1. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1
2. Avatar: The Way of Water
3. God of War Ragnarök
4. Turning Red
5. The Batman
6. Jurassic World: Dominion
7. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
8. Ms. Marvel
9. Bullet Train
10. Strange World

Composer of the year: Michael Giacchino

My runner-up is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. 1-5 got *****. The others got ****˝.

My apologies to the other ****˝ scores that didn’t make the cut: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Adam, Lightyear, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Interview with the Vampire Season 1, Super Furball Saves the Future / Supermarsu 2, and Top Gun: Maverick, the latter the year’s most improbable great score. Owing in part to the franchise imperatives that drive films and television these days, there are a lot of colons in the aforementioned 18 works. The proctology jokes almost tell themselves.

My top two are boring picks because many others like one or both of them, so I can at least take comfort that the rest of my list is a tad eclectic. Ragnarök was better than its predecessor. If you’d told me at the start of the year that my #4 pick would feature more new jack swing than any score in history has, I’d have said you were high. Dominion and Dumbledore are threequels that have to juggle an insane amount of legacy melodies, somewhat at the expense of their new themes, but their many strengths outweigh their weaknesses. Ms. Marvel is the only MCU score that can even be in the same conversation as Black Panther. I thought Wakanda Forever was the weirdest major score of the year, and then I heard Bullet Train. Watching Strange World helped a lot with understanding how it was one of the year's most dextrous scores when it came to varying its melodies to represent characters as well as story themes. Anything I could say about The Batman would run the risk of just being the same thing over and over and over.

The **** occupants of my top 20 are Legend of the Forest and Moon Knight.


2022 specialty releases
Lotta goodies. Spider-Man added solid material. The Godfather finally overhauled the wretched sound of its original album release. I’ve already raved here about Tomorrow Never Dies. How To Train Your Dragon 2 proved there perhaps is a way to improve a perfect score album. The Weather Man filled a notable gap in Zimmer’s discography. The last score of Miklós Rózsa’s career got a long overdue complete release. Mary, Queen of Scots turned out to be even better when heard in full. The L.A. Confidential and Matinee expansions both earned their scores another half star from me. Becket was a revelation, the best “I have no idea what this sounds like, but here goes” release of last year, though it took me until early 2023 to get around to listening to it.

But nothing can hold a candle to Intrada’s all-powerful expanded release of Willow (1988), which easily wins on the basis of the 11-minute stretch across Willow Captured, Arrival at Snow Camp, and The Sled Ride at the end of the first disc. The latter track’s back half is an unstoppable freight train of musical thrills. The release catapulted the score into my all-time #6 entry. I honestly don’t remember listening to anything else in the month of July.

And yes, I hate that I now have to specify the year thanks to the new, truly desultory Disney+ legacyquel series not even bothering to have a different name. Kasdan’s brother at least had the decency to do that on his Jumanji movies.

Almost the same note as last year: If the full set of Rózsa Polydor recordings (maybe my sole remaining “holy grail”) gets released in 2023, it wins the year. Game over. It’s in the rulebook.


The best older works I discovered in 2022
****˝
1. Home (2015) - Lorne Balfe
2. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002) - Michiru Oshima
3. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) - Michiru Oshima
4. Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) - John Barry
5. Walkabout (1971) - John Barry
6. The Haunted Mansion (2003) - Mark Mancina
7. Presumed Innocent (1990) - John Williams
8. Zulu (1964) - John Barry
9. Only You (1994) - Rachel Portman
10. Toy Soldiers (1991) - Robert Folk

**** runners-up:
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) - Geoff Zanelli
- Kong: Skull Island (2017) - Henry Jackman
- Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) - Julian Nott, Rupert Gregson-Williams, Jim Dooley, Lorne Balfe & Alastair King; produced by Hans Zimmer
- And, to throw Riley a bone, Flyboys (2006) - Trevor Rabin

Not scores, but still great:
- Tapestry of Nations (1999) - Gavin Greenaway
- Dream & Variations (2007) - Don Harper

This is the third straight year I’ve decided to call out a score discovery that rated below 4.5 stars but provided at least one addictive track, with last year’s being the Western-infused romp The Bad Guys / Hit Me / Car Trouble / Flying High from Looney Tunes: Back in Action and the first instance being the groovy medieval jazz in the suites of The Monks of St. Thomas Affair from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Season 3 (RIP Gerald Fried). This year’s winner is Guns from The Rundown, which is about as badass as film music gets.

