1. The Call of the Wild
2. The Personal History of David Copperfield
3. Wonder Woman 1984
4. The Pathless
5. The Queen’s Gambit
6. Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond
7. Enola Holmes
8. Emma.
9. Fanny Lye Deliver’d
10. His Dark Materials Series 2

Composer of the year: John Powell

1-5 got ****½. The top two choices were neck and neck for most of the year. #3, (justice) leagues better than its 2017 predecessor, is close behind. The rich textures of #4 gave it the slight edge over the emotional beats of #5.

The other entries each got ****. #6 delivered hefty doses of nostalgia. #7 is perhaps being the first “normal” score by that composer. #8 and #9 were both belated January discoveries, the former after seeing the film and the latter after seeing a few lists and thinking “well, FINE, let’s see if this is really as good as people are saying it is.” #10 might not have made it this high in a “normal” year, but it is still extremely entertaining and is a slight step up from its show’s first season of music.

In contention for the last spot were Da 5 Bloods and Harbor from the Holocaust.

Other **** - Animal Crackers, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, Dolphin Reef, Fukushima 50, Outlander Season 5, The Secret Garden, The Summer We Live In / El verano que vivimos, and The Witches. I finally listened to Effigy: Poison and the City and Mortal this week and they probably fall in this tier as well.

***½ - Dolittle, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last Full Measure, Lev Yashin: The Dream Goalkeeper, The Midnight Sky, Mulan, News of the World, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Sadan Hanim, School / Kyojo, Silver Skates, and Unknown Origins / Orígenes Secretos

*** - Artemis Fowl, Fearless, Freaky, and The Mandalorian Season 2 (why, yes, dear reader, that IS a worse rating than the one I gave last season’s music)

Given the early 1970s, WORST. SCORE. YEAR. EVER. seems perhaps too strong a pronouncement, even with the absence of a 5-star work this year. And I can’t justify “worst score year in my lifetime” or even “worst score year since I started listening to scores” since the year’s roster was perhaps a bit better than the 2000 roster was, and there were more great scores in 2020 than in 2008.

However, more so than in any other year I can recall since we’ve started doing these polls, it was tempting to write ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as COTY. Delays left few composers with multiple new works, and of those none could make a distinctive claim to be “the best”. Pemberton had a productive but uneven year. McCreary didn’t match his 2018 and 2019 heights. Cannon had consulting, performance, and add’l music / orchestration credits in three works by others. I’ll admit I didn’t listen to any other Balfe albums. Heck, has anyone heard Zimmer’s Sponge on the Run? SOOOOOOOO...I defaulted to whoever wrote the year’s best score (hey, if it works for the MMUK Awards...lol).

10 favorite tracks, in no particular order:
- Copperfield features some of the most enjoyably bustling material in quite some time, perhaps best represented by These Pages Must Show. It also has a number of truly gorgeous moments like the converging solos used in David’s Writings. Also worth calling out is the brief A Beautiful Summer which deploys both of those personalities to great effect.
- The rousing Buck Takes the Lead from The Call of the Wild cemented its position on this list as I explored the album while skiing in Whistler in February, as did that album’s impressively realized final track.
- Once I heard the resolute Juliette’s Theme from Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond I knew that score was going to meet the standards Giacchino set with his prior entries in the franchise.
- Under a China Blue Sky blends Harbor from the Holocaust’s many cultural elements for one truly special album ending.
- The Fatal Blow from Artemis Fowl is a throwback Patrick Doyle joy.
- This list would be incomplete without including one of The Secret Garden’s sublime statements of optimistic joy; Healing gets my vote.
- Last but not least, the arresting What This Mission Is About from Da 5 Bloods which got me to say “Wow” out loud after hearing it for the first time

Runners-up: The glorious and unintentionally hilarious James Horner tribute Beginning from School, the gliding elegance of The Garden from The Secret Garden, the riotous Overture from Animal Crackers, the mournful Horner/Newman fusion These Things We Do, That Others May Live from The Last Full Measure, the unsubtle Symphonic Suite F 1st Chapter: All Life from Fukushima 50, and the unexpected exuberance of 1984 which proved perhaps to be the most delightful of the many musical goodies in WW84. A few tracks from the remarkably consistent album for The Queen’s Gambit probably belong in this tier as well. I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention plenty of other worthy tracks across various works.

2020 specialty releases:
The best were the Deluxe Edition of Solo: A Star Wars Story and Intrada’s The Land Before Time, two expansions that added substantial material to scores that were already brilliant on their original albums. Close behind are Tadlow’s exquisite new recording of King of Kings and the Blu-ray release of John Williams in Vienna.

In essentially a four-way tie for 5th are the expanded releases for Far and Away, How To Train Your Dragon, Legends of the Fall, and The Young Lions. All added some nice new tracks, though nearly all the highlights were on their respective original releases.

