The best film soundtracks of 2018
Image: Photo: HereditaryPhoto: SuspiriaPhoto: You Were Never Really HereGraphic: Libby McGuire Aux Features Best Of 2018
2018’s best film music is about reinvention. We may be doomed to an endless parade of reboots, remakes, and sequels, both spiritual and otherwise, on our theater screens—a problem that, to be fair, is not a new one for Hollywood—but thankfully we’ve got visionary composers and performers who can mold familiar themes into fresh new shapes. Some of these reinventions upend our expectations, as with Thom Yorke’s delicate, hypnotic response to Goblin’s bombastic score to the original Suspiria. Others are more interested in refinement, like the new textures John Carpenter added to his Halloween theme for David Gordon Green’s remake. And some present the expected in vivid new ways that spark the imagination, like the triumphant pop mastery of A Star Is Born and the Afrofuturist innovation of Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop driven Black Panther soundtrack. Even self-reinvention is on the table, as in Jonny Greenwood and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s edgy scores for a pair of similarly boundary-pushing films.
We’ve collected 10 of the year’s best soundtracks and scores—here defined as the work of songwriters and composers, as opposed to the music supervisors who compile existing songs into soundtrack albums—below.
A Star Is Born
The problem with most movies about fictional musicians is the music. For an audience to really become immersed in the world of a rock (or pop, or country, or hip-hop) star, we have to believe that thousands of people would actually pay money to watch this person perform—and that’s tough to do with milquetoast filler. A Star Is Born understands this very well, recruiting professional songwriters like Jason Isbell, Paul Kennerley, and Lukas Nelson to help bring the musical oeuvre of Bradley Cooper’s tortured country singer-songwriter Jackson Maine up to festival-circuit level. And while Cooper’s co-star Lady Gaga hardly needs help writing pop hits, she’d bring in heavy hitters like Diane Warren and Mark Ronson to work on her solo album in real life, too. The verisimilitude of the result is remarkable: You can actually imagine singing along with “Shallow” on the radio, or hearing “Heal Me” piped in through the loudspeakers at a fast-fashion emporium, or watching Ally play “Always Remember Us This Way” on grand piano at an awards show—which Lady Gaga might actually do come Oscar season, closing the musical reality loop. [Katie Rife]
Cold War
Looked at one way, Cold War can be seen as a kind of shadow Star Is Born: Though it unfolds over a couple decades and on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Pawel Pawlikowski’s gorgeously monochromatic period romance centers, too, on the tumultuous relationship between an older musician (Tomasz Kot) and the young, beautiful chanteuse (Joanna Kulig) he plucks out of obscurity. But the spectrum of music highlighted here is much wider than what a simple rock-pop dichotomy could hope to cover. Brilliantly, the film uses its mostly pre-existing songs to mark each leap forward in time and map the seismic changes rippling through a post-WWII Europe. Ragtag rural folk of the Mazowske variety gives way to bombastic Soviet propaganda music, then bebop piano and French jazz, then Gershwin and Bach, and finally—to officially eulogize the death of an old world and the birth of a new one—“Rock Around The Clock.” It’s a mid-century mixtape of cultural transition, perfectly curated. Pawlikowski even has his own trailer-ready “Shallow,” though his version is sadder, smokier, and sexier: a Polish folk standard, “Two Hearts,” transformed into a lounge ballad melancholy enough to stop yours. [A.A. Dowd]
Black Panther
Marvel may have already scored a soundtrack hit with the throwback jukebox pleasures of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 1, but it wasn’t until the hero from Wakanda that it landed on an album as inspired as the film that birthed it. The Black Panther soundtrack may be a compilation, but this is the Kendrick Lamar show through and through. The rapper’s presence saturates nearly every contribution, be it his appearance on the fiery Schoolboy Q excitement of “X” or his pit-er-pat hook on the Travis Scott team-up “Big Shot.” And the tracks credited to Kendrick bump with the Afrofuturist throb of the film that prompted him to curate this compilation. The opposite of a lazy cash-in record, Kendrick and his collaborators all deliver top-of-their-game beats and verses, the entire project doubling as a victory lap for Top Dawg Entertainment’s creative insurgency in hip-hop, the rare 21st century movie soundtrack that’s also a massive commercial hit. [Alex McLevy]
Suspiria