Full breakdown:
Newly heard scores - 227
- Part of MV/RC rundown - 188 (Zimmer 29, HGW 18, Jablonsky 17, Balfe 16, Rabin 15, Powell 12, Djawadi 10, Morris 9)
- Others - 39 (Jerry Goldsmith 5, Barry 3, Beltrami 3, Horner 3, Mancini 3, Oshima 3, Tyler 3, Waxman 2)

Catch-up on 2021 - 48, the best being Benedetta, Eternals, Fear Street Part Two, Spirit Untamed, and Succession S3

Expanded releases - 20, the best being The Godfather, HTTYD 2, Spider-Man, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Willow

Non-score works - 5 - Gavin Greenaway’s IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth and Tapestry of Nations, Elliot Goldenthal’s Fire Water Paper, Don Harper’s Dream & Variations, and Craig Armstrong’s The Edge of the Sea

Concert recordings - 2 - The Wings of a Film and Hans Zimmer: Live in Prague

Compilation re-recording - 1 - The Golden Age of Hollywood

Finally owned legitimately - 1 - Star Trek III


10 favorite tracks, in no particular order
- The “oh snap, is the track of the year out already?” wows of the Galadriel suite, the floor-shaking Numenor-centric duo of White Leaves and Sailing Into Dawn, the beguiling True Creation Requires Sacrifice, and the seductively haunting Where The Shadows Lie from The Rings of Power (had to limit myself to five).

- The relentless The Batman and the whispers of John Barry in Catwoman from The Batman.

- Suite, Suite Dino Revenge from Jurassic World: Dominion, mainly due to that out-of-nowhere 90s Goldsmith arrangement of the new Satler / Grant love theme.

- The jazzy, elegant opening track from The Outfit.

- The dazzling Make or Brake from Bullet Train.

The next batch: The thrilling thematic summary in the Main Titles from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; the glorious build-up in Wyvern Rescue and the emotional explosion in He Sought to Kill, I Sought to Protect from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore; the giddy nonsense of The Aunties and the absurd synthesis of traditional music, boy bands, and beatboxing in Pandas Unite / Nobody Like U (Reprise) from Turning Red; the bustling Main Title Theme from The Gilded Age Season 1; the cultural fusion in the Ms. Marvel Suite and the gorgeous tension in Answered Prayer from Ms. Marvel; the moving End Titles from Notre-Dame on Fire; and Lorne Balfe’s energetic take on the Top Gun Anthem for the end credits of Top Gun Maverick.

The next batch: The bombastic Getting Through from Doctor Strange; the mystical and playful Giantess of Ironwood from God of War Ragnarök; the lovely Payakan and the rampaging Na’vi Attack from Avatar: The Way of Water; the stylish Tentomushi from Bullet Train; the abstract ecclesiastical beauty of The Banished Angel and the powerful Love Across Worlds from His Dark Materials Season 3; the striking Constellation and the awe-inspiring Welcome Travelers from Moon Knight; and John Williams’ marvelous Obi-Wan theme from Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Honorable mention: One of my favorite tracks from The Gilded Age Season 1 which astonishingly didn’t make the album was a piece from the season finale that started as source music for a dance, evolved into full score, and dramatically ended right as a carriage door slammed.


