness of the second A Nightmare on Elm Street film. That second film was a weird favourite of mine – weird, because it really made no sense, and the general consensus seemed to be that it was a ghastly dud. But maybe time has been kind. The further sequels (after 3) are the real tragedies. And though part two still makes no real sense, chronology/story-wise, it really does have a charm. If you watch this doco you’ll find out all about that – and a whole lot more. The music for the doco is superb and does a great job of playing off Christopher Young’s score for Elm Street film in question.

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies, Halloween All up, I rather liked the new (final?) trilogy of Halloween films – and the key to being on board was the clever ‘casting’ of John Carpenter returning to do the score/s. With the help of his son (Cody) and godson (Daniel) he retraces and updates the classic Halloween score. No surprises, but plenty of reasons to tune in – to the music if not the film/s.

Sean Murray, Avengement If I get the chance, I’m always very happy watching a trashy-but-wonderful action/martial arts film. Avengement is basically a box-ticker. And though I didn’t need to double-down and spend time with the score after, I did. And I’m glad I did. Lol.

So, there you go. A random sample of 10 film/TV scores you might not have heard before – or even thought about listening to. I might not have bothered either, were it not for the decision to dive headlong into film scores. I’m back out the other side now, and once again listening to old favourites from all genres and even discovering a bit of new music still – but the film score fixation continues. It’s still likely my new favourite genre.

Here's a playlist of a few (mostly older) favourites I recently made. I’m sure this is more film music than most people will ever need. But hopefully someone out there has found something new and cool through this.