When it comes to being a film buff, you can spot someone who knows their Hans Zimmer from their Karyn Rachtman if they can tell you what is the difference between a film score and a soundtrack without having to look it up. Many film fans use the two terms interchangeably, but they’re not the same – so we’re here to talk you through understanding film scores and soundtracks – and give you examples of the best of both.
Featured Scores and Soundtracks:
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
- Everything Everywhere All at Once
- Under the Skin
- Joker
- The Social Network
- The Bodyguard
- Trainspotting
- Pulp Fiction
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
What Is a Film Score?
Film music can change the entire tone and feel of a film - a film score is original music that’s been composed and recorded for a movie, which is usually instrumental. Often – though not exclusively – by one composer, the music is designed to fit the story exactly. This can bring in elements such as action and emotion, or specific themes for some of the characters. The music pieces are written to a strict timecode, matching what’s on screen.
Film scores were traditionally performed by full orchestras, and many still are. However, composers aren’t shy of bringing in new techniques and instrumentation, including power-packed hybrid orchestral scores – think the Marvel Universe and other effects-driven blockbusters best seen on an IMAX screen.
To get an idea about the versatility of an orchestra performing a film score, take a listen to this one performing 30 film and TV themes, from Avatar to Game of Thrones, How to Train Your Dragon to Howl’s Moving Castle, which incorporates work from big names including John Williams, Alan Silvestri, Hans Zimmer and Ludwig Goransson.
Or watch a true master at work, as John Williams conducts a medley as a salute to 50 years of legendary film composers and their themes, featuring the Warner Bros Fanfare segueing neatly into Williams’s own march from Star Wars, work by Bernard Herrman (Citizen Kane and Psycho), James Horner (Titanic), John Barry (Out of Africa), Elmer Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven) and Ennio Morricone (Cinema Paradiso). Even if you can’t immediately name the movie, you’ll know the melody.
How Do You Compose a Film Score?
Film scores are usually composed under the guidance of, or in collaboration with the film’s director or producer. The composer will be given a brief, and often the script, rushes, or a rough edit of the whole film.
Once the precise timing, narrative content and emotional tone of each music cue has been decided, the composer can spend anywhere from two weeks to three months writing the score. A rule of thumb is that the score will run for roughly half the length of the film – so if the movie is two hours long, the composer will create an hour’s worth of music.
Industry giant Alan Silvestri, who has scored everything from Back to the Future to Forrest Gump and The Avengers, breaks down his process in this video. He explains how he feels that being a composer is very much like being an actor; how technology has changed the world of scoring by using track archives, DAW (digital audio workstations) and instrument ensembles, and what it was like to record the soundtrack for Avengers: Endgame with a 90-piece orchestra at Abbey Road Studios.
The best film scores’ music really have the power to take a viewer further into the movie’s world. Think of the almost entirely electronic score by Vangelis, conjuring up a dark, dystopian future for Bladerunner, or Dune Part One’s otherworldly sandscapes, which composer Hans Zimmer partially brought to life using ‘invented’ instruments and an extraordinary vocalist:
This explainer demonstrates how Pixar uses music, particularly themes, to create its characters and emotional impact:
Five Film Scores You Need to Know
1. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – Ludwig Goransson
Black Panther featured an Oscar-nominated score by Ludwig Goransson, and the sequel, Wakanda Forever, was also composed by Goransson, who’s been working with director Ryan Coogler for 15 years.
Goransson travelled to Mexico, Nigeria and London, creating an estimated 2,500 hours of recording. The challenge was to find a new sound for the African kingdom of Wakanda, and its grief-stricken people, plus, he had to imagine the sound of Talokan, the undersea kingdom.
As its origins lay in Mexico’s ancient Mayan civilisation, Goransson consulted musical archaeologists and collaborated with Mexican musicians, using ancient instruments from clay flutes to the ‘flute of truth’ – a whistle-like woodwind instrument.
