Top 30 Movie Scores Of All Time

As a musician who is very much into movies, cinematic scores are pretty much my favorite thing in the world. My dad challenged me to post a list of the all-time greatest movie scores on my blog, and a challenge it indeed was. There are way more than 10 scores that deserve to be talked about, so I opted to make a top 30-list (don't worry, dear reader; the descriptions are shorter than usual so the post won't take 15 hours to read). Below is a list of my 30 favorite movie scores of all time; to qualify, the soundtrack must be a) instrumental and b) original (some of these films feature other music as well, but for this list I judge them only based on their original instrumental scores).

Here are my honorable mentions: Casablanca (Max Steiner), Dead Poets Society (Maurice Jarre), The Elephant Man (John Morris), Titanic (James Horner), Schindler's List (John Williams)

30. The Social Network (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross)

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails were quite an out-of-the-box choice to compose the soundtrack to Facebook biopic The Social Network. They did an amazing job however, producing a score that mixes the psychedelia and industrial sounds of Nine Inch Nails with the norms and styles of instrumental cinematic music. This made for a unique soundtrack suited perfectly for the dramatic story of Mark Zuckerberg and company.

29. The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise (Charles Bernstein)

One of the many horror movie scores to appear on this list, Bernstein's music for the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise (especially the original film) is some of the creepiest music ever composed. While the long and tense tracks in the film are decent, the true genius of this score is in the short interlude pieces that pop up in critical places. The iconic main melody theme and much of the music accompanying it throughout the film is bone-chillingly scary, and thus very appropriate for one of the most frightening horror films ever made.

28. The Back To The Future Trilogy (Alan Silvestri)

Alan Silvestri has got to be the world's greatest composer of John Williams -style soundtracks without being John Williams. The Back To The Future score is very reminiscent of Williams's work, yet ultimately very original and perfect for the film in question. The epic brass melody in the main theme is glorious and fun, echoing the attitude of the time-travelling film trilogy in just the right way.

27. BlacKKKlansman (Terence Blanchard)

There are two layers to this recent movie score. The soundtrack during a majority of the film (everything after the opening scene and before the final scene) is a wonderful re-imagining of saxophone-heavy police movie soundtracks from the 70's and 80's - cheesy yet dramatic and appropriate. However, the movie's opening and ending scenes - very similar to each other regarding their themes - feature serious and emotional orchestral music, which ties in well with the overarching themes of the film.

26. Jaws (John Williams)

How much can one do with just two notes? That is a question that can only be answered by watching Spielberg's Jaws and paying attention to the intense John Williams score. The main melody that most of the tracks are based on is an intricate balancing of two consecutive notes, and it works wonders. Of course there is an orchestra adding harmonies as the music goes on, and many changing rhythms, yet in its essence the music of Jaws is so great because the two-note motif works so well and stays fresh and exciting throughout the film.

25. It & It: Chapter Two (Benjamin Wallfisch)

The spirit of Stephen King's novel can be felt clearly in Benjamin Wallfisch's It score. The book, as well as the film adaptation, is a combination of beautiful coming-of-age story and terrifying horror story, and Wallfisch nails this combo with his soundtrack. At times the music is emotional, humane and beautiful, while at others it is intense and very creepy. From the suspenseful string section in the opening scene of 2017's It to the emotional track at the end of the 2019 sequel, the music played a huge part in the It movies being a solid adaptation that did King's novel justice.

24. The Star Trek Franchise (2009 Onwards) (Michael Giacchino)

As a whole, the Star Trek franchise has many great soundtracks to its name (the music is honestly the best part about 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, even though the original set of films barely missed out on this list). With the 2009 reboot, Michael Giacchino (a man who forever has a place in my heart due to his work on the Lost soundtrack) faced the challenge of combining the undying themes of exploration and adventure from the 1960's Star Trek series with a modern cinematic style fitting a J.J. Abrams blockbuster. He did a fantastic job, composing a soundtrack that feels more majestic and cinematic than any previous Star Trek scores yet still resonates with the essence of the franchise and its roots.

23. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (Michael Brook)

The score to this wonderful coming-of-age drama is untypical yet absolutely incredible. The use of long and slow chords played on various synth pads makes for a score that is constantly evolving and in perfect harmony with main character Charlie's story and the various phases he goes through in the film. Heartbreaking at times and uplifting at others, Michael Brook's music adds a lot to the deep emotional power of this fantastic film.

22. Gandhi (Ravi Shankar & George Fenton)

Legendary Indian composer Ravi Shankar worked with George Fenton to create just the right atmosphere for the biographical film of Mahatma Gandhi. The combination of Indian classical music elements with modern cinematic musical themes is incredible, making for a score that feels exotic and very Indian, while also having all the makings of a conventional Oscar-worthy soundtrack.

21. Psycho (Bernard Herrmann)

The most iconic horror soundtrack of all time deserves a lot of praise, even though it isn't quite my #1 favorite for the genre (see #7 on this list). I'm always amused when I remember that Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted Herrmann to compose a film-noir style jazz soundtrack for Psycho - the world would be a strange place had that happened. Herrmann's counter-proposal of making a string-heavy score was a great idea - the sharp and high-pitched string section in the infamous shower scene makes for one of the most inventive and influential moments in movie music history.

20. The Indiana Jones Franchise (John Williams)

Hearing five seconds of the main Indiana Jones theme is enough to make me want to hop on a plane and go on an thrilling adventure in some exotic setting. The adventurous spirit of the franchise translates so well into the magnificent John Williams score, with so many of the tracks being iconic and exciting - and surprisingly complex musically, as you might expect from a composer as genius as John Williams.

19. Black Panther (Ludwig Göransson)

Like quite a few of the scores on this list, Black Panther won the Academy Award for Best Original Score - a historic win for a comic book movie. And it was thoroughly deserved; Göransson did with the movie's African setting what Shankar & Fenton did with Gandhi and India: a perfect combination of cinema soundtrack norms and local music specific to certain parts of the world. A deep study of African music was conducted by Göransson as he composed the Black Panther score, leading to an exotic soundtrack that sounds genuinely African while also feeling genuinely Marvel. And as fan of creative rhythms, I'd say this film's main theme has that area covered more than hardly any other blockbuster.

18. The Terminator Franchise (Brad Fiedel)

1984's The Terminator had a soundtrack tailored for the film's atmosphere; a mixture of futuristic sci-fi sounds and an intense, badass rhythm fitting the action of the movie. Despite it being an action movie at its core, The Terminator also has a strong message of hope and humanity in its plot, and that comes across in the faint and emotional horn melody playing on top of the machinery-like rhythm. Brad Fiedel further improved upon this with 1991's Terminator: Judgement Day, with his arrangements of the first film's tracks being more dramatic and large in scale, while still having the same essence.

17. Top Gun (Harold Faltermeyer)

This is an interesting one: most people remember the Top Gun soundtrack for its use of pop/rock songs like Danger Zone and Take My Breath Away. While they do contribute a lot to the film's atmosphere, so does the extremely underrated instrumental soundtrack between those songs. Both versions of Faltermeyer's Top Gun Anthem are pitch perfect; the adrenaline-inducing buildup version played in the film's opening scene before Danger Zone kicks off, as well as the guitar-melody version played during the film's climax in what can only be called the most glorious action movie music of all time.

16. Birdman (Antonio Sanchez)

I may me partial to this one; I'm a drummer, and one doesn't come across movie soundtracks consisting entirely of drums very often. While the mere idea of a drum-based soundtrack is enough to get my attention, it's the inventive execution of this idea that puts the Birdman soundtrack this high on my list. The drumming is perfect for the film's unique and chaotic feeling, not to mention extremely skillful and rhythmically diverse.

15. Dunkirk (Hans Zimmer)

The entire soundtrack to Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk comes across as if it were one, two-hour long piece of music. It never ceases and is constantly evolving, matching the movie's engrossing intensity at every moment. The percussion rhythm in the background is like a ticking time bomb, building up towards something big and feeling suspenseful at all times. For a war film like Dunkirk, this unique soundtrack is absolutely perfect.