Every other score I gave a rating to
Other **** - Babylon, DC League of Super-Pets, Emily, The English, Enola Holmes 2, The Fabelmans, 5,000 Blankets, The Gilded Age Season 1, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, His Dark Materials Series 3, The Lost King, Luck, My Father’s Dragon, Notre-Dame on Fire / Notre-Dame brűle, Outlander Season 6, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, Polar Bear, Slumberland, The 13 Lords of the Shogun / Kamakuradono no 13-nin, Violent Night, Wednesday Season 1, and The Woman King

***˝ (round up to 4) - Amsterdam, Blueback, Death on the Nile, Frozen Planet II, Ghost Book / Ghost Book Obakezukan, Nope, The Outfit, Prehistoric Planet, The Railway Children Return, Thor: Love and Thunder, Ticket to Paradise, and The Time of Secrets / Le temps des secrets

***˝ (round down to 3) - The Book of Boba Fett, Devotion, The Faith of the Three Kingdoms, The Gray Man, Petra de San José, Redeeming Love, The Sea Beast, See How They Run, The Serpent Queen Season 1, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Thai Cave Rescue, Till, and Werewolf by Night

*** - Ambulance, The Bad Guys, 1883, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, The King's Daughter, The Last Warrior: Emissary of Darkness / Posledniy bogatyr 3, The Legend of Vox Machina Season 1, The Lost City, The Witcher: Blood Origin, and Wolf

Eh - Ice Age: Scrat Tales

Meh - Dying Light 2 Stay Human, Man vs. Bee

Oh dear - Thankfully nothing this year!


One other random thought
I truly despised the Halo series on Paramount+. It was maybe the worst season I’ve ever watched from start to finish, and I’ve seen Fargo season 4! But it is surprising that Sean Callery’s music still hasn’t received an album release, especially since the streamer’s YouTube channel featured a making-of video with the composer.

(Message edited on Sunday, February 26, 2023, at 7:29 p.m.)

Great write up and yeah, where the fuck is that Hall album?!

> 1. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1
> 2. Avatar: The Way of Water
> 3. God of War Ragnarök
> 4. Turning Red
> 5. The Batman
> 6. Jurassic World: Dominion
> 7. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
> 8. Ms. Marvel
> 9. Bullet Train
> 10. Strange World

You call your list more eclectic after the first two but I'm like a couple normie blockbuster scores away from having a nearly identical list as you lol. The way that Bullet Train snuck onto the ends of both of our lists cracks me up.

> Composer of the year: Michael Giacchino

Wait, forreals?

> My runner-up is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. 1-5 got *****. The
> others got ****˝.

> My apologies to the other ****˝ scores that didn’t make the cut: Doctor
> Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Adam,
> Lightyear, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Interview with
> the Vampire Season 1, Super Furball Saves the Future /
> Supermarsu 2, and Top Gun: Maverick, the latter the year’s most
> improbable great score. Owing in part to the franchise imperatives that
> drive films and television these days, there are a lot of colons in the
> aforementioned 18 works. The proctology jokes almost tell themselves.

Ooof.

> My top two are boring picks because many others like one or both of them,
> so I can at least take comfort that the rest of my list is a tad eclectic.
> Ragnarök was better than its predecessor. If you’d told me at the
> start of the year that my #4 pick would feature more new jack swing than
> any score in history has, I’d have said you were high.

Goransson showed up on my top Spotify artists last year, which tells me that even if I didn't end up putting this on my short list, I must have listened to it a lot. I think your take on Turning Red is going to age pretty well.

> Dominion and
> Dumbledore are threequels that have to juggle an insane amount of
> legacy melodies, somewhat at the expense of their new themes, but their
> many strengths outweigh their weaknesses.

Hokey trilogies and ancient themes are no match for a long album and an apathetic listener.

> Ms. Marvel is the only
> MCU score that can even be in the same conversation as Black
> Panther.

Now there's a spicy take! Captain Marvel, OG Doctor Strange, and Thor Ragnarok get pretty close for me though.

> I thought Wakanda Forever was the weirdest major score
> of the year,

YUP.

> and then I heard Bullet Train.