Senegalese singer Baaba Mal and drum player Massamba Diop, together with a host of African musicians, singers and rappers appear on the soundtrack. It’s a true collaboration between the director, Goransson and the musicians: ‘both in Mexico and Nigeria we were creating music based on the script, the story, and conversations with Ryan. When we got back to LA, it was time to put it up to the picture and see what works. That was the challenge – and the fun part.’
Goransson used instruments including the kora, a West African stringed instrument akin to a harp, plus the sabar and djembe – traditional African drums. Plus, as one of the main characters, Shuri, is so associated with technology, there’s a synth-based theme for her character to mix things up. Goransson used 40-voice choirs in London and LA, an LA choir specialising in Mesoamerican music and even a community of Mayan rappers in the Yucatan under the end titles.
2. Everything Everywhere All at Once – Son Lux
Son Lux’s 49-song score for Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s absurdist film Everything Everywhere All At Once hits the nail on the head.
The American experimental band managed to incorporate all multiverse story’s diverse themes and visuals into their music in a way that avoids alienation. They used unusual instruments such as paigu, gongs, foil violin and Mayan flutes made of cedar to create idiosyncratic sounds. They also took inspiration from The Matrix’s score to help them find the ‘science fiction palette for the film’.
Praising its ‘audacious range’ Pitchfork loved the result: ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once snaps between zaniness, hilarity, darkness, and hope, so too does its soundtrack. Despite running an hour and 54 minutes, the score doesn’t lose coherence... Son Lux’s broader artistic ethos are rooted in the imperative of creation, so sprawling in its possibilities as to span an entire multiverse.’
The score garnered Son Lux a nomination for the Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score) at the Oscars.
3. Under the Skin – Mica Levi
Scarlett Johansson as an eerie alien in Glasgow might not have proved itself to be the most commercial horror hit, but critic Mark Kermode praised the brilliance of Levi’s score: ‘Underpinning it all is Mica Levi, whose awe-inspiring work inhabits that strange musique concrète netherworld between score and sound effects.
Working closely with sound designer Johnnie Burn, Levi creates percussive, scraping, buzzing accompaniments that nod toward the avant-garde strains of Penderecki and Ligeti (and arguably the film scores of Jonny Greenwood), while groaning fragments of what sound like an alien language recall the industrial soundscapes of Alan Splet. The overall effect is dazzling.’
Mica Levi told the Guardian that her score had parts which, ‘are intended to be quite difficult. If your lifeforce is being distilled by an alien, it’s not necessarily going to sound very nice. It’s supposed to be physical, alarming, hot.’
In terms of how she used the instruments, Levi revealed that, ‘we were looking at the natural sound of an instrument to try and find something identifiably human in it, then slowing things down or changing the pitch of it to make it feel uncomfortable. There was a lot of talk of perverting material. It does sound creepy, but we were going for sexy.’
Plus, she looked to everything from Iannis Xenakis and John Cage to ‘strip club music and euphoric dance’ for further inspiration.
4. Joker – Hildur Guðnadóttir
A classically trained cellist, Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir has recorded both as a solo artist and with several bands, in addition to working on the scores for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival and Sicario, both of which were composed by her late countryman Johann Johannsson.
She won an Emmy for her work on the HBO/Sky miniseries Chernobyl, and took home the Oscar for Best Original Score for director Todd Phillips’ Joker in 2019. Phillips was curious to hear what the composer felt after reading the script, and loved the music she wrote for it so much that he played it during filming. Joker star Joaquin Phoenix said that the ‘Bathroom Scene’ track helped his transformation from wannabe stand-up Arthur Fleck into the eponymous villain.
Although the score was recorded by a 100-piece orchestra, the main themes are based around Guðnadóttir’s halldorophone, which she describes as ‘a kind of Jimi Hendrix electric cello’. Much of the film’s unique sound is down to this instrument: ‘It has eight strings and every string has a microphone. There’s a speaker on the back so it creates this feedback loop, and creates all these strange sounds and does that electro-acoustically. For this score, I played it through a four-stack of amplifiers, so all the strange sounds you hear, like when he goes into the fridge, are all played on this, and all played live. They’re not made in a computer.’