How do you create a soundtrack for a remake of a film known, in large part, for the titanic power of its soundtrack? If you’re Thom Yorke, you go in the exact opposite direction of the Italian prog band Goblin, conjuring up a double-LP spell of queasy dark ambient, droning Krautrock, and ballads that evoke Radiohead at its Amnesiac-era dreariest. In the context of the film, it adds an intoxicating new dimension to the on-screen witchcraft. As an album, it makes a great case for Yorke’s future as a solo artist—or at least a soundtrack composer. [Clayton Purdom]
You Were Never Really Here
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PL7-lFGlqsMm1nkcTZR6iBBqLfkgG0Is_V’ type=’playlist’]Jonny Greenwood’s better known for the eye-popping dissonance and Oscar-friendly romance of his work with Paul Thomas Anderson; his work with Lynne Ramsay pushes all of his proclivities further to the edge, resulting in fractured blasts of clattering percussion and uneasy, quivering beauty. His score for the hitman-redemption potboiler You Were Never Really Here mirrors Joaquin Phoenix’s remarkable performance, flicking quickly between Drive-wave menace and fluttering string elegies. Like the film itself, it’s quick, difficult, and memorable. [Clayton Purdom]
Mandy
The score to the psychotronic Nicolas Cage vehicle Mandy was the last project celebrated composer Jóhann Jóhannsson completed before his premature death in February. This simple, crushing fact can’t help but color the experience of listening to the film’s soundtrack, compiled separately from the score itself and released as a stand-alone album in September. Mandy marked a new musical direction for Jóhannsson, one that pulls the seemingly contradictory aural impulses of lush synthesizer romance, cold percussive menace, and harsh buzzsaw guitars into one doom metal-influenced ambient whole that sets your whole body abuzz with blissful waves of ecstatic noise. [Katie Rife]
Revenge
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PLohYzz4btpaTsLYvB79UKTUZjbEcVrtMN’ type=’playlist’]The synth-driven horror-movie soundtrack has become stale from overuse in recent years, but even in this oversaturated climate it’s still possible to smash through the walls of cliché through sheer mastery. That’s the case with Rob’s score for Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, which, much like the film it’s soundtracking, rips apart its glossy, flashy style from within with thrilling undercurrents of violent catharsis. The title track has the simple, pulsing melody of any number of Carpenter wannabes, and the slick dance floor beats of an Ibiza nightclub, but the decadence is cut with a cacophony of dissonant noise that glides down the track like a sudden, sharp flash of pain through the fog of a drug-addled partygoer’s brain. [Katie Rife]
Halloween
Every cliché was fresh once, and you can’t blame John Carpenter for setting the standard that soundtrack composers have been trying to live up to ever since he wrote the Halloween theme more than 40 years ago. But while his acolytes may hold his ’70s and ’80s works as sacred, Carpenter does not. So when it was time for another remake of Halloween, Carpenter called upon his son Cody and frequent collaborator Daniel Davies—both of whom were instrumental in Carpenter’s recent reinvention as a touring musician—to help him reimagine the most seminal track in horror-movie history. They did so by adding a thumping heartbeat to the song’s precise and persistent clicking mechanical beat, as well as bombastic layers of atmospheric synths that add a sense of space to the original’s intensely focused forward thrust. The new compositions the trio cooked up for David Gordon Green’s Halloween, including highlight “The Shape Hunts Allyson,” share a similarly textured, expansive approach to Carpenter’s signature straightforward keyboard melodies, reasserting the horror master’s place as the king of the form. [Katie Rife]
Hereditary
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PLkLimRXN6NKzXHL5qKuyV_vGy4AwdISNi’ type=’playlist’]A listening experience as jarring and unpredictable as the film from which it comes, multi-instrumentalist composer Colin Stetson’s soundtrack for the psychological horror of Hereditary goes all-in to create a mood of instability and dread. With an underlying doom-and-drone texture, Stetson’s usual woodwind techniques—upper-register saxophone, key clacks used as percussion—are on display, but he makes them subservient to the ominous low-pitch rumblings that dominate the proceedings. The film’s texture takes center stage, not Stetson. By foregoing his normal procedures and embracing electronic flourishes and swelling waves of synth-laden chorals, the music rises and falls in unsettling progression, often lingering in near-total silence for extended breaks before beginning another atonal declension or wailing melody. Consider it the polar opposite of easy listening. [Alex McLevy]