Well, yup. Wonder if my hearing them in the inverse order affected my weirdness ranking.

> Watching Strange
> World helped a lot with understanding how it was one of the year's
> most dextrous scores when it came to varying its melodies to represent
> characters as well as story themes. Anything I could say about The
> Batman would run the risk of just being the same thing over and over
> and over.

Ha. Ha-ha, ha.

> Becket was a revelation, the best “I have no idea what this
> sounds like, but here goes” release of last year, though it took me until
> early 2023 to get around to listening to it.

Pro-tip: if you weren't sure what the score was heading into it, you need to explain to the class who it's by and what it's about.

> But nothing can hold a candle to Intrada’s all-powerful expanded release
> of Willow (1988), which easily wins on the basis of the 11-minute
> stretch across Willow Captured, Arrival at Snow Camp, and
> The Sled Ride at the end of the first disc. The latter track’s back
> half is an unstoppable freight train of musical thrills. The release
> catapulted the score into my all-time #6 entry. I honestly don’t remember
> listening to anything else in the month of July.

> And yes, I hate that I now have to specify the year thanks to the new,
> truly desultory Disney+ legacyquel series not even bothering to have a
> different name. Kasdan’s brother at least had the decency to do that on
> his Jumanji movies.

Maybe punctuation could clarify? '88 can be "Willow!" and '22 can be "Willow."

> Almost the same note as last year: If the full set of Rózsa Polydor
> recordings (maybe my sole remaining “holy grail”) gets released in 2023,
> it wins the year. Game over. It’s in the rulebook.

performative notebook scribbling as a team kicks a field goal in the background

>
>
> The best older works I discovered in 2022
> ****˝
> 7. Presumed Innocent (1990) - John Williams
> 9. Only You (1994) - Rachel Portman
> 10. Toy Soldiers (1991) - Robert Folk

Someday I'm gonna get to these.

> **** runners-up:
> - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Don't Tell Tales (2017) -
> Geoff Zanelli

You conniving bastard, calibre, etc etc

> Not scores, but still great:
> - Tapestry of Nations (1999) - Gavin Greenaway
> - Dream & Variations (2007) - Don Harper

> Full breakdown:
> Newly heard scores - 227
> - Others - 39 (Jerry Goldsmith 5, Barry 3, Beltrami 3, Horner 3, Mancini
> 3, Oshima 3, Tyler 3, Waxman 2)

Still impressive considering how sprawling the rundown has become.

> Catch-up on 2021 - 48, the best being Benedetta, Eternals,
> Fear Street Part Two, Spirit Untamed, and Succession
> S3

All excellent, though once the year in question is over, we can stop pretending Succession scores are from the year the album came out haha

> Finally owned legitimately - 1 - Star Trek III

Now there's a stat I should be sharing every year lol. I have a spreadsheet on the legitimization process, I'm just a little too ashamed to be sharing it.

> 10 favorite tracks, in no particular order
> - The “oh snap, is the track of the year out already?” wows of the
> Galadriel suite, the floor-shaking Numenor-centric duo of White
> Leaves and Sailing Into Dawn, the beguiling True Creation
> Requires Sacrifice, and the seductively haunting Where The Shadows
> Lie from The Rings of Power (had to limit myself to five).

This is fascinating because for me the top cue is "Wise One" and it isn't even close. "Nolwa Mahtar" is the other one that made my countdown playlist but that was partially for its brevity.

> - The relentless The Batman and the whispers of John Barry in
> Catwoman from The Batman.

Relistened to "The Batman" recently after a long time, since there's plenty of it in the score and...dang I do not like it. It very much sounds like the pre-scoring demo that it is.

> - Suite, Suite Dino Revenge from Jurassic World: Dominion,
> mainly due to that out-of-nowhere 90s Goldsmith arrangement of the new
> Satler / Grant love theme.

Okay fine I'll listen to it again.

> the
> cultural fusion in the Ms. Marvel Suite and the gorgeous tension in
> Answered Prayer from Ms. Marvel;

Yessssss!!