As Todd Phillips explained to the LA Times, ‘When you’re making a film about one person, every other element really becomes a character in the film. The production design, the wardrobe — the way we shot the film, the city of Gotham. To me, the music is one of the biggest characters of the film.’
5. The Social Network – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
David Fincher’s 2010 biopic of the founding of Facebook stars Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
At the time, Trent Reznor was best known as the frontman of Nine Inch Nails; The Social Network became his first movie score with longtime collaborator Atticus Ross and it went on to pick up one of the movie’s three Oscars, as well as Best Original Score at the Golden Globes.
The pair sent about 16 tracks to Fincher, intending them to be a kind of sonic mood board. However, Fincher’s sound editor, Ren Klyce, took the cues and set them to the movie: the first draft became the final score. Reznor and Ross’s score gives the biopic its menacing undertones as the Winklevoss twins (played by Armie Hammer) pursue Zuckerberg across campus and then through the courts. In other hands, the soundtrack could have been a John Hughes-esque campus dramedy.
As Pitchfork.com suggests, even the lighter tracks, such as ‘Intriguing Possibilities’, have dark bass notes underneath them, suggesting potential dissatisfaction and discord. The composing duo’s skills are evident throughout: ‘Try to imagine the famous boat race without Reznor and Ross’s infernal retooling of ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ beneath it. The creeping dread that pervades the movie, the intimations of existential rot, only exist in The Social Network because Reznor and Ross put them there.’
What Is a Soundtrack?
CuttingRoomMusic.com explains that, ‘We generally associate the term “soundtrack” with the collection of music that is released along with a feature film. The thing is, a commercially released soundtrack album can be anything the studio wants it to be: it could be only the original score, only the licensed songs, or a combination of score and excerpts of dialogue or remixes and tribute versions of the music in the film.’
In general, though, a movie soundtrack is made up of songs by bands or individual artists. These might have been created especially for the film – think of Rihanna and Tems’s Oscar-nominated ‘Lift Me Up’ for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, or Lady Gaga’s ‘Hold My Hand’ for Top Gun: Maverick – or be pre-existing tracks brought together and licensed by a music supervisor.
Movie soundtracks, much like scores, don’t just help us recall the plot or character, they allow us to understand its meaning better. Music supervisors and directors can use tracks to personify characters – think of Peter Quill’s mixtapes in the Guardians of the Galaxy films – or to create iconic moments like ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ in the Reservoir Dogs torture scene.
80s classic Top Gun has one of the decade’s most memorable (and bestselling) soundtracks. From Berlin’s Oscar-winning love theme, ‘Take My Breath Away’ to Kenny Loggins’ ‘Danger Zone’ and Harold Faltermeyer’s ‘Top Gun Anthem’, it brought emotion and action together, melding rock with power ballads, plus The Righteous Brothers’ classic, ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, which soundtracked one of the film’s most enduring scenes. In the long-awaited sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, Miles Teller performs ‘Great Balls of Fire’ at a piano in a bar. Similar setting, another classic, retro track – it reminds fans of the first film, whilst creating a new iconic moment for the 2020s.
The best movie soundtracks can become huge stand-alone sellers – the songs promote the movie, the movie takes the songs to a whole new level. Music and movies have gone hand in glove since the Silent era, when there’d be a pianist or organist in the cinema accompanying the moving pictures on the screen, but commercial soundtracks have given music a global platform like no other.
Five Movie Soundtracks You Need to Hear
1. The Bodyguard
The soundtrack for The Bodyguard still reigns supreme as the bestselling movie soundtrack of all time, with sales of over 45 million copies worldwide. Released in 1992, the album features songs recorded by Whitney Houston, who starred as superstar singer Rachel Marron, together with the work of artists including Lisa Stansfield, Curtis Stigers and Kenny G.