First Man
Scoring a drama about the space race probably isn’t as daunting a task as composing all the songs for an original musical. (No one needs to tap their toes along to whatever is blaring when the astronauts stride to the launch pad.) Yet the soundtrack Justin Hurwitz created for First Man is a worthy, versatile encore to his La La Land score. As in that Oscar-winning suite, Hurwitz creates a symphony of repeated themes, familiar melodies bobbing in and out of the mix like objects caught in celestial orbit. Space itself becomes a zone of science-fiction menace (“Spin”), classic Hollywood enchantment (“Docking Waltz”), and theremin-abetted majesty (“Moon Walk”), while the musician uses clicks and whirrs and groans to ground his more conventionally rousing compositions in the nuts-and-bolts procedural spirit of the material. Meanwhile, Hurwitz revives the earworm melancholia of “City Of Stars” in some delicately plucked numbers for the home front. On a whole, First Man views Neil Armstrong, that famously guarded American icon, as a man emotionally removed from the world. But as surely as it blasts us into outer space, Hurwitz’s music transports us into his head and heart, the soundstage for the musical he keeps inside, muffled by introversion. [A.A. Dowd]
79 Comments
First Man’s got my vote, 10000%. Wholly unique, wholly distinctive on SO many levels, and perfectly fitting for such a quiet movie. The Favourite (while not technically an OST) also has one of the most ridiculously stacked and well-picked classical playlists (much like The Lobster before it) that’s been on loop for my past month.
“The Landing” is as good as “No Time For Caution” from Interstellar. I bought that track immediately after coming home from the movie.
I LOVE The Landing. Listen to it all the time.
“Wholly unique, wholly distinctive on SO many levels.”You wouldn’t be saying that if you are at all familiar with scores like Last of the Mohicans, Gravity, Interstellar, United 93, or Moonraker.
I am deeply familiar with all of those, haha. No one’s used the theremin in such a prominent way in ages – main themes have been instrumentally stagnant since Zimmer’s second synth push in the early aughts (for the most part), and the young’uns like Hurwitz, McCreary, and Pemberton have been a seriously needed shot in the arm to move the needle back towards a more diverse instrumental scene….interesting spread of scores, too, haha. Not quite sure what throughline you’re trying to pull there, but I’m kinda curious now.
What do you consider to be ages? There has been prominent use of the theremin in GODZILLA: PLANET OF THE MONSTERS, ZOMBILLÉNIUM, CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS, THE BOSS BABY, DYRENE I HAKKEBAKKESKOGEN, EXTRAORDINARY TALES, etc. All those scores were written in the last THREE YEARS!“main themes have been instrumentally stagnant since Zimmer’s second synth push in the early aughts”Say what? How many film scores do you listen to? Your comment couldn’t be FURTHER from the truth.“Not quite sure what throughline you’re trying to pull there, but I’m kinda curious now.”Each one of the scores I listed was OBVIOUSLY used in the temp. Hell, Hurwitz pretty much rips off John Powell’s United 93 – right down to the final chord statement from the cue “The End” – in his cue “Apollo 13 Launch”, which also has elements from LAST OF THE MOHICANS. INTERSTELLAR, GRAVITY, MOONRAKER… even Strauss is littered throughout Hurwitz disjointed score. You call it unique, I call it a bad case of temptrackitis.
Mandy, Hereditary, Black Panther, Review, Halloween (The Shape Returns is what I’m calling it now) all have brilliant soundtracks. Suspiria? That one was a monumental disappointment for me and is only part of the reason that film was such a letdown. The last thing I expected/wanted was something so ordinary and for the most part that’s what I heard.
“Review,” is supposed to be “Revenge.”
To me the soundtrack shift was similar to that of the colors: from brilliant to boring.
I’m still looking forward to giving the film itself a shot, but no surprise that Yorke’s soundtrack was so forgettable. Kudos to the general idea of breaking from the template set by the original, but I still think that this gig should have gone to Mike Patton, who’s demonstrated his suitability throughout his entire career and particularly with this year’s 1922 soundtrack.
I don’t think York’s soundtrack is forgettable it just doesn’t overtake and supercede the images in the film. Sure Goblins soundtrack is awesome but a soundtrack as showy as this would have been completely inappropriate for the film. Ha having the literal, “WITCH” lyrics is a bit much for the what the new movies going for. I think Yorks score is wonderful and supports the film appropriately. The distorted guitars at the end of the film are actually really cool!
