Awhile back a friend and I were talking about our favourite movie score. To supplement the discussion I decided to gather up a shortlist. My initial shortlist was 66 tracks long. I started to condense the shortlist into a top ten. I only had two rules: I could only pick one track per movie, and it had to be a movie score track, rather than a soundtrack song (as in, instrumental music written for the movie rather than an already published song included in the movie).
As I narrowed the list I realized I was choosing movies that meant the most to me. In the end I wasn’t looking for my favourite overall movie score, but a track from a movie that encapsulated scenes, or moments, or overall feelings from movies I loved. When I finally showed my top ten list to my friend he didn’t recognize a lot them. So I decided to write up what made those tracks meaningful to me.
So spoiler alert: In some cases I not only had to describe the foundation of the movie, but the overarching plot or themes as well. Some of the tracks were more involved than I thought. I tried to remain away from spoilery plot details wherever possible, but in moments where the movie score track accompanies the climax / ending, that was unavoidable. I’d also like to note that I only have very basic music training so where I’m talking about the music itself, I’m simply doing my best to communicate how the music makes me feel.
Here are my top ten favourite movie score tracks (in no particular order):