Amazingly I wrote a draft of this at one point that didn’t cover Quartet’s superb...quartet (lol) of year-end releases. All four were significant for various reasons, especially the terrific restoration of Endless Night (challenging Moog tones aside), even if none of them ultimately contended.

Others that merited consideration: Joe Hisaishi’s whimsical Kiki's Delivery Service Symphonic Suite concert album, the expanded sets of dynamic underwater television adventure music for SeaQuest DSV and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Intrada’s release of both recordings of John Williams’ pastoral music for The River, and the late-arriving Powell highlights recording Film Suites Vol. 1.

I enjoyed discovering Mussolini: The Untold Story, but it’s hard to consider an album that was purely a reissue. Also ruled out were La-La Land’s The Swarm and Intrada’s Ivanhoe, which were largely sonic upgrades, and Quartet’s Total Recall anniversary release (though if album cover of the year was an award that would’ve won in a landslide).

Older stuff:
Last year wasn’t quite as rewarding as 2019 or 2018 or 2017, which featured six, five, and five ***** entries respectively, as well as exposure to more Chandos albums. Nevertheless, I still managed to find a lot of excellence. The top 10 older scores I discovered last year are ranked below while the rest are subsequently ordered alphabetically within rating tiers.

*****
1. A Bridge Too Far (1977) - John Addison

****½
2. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Season 2 (1965-66) - Gerald Fried, Robert Drasnin & Lalo Schifrin
3. Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (1995) - John Scott
4. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997) - John Scott
5. We’re No Angels (1989) - George Fenton
6. Mussolini: The Untold Story (1985) - Laurence Rosenthal
7. The Molly Maguires (1970) - Henry Mancini
8. Cousteau - Channel Islands: Waters of Contention, Days of Future Past (1989) - John Scott
9. Shoot to Kill (1988) - John Scott
10. Jules Verne Expedition: Aboard the Three-Masted Belem / Expédition Jules Verne: À bord du trois-mâts Belem / Odyssey of the Belem (2003) - John Scott

Runner-up: The Italian Job (1969) - Quincy Jones; lyrics by Don Black

And a special shout-out to Gerald Fried’s score for the U.N.C.L.E. episode The Monks of St. Thomas Affair. Season 3 as a whole didn’t make the cut for this list, but Fried’s groovy medieval jazz was the catchiest thing I heard all year.

I should note that I didn’t listen to any of Horner’s Romeo & Juliet. Since I’ve heard other “unmentionables”, I can’t quite say this was a matter of principle, but something still felt...wrong about listening to such an unauthorized leak, especially with the folks who had originally possessed the music publicly stating that this had probably compromised their efforts at a legitimate release. Many have said it’s supersaturated with Hornerisms, so perhaps that suggests it wouldn’t have merited mentioning here anyway.

Other ****1/2 scores
The Blue Bird (1940) - Alfred Newman & team
The Big Gundown / La resa dei conti (1966) - Ennio Morricone
Born Free (1966) - John Barry; lyrics by Don Black
Cousteau - Amazon (1984) - John Scott
Cousteau - St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea (1982) - John Scott
Dead Ringer (1964) - André Previn
Dial M for Murder (1954) - Dimitri Tiomkin
Diane (1956) - Miklós Rózsa
Five Days and Five Nights (1961) - Dmitri Shostakovich
The Gadfly / Ovod (1955) - Dmitri Shostakovich
Green Mansions (1959) - Bronislau Kaper & Heitor Villa-Lobos; add’l music by Sidney Cutner & Leo Arnaud
Karol: A Man Who Became Pope / Karol, un uomo diventato Papa (2005) - Ennio Morricone
The Kentuckian (1955) - Bernard Herrmann
The Long, Hot Summer (1958) - Alex North
Lord Jim (1965) - Bronislau Kaper
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Season 1 (1964-65) - Jerry Goldsmith, Morton Stevens, Walter Scharf & Lalo Schifrin
Raton Pass (1951) - Max Steiner
Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) - Alex North
Something Wild (1961) - Aaron Copland
The Taming of the Shrew (1967) - Nino Rota
The Trouble With Harry (1955) - Bernard Herrmann
Two for the Seesaw (1962) - André Previn

Of the 264 things I explored (50 more than last year), here’s the breakdown:
New for me: 203
- 64 of those were from the 1960s, which was more than any other two decades put together
- By far the most represented composer was John Scott who accounted for 26 of those; also reaching double digits were Jerry Goldsmith, Georges Delerue, Max Steiner, Akira Ifukube, and Alex North
Expansion/Reissue: 19
Compilation: 11
2019 catch-up: 7
Legit purchase of something I downloaded long ago: 6
Film recording of score I had a rerecording of: 6
Concert album: 5
Rerecordings: 4
Books about film music: 2
Album recording: 1

Plus there were another 112 classical entries. That was 112 more than 2019!