> 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

And by that I mean we have an overlap of 5. (6 if you toss the VG scores) This tracks pretty well with how our lists often turn out.

> 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.

Sigh...so close.

> 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)

Dang, there's nothing you've criminally underrated the way I did with Emma. How will we have balance?? I guess Kajillionaire isn't on your list at all.

> 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.

Think I'd agree, though I don't know 2008 or 2000 as well as you probably do. I see myself returning to a few of these a fair amount.

> 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).

Meanwhile I go for the guy whose highest score landed 13th on my list.

> - This list would be incomplete without including one of The Secret
> Garden’s sublime statements of optimistic joy; Healing gets my
> vote.

Oooh yes.

> 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.
> 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.

Still need to pick this one up. And probably King of Kings...

> Others that merited consideration: Joe Hisaishi’s whimsical Kiki's
> Delivery Service Symphonic Suite concert album,

Ooh, missed this one!

> 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.

Lol that this is the only other mention of this score in a year in review so far.

> Other ****1/2 scores
> The Big Gundown / La resa dei conti (1966) - Ennio Morricone

Oh hell yes.

> The Trouble With Harry (1955) - Bernard Herrmann

It's aight.

> Of the 264 things I explored (50 more than last year), here’s the
> breakdown:
> New for me: 203
> - 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

Ayyy I have a category for this too. I call it a reclamation.