For several weeks now, I’ve been obsessed with this score…

It’s hardly the first time. When I was a kid, before I watched a lot of movies and certainly before I know what a “Brat Pack” was, I got obsessed with this song after seeing it set to fireworks…

When I did start getting into films, it wasn’t long before this one was purchased this cassette…

A few years later, around the time I turned twelve, the budding baseball fan in me became transfixed by this track…

Just a few years later, like so many other film fans, I found myself playing this one on loop…

Not long after that, again like so many other film fans, I couldn’t get enough of these chiming tones…

Of course, as I got into the classics, I soon found myself humming this one to myself…

Like so many of you, I haven’t been able to stop playing this one for the last two years…

Likewise, anytime I’m feeling a bit nervous, I find that humming this track from three years ago settles me down quite nicely…

What is it about a great score that sticks with us? Before you know what’s hit you, the track has burrowed itself into your ear and stuck there. It reminds us both of the film we’ve watched, and those moments in our own lives we quietly wish had a movie soundtrack playing under them.

Not to underline my soundtrack geekery further, but I do have a playlist on my iPod right now with some of my favorite tracks:

What’s The Score? Playlist

  • Hand Covers Bruise – Trent Reznor (THE SOCIAL NETWORK)
  • The Dream is Collapsing – Hans Zimmer (INCEPTION)
  • The Game Has Changed – Daft Punk (TRON LEGACY)
  • Summer Overture – Clint Mansell (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM)
  • Liberation – AR Rahman (127 HOURS)
  • Life – Mark Streitenfeld (PROMETHEUS)
  • End Titles – Tom Tykwer (CLOUD ATLAS)
  • Proven Lands – Jonny Greenwood (THERE WILL BE BLOOD)
  • Able-Bodied Seaman – Jonny Greenwood (THE MASTER)
  • Moving On – Nick Cave (THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES)
  • Postcards – Alexandre Desplat (CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON)
  • Perfection – Clint Mansell (BLACK SWAN)
  • The Surface of The Sun – John Murphy (SUNSHINE)
  • Sonata for Cello and Piano – Mutato Muzika (RUSHMORE)
  • Briony – Dario Marianelli (ATONEMENT)
  • Discombobulate – Hans Zimmer (SHERLOCK HOLMES)
  • Devil is In The Details – Chemical Brothers (HANNA)
  • The Kings Speech – Alexandre Desplat
  • The Poet Acts – Phillip Glass (THE HOURS)
  • Road to Chicago – Thomas Newman (ROAD TO PERDITION)
  • Foreground – Grizzly Bear (BLUE VALENTINE)
  • God Yu Tekkem Laef Blong Mi – Hans Zimmer (THE THIN RED LINE)
  • Test Drive – John Murphy (HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON)
  • You’re So Cool – Hans Zimmer (TRUE ROMANCE)
How’s about you – any favorite scores through the years?

32 Replies to “Life’s a Happy Song: The Movie Scores that Stick With Us”

  1. Cool list man.
    Ha I have “Dead Already”, “Hand Covers Bruise” and “Married Life” in my phone right now 🙂
    Apart from these, “Comptine d’un autre Ă©tĂ©” from AmĂ©lie, “Morning Passages” from The Hours, “Yumeji’s Theme” from In the Mood for Love, “A Familiar Taste” from TSN again, and the latest, “The Heroic Weather-Conditions of the Universe, Part 7: After The Storm” from Moonrise Kingdom.

    Still I would say I am not much of a score person. Soundtracks however…

    1. Funny thing about the score for THE HOURS – When I saw the film, I thought the score was a little heavy-handed. It felt like in a lot of scenes the dialogue had to fight to be heard over the music.

      Later when I listened to the score independent of the film, I realized how truly beautiful it was. “The Poet Acts” is my favorite track.

      And thanks for reminding me to get my mitts on the scores for MOONRISE and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE!

  2. This is a very cool post. Thanks for sharing! I love the American Beauty soundtrack, but lately I’ve been listening to “Test Drive” from How To Train Your Dragon. I love that song. Same with “Once There Was A Hushpuppy” from Beasts of the Southern Wild.

    1. Oh man – love “Test Drive”. It always makes me feel so optimistic! And this is the second comment that has given me a little reminder: in this case it’s to track down a copy of the music from SOUTHERN WILD.

      Thanks!

  3. Great music you have there, I think we have similar taste. Some of my favourites from recent years include:

    “Hand Covers Bruise” from The Social Network
    “Time” and “The Dream is Collapsing” from Inception
    “Bibo No Aozora” from Babel
    “It’s A Process” from Moneyball
    “Briony” and “Elegy for Dunkirk” from Atonement
    “Piano Variation in Blue” from Finding Neverland
    “Latika’s Theme” from Slumdog Millionaire
    “Life” from Prometheus

  4. Now, that’s a hell of a playlist! I’d be completely content to have that blaring through my headphones as I struggle with an essay.

    Although, I’d probably swap “Hand Covers Bruise” with “Intriguing Possibilities”. I think “Hand Covers Bruise”, excellent as it is, gets a little too much credit. I think “Intriguing Possibilities” is a much more dynamic and, dare I say, INTRIGUING song to listen to. Granted, that’s only on the soundtrack. In the film, the songs take on new meanings, which is something I’ve always been fascinated with. I love a score during the film, because it adds so much to it. Then I buy it and listen to it by itself, and it’s different. It might not resonate with me as much. It might resonate with me more. Curious…

    And man, the CLOUD ATLAS score is pristine isn’t it?

    1. OOO OOO OOO!! Almost forgot about this one. Howard Shore’s original score for THE DEPARTED. All those spanish guitars. What a gem that one is! Ok, if we’re mentioning Shore, I guess we should mention LORD OF THE RINGS, cuz… you know, hobbits!