14. The Avengers Saga (Alan Silvestri)

2012's The Avengers was an ambitious project, bringing together the heroes from multiple superhero films, and the soundtrack had to match the ambition and epicness of what was happening on screen. Alan Silvestri was the right man for the job, with the overall score being quite majestic and especially the main theme and variations on its melody being some of the most glorious music ever heard in a movie soundtrack. As the team-ups and plotlines got even bigger with Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Avengers: Infinity War, so did the soundtrack, with Silvestri arranging the same melody ideas for even larger orchestras playing the music with even more gravitas. 2019's Avengers: Endgame brought this to an extreme, with melody of the main theme being ingeniously teased throughout the film and finally breaking through with unforeseen magnificence in the climactic battle scene.

13. The Godfather Trilogy (Nino Rota)

Nino Rota's soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather movies is pure class. I once happened upon an Italian string quartet playing the film's main theme live on a sunny day in Venice, and this was perhaps the most magical moment of my life. The beautiful and timeless aesthetic of these films is personified by the beautiful string melodies in Nino Rota's Love Theme, The Godfather Waltz and other undying tracks from this masterful work.

12. The Dark Knight Trilogy (Hans Zimmer)

No other director/composer duo has been as prolific in the modern film era as Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer - four of Zimmer's scores from Nolan films have made it onto this list of mine. Among them is the intense soundscape of blaring horns that defines the Dark Knight films. Large in scale and perfectly atmospheric for the series's dark depiction of Gotham City, this soundtrack is truly epic and befitting this wonderful film trilogy.

11. 1917 (Thomas Newman)

The newest of the scores to make this list, the 1917 soundtrack was somewhat robbed of an Oscar this year in my opinion (the Joker soundtrack was also very good, but still...). Similar in style to the Dunkirk score yet even more heart-pounding, emotional and intense, this Thomas Newman piece worked wonders for Sam Mendes's war film. The track Sixteen Hundred Men, played in a climactic scene, is some of the best music to ever depict the gruesome and chaotic nature of war.

10. Braveheart (James Horner)

By now you might have noticed that I have a thing for soundtracks that infuse typical cinematic score elements with the traditional music elements of the culture where the film is set (see: Gandhi, Black Panther, etc.). No score does that quite as well as James Horner's acclaimed music to Braveheart. The use of bagpipes, as well as harmonies and scales typical for Scottish music, makes the film's atmosphere feel so much more authentic. In addition to the iconic main theme and other memorable songs, the track Sons Of Scotland (played on the background of the iconic scene where William Wallace gives his battle speech at Stirling) is one of the best individual tracks from any movie score ever made.

9. Home Alone (John Williams)

I'll admit that this score's placement on my list is boosted by my childhood nostalgia for this film and its first sequel - but so what? The point of movie music is to cause emotional reactions, and opinions about movies are supposed to be subjective. Also, my nostalgia isn't the only reason for this placement - the Home Alone soundtrack is also a great piece of music on a more "objective" level, as you may expect from the great John Williams. The main title with its emotional modulations, the Holiday Flight -theme that has become synonymous with chaotic pre-holiday stress, and the adrenaline-inducing Setting The Trap -track are all examples of the amazing and magical music that is an essential part of this holiday classic.

8. The Jurassic Park Franchise (John Williams)

The majestic beauty of this score is quite one of a kind. While the Jurassic Park films have their tense and thrilling moments, they are ultimately a series of quite beautiful films where ancient creatures are brought back to life on an exotic island. And that is where the soundtrack succeeds the most; while the suspenseful scenes also have very good music accompanying them, it's the moments where the characters stop to look in awe at what the park has to offer where Williams's music is truly in its element. The main theme is an absolutely brilliant piece of orchestral music, with many of the other tracks being on the same level.

7. The Halloween Franchise (John Carpenter)

With this one, it's mostly about the main theme. It's perhaps the greatest main theme of a film soundtrack to ever be made (I can't really decide between this one and the main theme from #2 on this list). While the score also has other very decent pieces to it, the recurring main melody of the Halloween franchise is the best piece of music ever made for a horror film. The sheer intensity and feeling of horror of the track gives me the chills every time it plays during one of the Halloween films, whether it's in the opening sequence or the opening credits or suddenly during a scene to signify something big. The rhythms, chord progressions and sounds of the Halloween theme are ingeniously composed, and it makes for a soundtrack perfectly suiting these films.