> ***˝ (round down to 3) - The Book of Boba Fett, Devotion,

This juxtaposition is painful but I can't decide which score I'm more indignant about.

Good summary, thanks for sharing!

> The way that Bullet Train snuck onto the ends of both of our lists cracks me up.

I honestly didn't pick up on any of it when I saw its film (which I didn't like), but then finally decided to get around to it in January. So 'snuck up' is very fair.

> Wait, forreals?

I think Giacchino averaged a 4.2 star rating and McCreary averaged a 4.1. Either could have gotten it.

> Hokey trilogies and ancient themes are no match for a long album and an apathetic listener.

LOL.

Neither album really felt long to me though. This is not true with all long score albums from last year; The English does not benefit from that expanded program, for example.

> Now there's a spicy take! Captain Marvel, OG Doctor Strange, and Thor Ragnarok get pretty close for me though.

If I didn't use half star ratings, those would probably be the only two scores from the franchise I'd round up to 5 stars.

> Pro-tip: if you weren't sure what the score was heading into it, you need to explain to the class who it's by and what it's about.

Epic medieval drama music by Laurence Rosenthal. 1960s film with Peter O'Toole as Henry II - no, not that one, the other one.

> Still impressive considering how sprawling the rundown has become.

Nearly all of those were pre-rundown. There's some Christmas holidays catch-up in there though.

> This is fascinating because for me the top cue is 'Wise One' and it isn't even close.

It's definitely in the 'next 5' from that series.

> This juxtaposition is painful but I can't decide which score I'm more indignant about.

LOL, yes, behold what happens when you list stuff in alphabetical order.

They're in that tier for different reasons though - the former delights and irritates in equal increments (basically on par with Mando Season 1), while the latter was generally competent but rarely knocked my socks off.

> I honestly didn't pick up on any of it when I saw its film (which I didn't
> like), but then finally decided to get around to it in January. So 'snuck
> up' is very fair.

> I think Giacchino averaged a 4.2 star rating and McCreary averaged a 4.1.
> Either could have gotten it.

> LOL.

> Neither album really felt long to me though. This is not true with
> all long score albums from last year; The English does not benefit
> from that expanded program, for example.

> If I didn't use half star ratings, those would probably be the only two
> scores from the franchise I'd round up to 5 stars.

I'm mostly going off of anything that showed up in a top ten for me. But also, those two are the only ones that have ever been a top 5 for me so...yeah I guess you're right.

> Epic medieval drama music by Laurence Rosenthal. 1960s film with Peter
> O'Toole as Henry II - no, not that one, the other one.

Still sold.

> LOL, yes, behold what happens when you list stuff in alphabetical order.

> They're in that tier for different reasons though - the former delights
> and irritates in equal increments (basically on par with Mando Season
> 1), while the latter was generally competent but rarely knocked my
> socks off.

No that completely tracks. Boba Fett is great when it's doing Mando S2.5 but really didn't work for me elsewhere.

> 1. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1
> 2. Avatar: The Way of Water
> 3. God of War Ragnarök

Same top 3, woo!

Although, given that, what the heck is up with...

> Composer of the year: Michael Giacchino

The math doesn't seem to add up. You gave 5 of your top 10 tracks to McCreary for heaven's sakes!

Nice list, nice commentary, but I remain convinced you must be on some sort of mind-altering substance to dish out the extremely generous ratings that you do. Eighteen 4.5 scores in a single year? Whatever it is seems like good stuff, DM me.

> But nothing can hold a candle to Intrada’s all-powerful expanded release
> of Willow (1988), which easily wins on the basis of the 11-minute
> stretch across Willow Captured, Arrival at Snow Camp, and
> The Sled Ride at the end of the first disc. The latter track’s back
> half is an unstoppable freight train of musical thrills. The release
> catapulted the score into my all-time #6 entry. I honestly don’t remember
> listening to anything else in the month of July.