Mike Patton….as part of Fantomas!
Dang, good call. I was thinking more along the solo lines – somewhere between Pranzo Oltranzista and Laborintus II, but some assistance from Buzz and the gang wouldn’t go amiss either!
Honestly, any band with Patton OR Patton by himself would be glorious!I just kneejerked Fantomas because of The Director’s Cut and I thought I remembered “Goblin” on there…but it was “Der Golem”.
Yeah, I wonder if perhaps the Suspiria theme is already too deranged for the Fantômas touch to be that effective – much as I’d like to hear that song with ‘The Bit’-esque guitars and Lombardo’s drumming, it might sound like a straight cover compared to the other madness on that album.
Damn, what? Suspiria was easily Yorke’s best ever solo work and the song-songs are among some of his best non-Radiohead work. The more soundtrack-y cuts were otherworldly and frightening and repurposed Yorke’s gift for dour moods to great ends. What was there to dislike? For what it’s worth, I also thought Suspiria was a trip, and while I understand a lot of the criticisms lobbed at I find most of them oddly nitpicky and lazy. One of my favorite films of the year, a clear improvement on the original in most ways, and one I think is destined to be much more positively received in future decades.
I’m with ya. While obviously not on the same classic status, Suspiria feels like this decade’s The Shining, a film met with mixed to negative reviews upon release that will be seen as a sterling gem of the horror genre and what it can acheive, in the years to come
I’m with ya. While not an out-and-out classic like Kubrick’s film, I feel like Suspiria will end up as this decade’s The Shining: A horror film met with mixed to tepid reviews upon release that will go on in the years to come to be seen as a sterling gem of the genre and an example of the artistic heights it can achieve. Fight me, internet.
My main problem with Thom Yorke’s soundtrack is not that it doesn’t replicate Goblin’s (that would have been equally as disappointing for me), it’s that it felt so safe and ordinary. I feel that Johnny Greenwood would have done a much better job because he seems to be the more daring of the two and his transition into film scores has proven to be exceptional. As for the actual film itself, the dance scenes (mainly, the one of the climax) were fantastic and easily the standout parts of the film aside from the spectacular bit of body horror but I wouldn’t consider it anywhere near the original and I doubt it will be remembered as so and I say this as someone who doesn’t think Suspiria is Dario Argento’s masterwork even though I do enjoy it. One film felt like art and the other felt like a product made by someone who was essentially shouting “THIS IS ART,” throughout the entire film and for me the latter is definitely Suspiria 2018 and it suffered greatly as a result. My complaints about the new film are far, far too many so I won’t waste your time on all of them but my number one is at least partially shared with you I believe in that it wasted far too much time on a subplot that involved too much tell and less show involving Tilda Swinton’s stunt casting as an old man and that not at all engrossing (though it honestly could have been) plot thread that somehow even ended the film. There is definitely a good film somewhere in this overlong remake but unfortunately I think Luca’s apparent pretentiousness got the best of him here. And, while I won’t disagree with you that this could be Thom Yorke’s best solo material (I’m not the biggest Radiohead fan so I haven’t listened to his solo material), I think someone like Greenwood or a number of more exciting composers would have made a far more exciting soundtrack that could have elevated this picture and maybe helped me even overlook it’s numerous flaws.
Seriously? I went in with zero expectations, and the soundtrack was one of the things that won me over with the new Suspiria. I was afraid it would try to imitate Goblin’s legendary tunes, but instead it provided something completely different, yet just as appropriate. I still have Suspirium and Unmade stuck in my head. The only complaint I have about the film is the pacing; it could have easily been 15-20 minutes shorter with minimal editing.
I definitely didn’t want him to imitate Goblin, I just wanted him to do something interesting and different for the soundtrack and what he delivered for me was painfully safe and ordinary. Where I wanted tension and dissonance and a sense of unease, I got a soundtrack that wouldn’t have felt out of place in your average indie romance film and that for me was very disappointing and in many cases took me out of the film. It was the opposite of immersive for me. But yeah, I do agree that the pacing was off in the film though I would say it was horribly off and there was at least one subplot that could have been removed entirely.
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THANK YOU. its honestly the worst work ive heard all year. completely takes you out of the film with Thom Yorks awful whiney voice. it was like in rainbows b sides, and cheapened the film. its a no from me dog.