The album hit No. 1 in 18 countries and gave Houston the distinction of having the most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist on the Billboard 200 – a record she held for 19 years, until being overtaken by Adele’s 21 in 2011.
When it comes to choosing songs for soundtracks, some of the most memorable can come about as happy accidents. Whitney Houston originally planned to record ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted’ as the film’s theme song. However, a version was slated to appear in Fried Green Tomatoes. Houston’s co-star, Kevin Costner, came to the rescue, suggesting ‘I Will Always Love You’, which was originally recorded by Dolly Parton, and the perfect marriage of song, scene and emotion – not to mention a global hit - was born.
2. Trainspotting
For an example of a soundtrack that promotes the film and vice versa, you only have to look at the not one, but two soundtrack albums released alongside the film adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name. Danny Boyle’s 1996 film became one of the decade’s biggest hits, and launched its stars’ careers into the stratosphere.
Although the film’s story is actually set in the late 80s, the tracks chosen for the soundtrack span three eras. The 70s brought in Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’ (released in 1977) and Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ from 1972, plus Brian Eno’s ‘Deep Blue Day’ and Blondie’s ‘Atomic’. Britpop was represented by Pulp’s ‘Mile End’, Blur’s ‘Sing’, and Elastica’s ‘2:1’. The soundtrack’s third strand introduced 90s techno including Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’ and Leftfield’s ‘A Final Hit’. There’s even a dash of classical in there, with Bizet’s ‘Habanera’ from Carmen.
The first Trainspotting soundtrack album is a collection of the songs featured in the film, whilst the second includes both those left out of the first soundtrack, plus extra songs that had inspired the filmmakers during production.
The kaleidoscopic, kinetic soundtrack, shot through with dark tracks such as ‘Perfect Day’ and ‘Nightclubbing’ matched the film’s energy, plot and characters perfectly, and it’s regularly placed in ‘best of’ lists, notably Vanity Fair’s 2007 list of best motion picture soundtracks in history (No. 2) and Rolling Stone, who listed it as the 13th best soundtrack in their 25 Best Soundtracks in 2013.
3. Pulp Fiction
Impeccably stylish, with an all-star cast, endlessly quotable dialogue and non-linear narrative, when you think of Tarantino’s most iconic film, it’s still probably the soundtrack that comes to mind first. The mere mention of Pulp Fiction conjures up the dance scene with John Travolta and Uma Thurman in the Jack Rabbit Slims club, twisting to ‘You Never Can Tell’, a Chuck Berry track from 1964.
The film kicks off with Dick Dale’s ‘Misirlou’, perfectly setting up the rollercoaster ride to come, before segueing from the 60s to the 70s in the opening credits, funking it up with ‘Jungle Boogie’ by Kool & the Gang. Vincent Vega (John Travolta) meets mob boss’s wife Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) accompanied by Dusty Springfield’s ‘Son of a Preacher Man’.
The only original song on the soundtrack comes from Maria McKee (most famous for her No. 1 from Days of Thunder, ‘Show Me Heaven’.) ‘If Love is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)’ is the background for Marcellus (Ving Rhames) catching up with Butch (Bruce Willis) in a pawn shop. Pulp Fiction leaned heavily on Californian surf-rock, creating an eclectic, out of time feel for the soundtrack and the film as a whole. Tarantino said that he chose surf music because, ‘it just seems like rock ‘n’ roll Ennio Morricone music, rock ‘n’ roll spaghetti Western music.’
The ‘Tarantino effect’ of the film soundtrack was borne out by its influence on advertisers, who suddenly started using surf music in commercials to help sell everything from burritos to toothpaste – Virgin Media turned to ‘Misirlou’ only six years ago for their Virgin Fibre ad:
4. Guardians of the Galaxy
The Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack is a great example of using a soundtrack both as a plot element and to background a particular character. Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, (Chris Pratt) listens to his own personalized mixtape on a battered old Walkman. Quill’s mother gave this to him just before she died, with the mixtape she’d made for him, and it becomes one of his few mementos of his Earth life, before he was abducted by Yondu.
The Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 is a lovingly brought together collection of pop, rock and soul classics. From the Jackson 5’s ‘I Want You Back’ to David Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ and Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’, the songs give a sense of Quill and his life on Earth, and the connection to the person he was as a small child, before his life changed about as dramatically as one person’s can, when he was transported to the outer reaches of space.
We’re introduced to Quill as he grooves around a deserted landscape, accompanied by Redbone’s ‘Come and Get Your Love’, which instantly establishes the Guardians’ world, apart from the rest of the MCU. Soft rock? Not what we’re used to from the blockbuster behemoths.
The soundtrack reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Soundtracks chart for 16 weeks, and became the first soundtrack in history consisting entirely of previously released songs to top the chart. Empire loved this and the sequels’ ‘hand-crafted mixtapes of forgotten bangers and impeccable vibes, perfectly curated to soundtrack the exploits of Peter Quill and pals… These mixes have become cultural events in and of themselves.’
Music supervisor Dave Jordan’s work on the film won him the Guild of Music Supervisors’ Award for Best Supervision Film, as well as a Grammy nomination for Best Compilation Soundtrack.
5. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
From the styling of the title to its gorgeous, fresh-faced lovers and colour-drenched ‘Verona Beach’ setting, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet was Shakespeare for people who’d never got on with it at school and thought it must be deadly dull – if not incomprehensible.
The film was a rush of blood to the head from start to finish – Shakespeare for the post-MTV generation. But, as Junkee.com says, ‘style can only get you so far – the real mood of Romeo + Juliet lies in its soundtrack.’
Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) is introduced on Verona Beach with a Radiohead B-side, and the band then wrote ‘Exit Music (For a Film)’ to accompany the end credits.
When it comes to best movie songs, we’d like to nominate Des-ree’s heart-melting ‘Kissing You’ which plays in the background as Romeo and Juliet (Claire Danes) fall in love at first sight when they spot each other on either side of a fish tank at the huge Capulet costume party.
Elsewhere, there are post-grunge, post-punk wave bands such as Garbage (‘#1 Crush’), Everclear (‘Local God’) and One Inch Punch (‘Pretty Piece of Flesh’), but it’s probably The Cardigans’ ‘Lovefool’ that’s the biggest earworm. (It’s either that or Kym Mayzelle’s cover of Candi Staton’s disco hit ‘Young Hearts, Run Free’.) Prince was introduced to a new generation via the choral arrangement of ‘When Doves Cry’ sung by Quindon Tarver; the choral elements underpin Luhrmann’s use of religious imagery throughout the film (there are even religious symbols on the guns).
Angsty, angry, loved-up, lovesick, lovelorn: there’s something for every teen, no matter what they’re going through on the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack – it’s a classic for a reason and director Baz Luhrmann then took his eclectic approach to music into the stratosphere with his follow up, 2001’s Moulin Rouge!
Movie Music Magic
Fancy following in the footsteps of Hans Zimmer, Hildur Guðnadóttir or John Williams? You need our guide to how to score a film. Find out more about the art of music in film by exploring the best classical music soundtracks, and of course you’ll want to know which are the Top 10 bestselling movie soundtracks of all time as well as 2023’s best movies.
If you want to specialise in soundtracks, and create a blockbuster selection like Karyn Rachtman (Pulp Fiction), then be inspired by the work of the best female music supervisors.
Need music for your movie project? We have everything from action to comedy – not to mention a hybrid orchestral collection curated by Zimmer protégé Lorne Balfe (Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning and Top Gun: Maverick), The Real Sound of Hollywood. We’ve also compiled hundreds of handy playlists, depending on what mood or genre you’re looking for to create your own movie magic through music. So if you want to license great original music, register now.
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