      1. I’m also a big fan of “In Motion” as straightforward as it seems. I’m actually rather perplexed with how much more I like TSN soundtrack in comparison to DRAGON TATTOO given that they come from a similar place.

        Never been a huge fan of Shore’s LOTR work…a little too repetitive for me.

        Definitely reach for the headphones next time you’re workin’. I’ve almost always got some complimentary music playing when I’m working on a post.

      2. I like TSN more than DRAGON TATTOO as well. I think they both work great as soundtracks in the film. On an album, I think DRAGON TATTOO isn’t as focused as TSN. Though that might have had something to do with the fact that “Immigrant Song” overshadowed EVERYTHING on that disc.

  5. Man, that’s a cool list. Most of my iPod is filled up with soundtracks (my friends think I’m weird because of that). I love the score to The Social Network to the end of the Earth and back, and I often listen to the Inception soundtrack to get nostalgic about 2010. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hanna, The Dark Knight Rises and Drive haven’t left my daily listening since I got them. It is a small collection, but I adore that music.

      1. If not in Contempt itself, you may have heard it in Casino. Scorsese was a big fan of both the film and the score, and used it repeatedly to evoke a mood of emotional loss (both films center on the end of a marriage – with a blonde no less! Who said they have more fun?)

  7. When it comes to orchestral scores, The LAST OF THE MOHICANS is still and always a favorite. The music for HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS is exquisite.

    I really like the soundtracks to COLD MOUNTAIN (the music is the only thing I liked about that movie) and GANGS OF NEW YORK for the Irish/Americana folks songs.

    1. Curiously, the music for GANGS doesn’t stick out much in my head…which might say something about how much I liked it (That U2 track that closes the film is pretty cool though).

      I’m with you COLD MOUNTAIN, both on liking the soundtrack and disliking the film. All of that rootsy, folksy music made for such a textured listen. When you expand it out and bring in the songs they played by artists like Allison Krauss and Elvis Costello, it gets even better! Might have to track that one down soon.

      And it looks like Nick totally concurs with you about MOHICANS…

  8. I don’t buy scores too often, but here are the ones I keep on the iDevices pretty consistently:

    The Social Network
    The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (T. Reznor & A. Ross)
    Inception
    Black Hawk Down
    Drive
    The Muppets Soundtrack
    The Animatrix
    Trainspotting
    TRON: Legacy
    Braveheart
    Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ

    There are probably even more parts of soundtracks, but these are the ones I load the full albums of.

    1. Oh man – I’d forgotten about Passion (don’t ask me why). That’s one of the all-time greats…perhaps because of Gabriel’s ability to turn the music into a living-breathing entity all its own. “A Different Drum” is a track I could play on loop.

      Can’t say I’ve ever listened to the music for BLACK HAWK DOWN. What’s it like?

  9. The score from American Beauty is as hauntingly beautiful in 1999 as it is now. And I was so pumped when Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won best original score for The Social Network XD

    1. It’s funny – every once in a while when I think I’m “over” that AMERICAN BEAUTY score, I hear it somewhere and think to myself “What was I thinking – it’s still pretty rad”

  10. I agree with Helen. The score for “Last of the Mohicans” is tough to beat. You haven’t lived until you’ve driven through the mountains where they actually shot the movie with the score cranked on your car’s stereo. (Well, you probably have lived. But I hadn’t until then.)

    “Glory” is another personal favorite. And “Chariots of Fire.” When you just see it and hear it in its original context it cuts through any and all parodies of it in the ensuing years.

    And John Murphy’s score for “Sunshine”, which you noted, is just breathtaking.

    I could go on all day.

    1. I think I saw the CHARIOTS OF FIRE score spoofed one too many times on TV comedies during the 80’s that it now exists as an entity all its own. That said, I was pretty amused by what they did with it during the opening ceremonies of the London olympics.

      The girl who first got me into scores was a really big fan of both Mohicans and Glory. I think I’ll need to get my mitts on both of those and give them a listen (that, and I’m overdue for a rewatch of MOHICANS).

  11. Oh I LOVE David Foster!! And St Elmo’s Fire love theme is one of my all time fave of his work, glad you love it too! Great scores stay with us not only because they’re such ear candy, but also because of their ability to move us. Some of my faves like Somewhere In Time, Phantom of the Opera, Sense and Sensibility and Gladiator never fail to move me.

    1. Are you like me and totally smirk at the way PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ripped off the GLADIATOR score?

      Sometimes I forget about David Foster…I wonder why he stopped scoring films?

  12. I LOVE this article. And of course, the headline totally drew me in. The irony is that I’m writing this comment while listening to the soundtrack from I’m Not There- not an original score but a soundtrack all the same. And you included Field of Dreams! Score one for the baseball geeks.

    I have almost the exact same playlist- a playlist that’s all movie scores/soundtracks. It has: Donovan’s Atlantis (thanks to Goodfellas); The Ecstasy of Gold from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly; Chorale (Day for Night); Le MĂ©pris (Godard’s Contempt); Brahms Violin Concerto (3rd Movement)- the end credits of There Will be Blood; the theme from Shoot the Piano Player; the theme from The Cremator; Speaking Unto Nations from The King’s Speech; Trent Reznor’s version of In the Hall of the Mountain King (aka the Henley Sequence in The Social Network); The Hebrides Overture (various movies); and the various GymnopĂ©dies and Gnossiennes that make up the soundtrack from The Fire Within.

    A good score- classical or otherwise- can add so very much to a film, whether it’s the 70s-infused Tarantino, the classical garnishments of Scorsese and PT Anderson, the Kinks-driven Wes Anderson, the happy-go-lucky Muppets, or pretty much anything that Ennio Morricone ever did.

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