Shout out to Colin Stetson’s score for Hereditary, particularly the tonal shift for the finale.
That’s shouted out in the article above.
Giving a “shout out” might be a way of expressing enthusiastic agreement, right?
I think if there’s already someone else shouting, then one might be said to be joining in chorus 🙂
I didn’t say it was the BEST way to say it.
Yes, but a “call out” is an expression of defiant disagreement.
What a country!
Yeah, just listening to the music from the final scene several weeks after watching the movie still fucked me up.
I also quite liked the soundtrack from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Every movie could benefit from Brendan Gleason on the soundtrack singing “Unfortunate Rake/Streets of Laredo”
Man, I wish Jóhann Jóhannsson hadn’t done all that blow.
With retro-synthwave making a splash with movies like Drive, Revenge and return of Carpenter, himself, I’d love to see artist Perturbator, who can be heard peppered throughout the Hotline Miami games, get a crack at a full length movie soundtrack, especially since his last album The Uncanny Valley was a concept album.
Who would have thought that Suspiria, a film perhaps the most memorable for its unique and striking soundtrack, would happen to get a remake that has a completely different, but just as stylistically appropriate soundtrack that will probably boost its sales down the line as a cult classic. Seriously, I didn’t expect for one second to genuinely like the new Suspiria as much as I do. Sometimes it’s good to be wrong.
I actually went in expecting to love it and was sadly disappointed to be proven wrong. When I first heard about the remake I naturally scoffed but then when I saw the trailers I was incredibly excited and a huge part of that was how it looked to be such a unique interpretation of the original and looked to be genuinely frightening (something the original nor really any of Dario Argento’s films are even though I thoroughly enjoy or love a large number of them), maybe I just allowed myself to get to psyched for this new one but it was definitely a letdown for me.
I haven’t seen the remake of Suspiria, so can’t comment on that, but your point about potentially getting ‘too psyched’ before seeing it is one that really spoiled a bunch of films for me.I would get super-stoked for a film before its release, only to go and inevitably be disappointed at the cinema. Then, after a few months I might watch it again and, without the burden of my self-generated hype, end up really enjoying it the second time.Perfect example of this for me is The Bourne Supremacy. I adored the first film (I’m a big Liman fan), but when I first saw the sequel I was really disappointed. I hated the loss of Franke Potente’s character and couldn’t get to grips with Greengrass’s very different editing style. It was only on a much later second viewing that I came to really, really like it (and its sequel – you know, the one that completes the trilogy. Because there is not a fourth, truly awful, film).
Avengers? Bad Times at the El Diablo?
I never buy a soundtrack album.The only other film scores I own are the John Carpenter compilation and the Ennio Morricone compilation.But I bought the soundtrack for ‘Mandy’ the day after watching it. I realised I couldn’t get the feeling of armageddon out of my head without hearing it again. I think it’s my favourite album of the year, soundtrack or otherwise.
Halloween was a huge letdown for me. I didn’t find it suspenseful at all.
Hereditary, however, is a fucked-up delight. Annihilation, as well, is skin-crawling.
Now that you mention it, Annihilation is a surprising omission. After the trailer appeared, people went nuts over that alien motif.
Where the hell is Superfly? Best soundtrack in years.
How could you forget this spook shit?
The film I enjoyed most in theaters this year was Thoroughbreds, so I felt I should give a shoutout to Erik Friedlander’s scoring, which uses percussion and dissonant strings to keep you on edge. The soundtrack mixes his stuff together with some tracks by other artists, so perhaps it doesn’t form a cohesive whole, but I liked parts of it enough to mention here:
Not to mention Tanya Tagaq’s bangers. This soundtrack was amazing and I’m pissed it didnt get any love on this list. Critics seem to have forgotten about this movie as soon as it left theaters. It’s a damn shame.
Good call. Hats off to A Star is Born, but the soundtrack I like listening to is from ‘Bad Times at the El Royale’. Susperia had a good minute or two, but overall, it was boring music.
MANDY is at the top of my lists. Best Actor for Nic Cage, Best Movie of the Year, and hands down best soundtrack. Much of the Mandy soundtrack is scary noise, but after seeing the movie (and so much appreciating its heavy-metal vibe), the soundtrack is more than just music, it plays the images behind your eyes.Did I mention Mandy fucking rules?