6. The Harry Potter Franchise (John Williams)

On a non-analytical, intuition-based level, I love this soundtrack for how magical it is. It just sounds so great, and it sounds like the exact atmosphere that is present in J.K. Rowling's books. If I put my musician's hat on and think more analytically, I love this soundtrack even more for how genius it is; I once discovered it's one of the absolutely hardest soundtracks to learn by ear on the piano, because it's excessively complicated despite sounding quite natural. John Williams uses so many different scales and unconventional melodies and harmonies in the main theme alone, not to mention other pieces of the score. I'd also like to give a shout-out to Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper and Alexandre Desplat, for composing new tracks and making arrangements of Williams's themes in the later installments of the franchise.

5. Interstellar (Hans Zimmer)

Every time I hear a piece of the Interstellar score, I'm brought back to the movie theater in 2014. Listening to those tracks even six years afterwards for the millionth time never fails to bring back the exact feeling I had when watching this Christopher Nolan film for the first time; that's how powerful this soundtrack is. Zimmer's use of a simple melody echoing the feeling of contact and signals in the film's plot, as the music around the melody gets louder and more convoluted, is magnificent. The overlapping synth pads and organs get more and more chaotic and intense as the film goes on, leading to a larger-than-life musical experience that makes the film all the more memorable.

4. The Shawshank Redemption (Thomas Newman)

Of all the scores on this list, this one is the hardest to describe by words. It seems to transcend any conventional means of why film music is great. I have described many of the ones on this list as "perfect for the atmosphere of the movie" and "very powerful", but the Shawshank soundtrack takes that to an entirely new level. Newman's score is a masterpiece where every chord, every piano sound and string melody, is one hundred per cent reflective of the emotions the movie is causing at the moment and the power of the story. The stoic, dissonance-filled soundtrack builds up during the film until it finally reaches a breaking point in a certain climactic scene, where are the build-up leads to a glorious-sounding payoff in the titular track The Shawshank Redemption.

3. Inception (Hans Zimmer)

With the trademark large orchestral arrangements, blaring horns and intense progressions of Hans Zimmer, this tour-de-force is a piece of art that very many film composers have been trying to recreate over and over again in the 2010's with similar but less original scores. The track Mombasa is chaotic and rhythmically diverse, while The Dream Is Collapsing is gigantic in scope with its massive and dramatic sounds and chords, and Time is one of the most emotional songs ever composed in any genre. Simply put, the Inception soundtrack is Zimmer's masterpiece.

2. The Star Wars Franchise (John Williams)

How can one not feel chills down their spine when the legendary main theme starts to play at the beginning of every Star Wars film? The music is so very essential to these movies, with the iconic main melodies played by a wonderful brass section being such a big part of the aesthetic of this sci-fi adventure franchise. Apart from the main theme, there are tens and tens of other amazing tracks, with the haunting Force Theme, the universally ominous Imperial March and the dramatic Duel Of The Fates being among my favorites.

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy (Howard Shore)

Movies, at their best, feel magical. Music has a hand in this phenomenon; movies are at their most magical when the music accompanying them has its own larger-than-life feel to it. And no other soundtrack is so clearly larger than life as Howard Shore's masterful Lord Of The Rings score. I could go on and on about the different tracks and how each of them are perfect reflections of the places and characters they appear with, exact depictions of the atmosphere in Tolkien's books, and cleverly arranged into different versions depending on the intricate nature of each scene, but that subject would deserve its own blog post (or maybe a book). Suffice to say, my absolutely favorite tracks from here include the sweet Concerning Hobbits and its variations, the heart-jerking The Bridge Of Khazad-Dum, the glorious Minas Tirith and the powerful, closure-giving The Grey Havens. All of the other tracks are also amazing.

Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my ranking of all the films in the Star Trek franchise.