> Related to this, (and this is directed at John B.) I'd love to know who
> your favorite film composers are because I always associate you with HGW
> and Menken (mostly for Mirror Mirror) and that's about it, haha. I
> actually just pulled up your decade list to illuminate things and was also
> interested that no John Williams score cracked your top 20 and outside of
> Maleficent, you're not as high on JNH's recent output.

Just seeing this after I responded to Vik! Those two, along with Williams and Horner, will be responsible for an inordinate percentage of my all-time list, if I ever get around to making it. But the reality is my lists of that kind tend to be pretty hodgepodge composer-wise. To your point, my decade list had very few repeats (Powell with 3, Horner 2), and only a couple of composers have showed up on multiple lists for me over the past few years. Meanwhile I see others highly rank scores by their favorites every year without fail. I think maybe that's partially attributable to me being pickier about genre, at least on album, which is how I most frequently experience new scores (I have very little time to watch films these days, unfortunately).

For Williams, Star Wars has just never really done it for me, and unfortunately it's been a while since he hit the highs I hope for. War Horse and Lincoln were just outside my 20, but probably could slot in somewhere in the teens depending on my mood, and I did really enjoy The Post.

The same-ish is true for Howard: his 2000-2007 run was amazing, but after that Maleficent is his only top-tier score, I think. I was and remain pretty down on the first Fantastic Beasts score, although the second was a big improvement and the third maybe even more so.

It's hard calling Menken a favorite composer in the same way - he's just produced a handful of incomparable works that hold nostalgic significance and have held up amazingly well over the years. The latter point is really important - The Lion King, for example, inspires the same nostalgia, but the songs haven't held up as well.