North by Northwest, or maybe 2001. I can’t remember which I saw first. But those were the first two soundtracks I loved, and the first two I purchased.
NxNW was the first that proved (to me) that a soundtrack can be a standalone album.
Last of the Mohicans. As far as scores go, it’s the G.O.A.T.
In 1992, “Last of the Mohicans” wasn’t even nominated for best score. Aladdin won that. Just like in 1979, “All That Jazz” and “Apocalypse Now” both lost to freaking, “Kramer vs. Kramer” for best picture.
That is why I don’t watch awards shows. The Oscars are as much of a joke as the Grammys, the Emmys or the Golden Globes. They are such an insider feast of self-congratulation that it borders on the masturbatory.
Don’t know much about the Tonys.
I mostly agree. There are some categories that I generally respect (e.g. the nominees for Oscars best director are almost always defensible, but it is only directors voting, so that makes sense), but as a rule, I’m with you.Aladdin had a great soundtrack—I absolutely would have given it best song—but failing to nominate Mohicans is utterly indefensible.
On the photo it says best film scores but then some of these really only mention the use of pop songs and not much about the score at all…
Still bummed that Jóhann Jóhannsson did all that blow.
You Were Never Really Here has an incredible score which I’m still listening to. Tree Synthesisers/Strings are absolutely gorgeous and Ywnrh legitimately makes me nervous wherever I happen to be listening to it. Can someone temper my expectations of whether Jonny Greenwood will get an Oscar sooner rather than later, please? I don’t wanna spend all summer getting hyped up for disappointment.
Down a Dark Hall was YA, but Victor Reyes was worth noticing.
I had the soundtrack of the original Mary Poppins when I was a kid and loved it! (“Chim Chim Cher-ee”, “Jolly Holiday”, and of course, “I Love to Laugh.”)I wonder how the music from this latest version stacks up. Anyone? No?
Came here looking for First Man, saw you had it, thanks.
Now, Justin Hurwitz needs to unleash the Chester French reunion album we crave.
Pretty upset Annihilation didn’t make the cut. The soundtrack and audio design for that movie was brilliant.
Interesting that you didn’t pick the cut from Halloween ‘18 that featured that teeth-shattering buzzsaw guitar line more prominently, mashed up against the original theme. When that sound blasted in the theater, it was the true fist-pump moment for me this year.
You state at the start that you’re not going to cover soundtracks which are just compilations of pre-existing music. But that’s exactly what Cold War is.
(Potentially) Unpopular opinion: the Black Panther album is great, but as a soundtrack it’s terrible.Why would a high-stakes gambling club listen to the Weeknd?
Mid-90’s
The only soundtrack album I have ever bought was Basil Poledouris’ Conan the Barbarian. I have no regrets.
In which Desplat once again makes a score that’s substantially more enjoyable than the film
These are great, but I don’t think 2018 has produced a rival to the “Phantom Thread” score yet.
I haven’t seen a lot of these, but Black Panther and A Star is Born, in my opinion definitely belong on this list. I also found the soundtrack to Outlaw King to be outstanding.
So you are saying that this is the year of the horror soundtrack?
I really enjoyed the music in ‘Bad times at the el Royale” thought the best song in the film (acoustic version of “this old heart of mine”) wasn’t on it.
You can never go wrong with Michael Giacchino.
Hereditary still gives me nightmares sometimes….
WE ARE ANIMALS. Best soundtrack in a decade.
Why is this list even published? The year isn’t even over yet. What’s the hurry?Anyway, you put a lot of rather ordinary scores on your list and missed brilliant efforts like Solo, Ready Player One, Asterix: Le Secret de la Potion Magique, El Fotografo de Mauthausen, The Cloverfield Paradox, King of Thieves, On Chesil Beach, Red Sparrow, Out of the Shadows, The Miracle Season.But we all know when it comes down to year-end best film scores lists it’s the INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION who you should really trust.
I know this is movies and not TV but goddamn Nico Muhly for Howards End is one of the best period piece soundtracks I’ve ever heard.
Also Annihilation was the best film soundtrack of the year.
No love for Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse!That was a great soundtrack. I’ve listened to it daily for about two weeks now.
I’m sorry the AV Club must not have seen Annihilation.
There’s a limited vinyl edition of unreleased material for the Suspiria soundtrack available.https://store-us.wasteheadquarters.com/products/suspiria-limited-edition-ep