I'm still not as high on this score as many (either side of it, Krull and The Rocketeer are my preferred Horners in this mode) but it was definitely a revelatory expansion.

> Meh - Dying Light 2 Stay Human

Boo! (But seriously, hit me up. I'll take liking this score less if it means finding 18 4.5-star scores in a year.)

> Nice list, nice commentary, but I remain convinced you must be on some
> sort of mind-altering substance to dish out the extremely generous ratings
> that you do. Eighteen 4.5 scores in a single year? Whatever it is seems
> like good stuff, DM me.

You already heard the good stuff!

Wait, you weren't talking about the 4.5s...

> Although, given that, what the heck is up with...

> The math doesn't seem to add up. You gave 5 of your top 10 tracks to McCreary for heaven's sakes!

4.2 average rating vs. 4.1. It was the sole basis for my decision.

While McCreary's top 2 were superior to Giacchino's top 2 I think things are very much in the other direction moving down - Lightyear over Paws of Fury and Outlander Season 6, and Werewolf By Night over Serpent Queen and Blood Origin.

If I really tried to science this heck out of this, accounting for Rings of Power being a superior 5-star score to The Batman (top 50 vs. top 125) and the tracks you mentioned, perhaps that would've moved the needle a bit more.

It's VERY close though. Possibly the closest margin ever, or at least in some time.

> Nice list, nice commentary, but I remain convinced you must be on some sort of mind-altering substance to dish out the extremely generous ratings that you do.

I blame all the wine in my house.

> 4.2 average rating vs. 4.1. It was the sole basis for my decision.

I used to rate composers' years like this, but I don't anymore, because i realized that (e.g.) a composer who wrote 1 great score, 2 good scores and 2 kinda uneven ones that still had some decent material had a better year than another composer who just wrote 2 good scores.

That, and not all scores are created equal in stature. In the case of something so unusually large-scale as Rings of Power, that seems to me like it should weigh the scale a lot heavier than (say) Werewolf by Night. I could see it being enough to give McCreary the argument for CotY even if he wrote no other scores this year.

> That, and not all scores are created equal in stature. In the case of something so unusually large-scale as Rings of Power, that seems to me like it should weigh the scale a lot heavier than (say) Werewolf by Night.

This feels easier to execute in practice with comparing scores with similar star ratings, and I do already enable some differentiation between 4.5-star scores I'd round up to 5 vs. 4 stars (same with 3.5 stars for 4 and 3 stars).

Maybe a decent go-forward COTY metric would be take into account 5-star tiering, which would even give Ragnarök more impact than The Batman (top 100 vs. top 125).

I don't know if my current approach is really designed to cleanly fit in consideration for an 8-hour masterpiece though - but then is anyone's?

> I could see it being enough to give McCreary the argument for CotY even if he wrote no other scores this year.

This would basically be invoking the 'Howard Shore wrote another Lord of the Rings score' corollary, which doesn't really have a non-pandemic use case for me.

What you're describing is basically the dilemma with putting something like John Powell's 2018 into consideration for COTY voting when multiple other composers had impressive multi-score years of output. Would I rather have Solo than all of, say, Roque Bańos' scores from that year? Yup. But 'score of the year' voting seems to handle that aspect of my preferences.

> This feels easier to execute in practice with comparing scores with
> similar star ratings, and I do already enable some differentiation between
> 4.5-star scores I'd round up to 5 vs. 4 stars (same with 3.5 stars for 4
> and 3 stars).

> Maybe a decent go-forward COTY metric would be take into account 5-star
> tiering, which would even give Ragnarök more impact than The
> Batman (top 100 vs. top 125).

> I don't know if my current approach is really designed to cleanly fit in
> consideration for an 8-hour masterpiece though - but then is anyone's?

As I alluded to on Edmund's top ten post, I'm not really into getting super quantitative on this kind of thing, but if you wanted to weight scores to account for their length and quality, maybe there's some metric you could use to determine like, the total minutes of excellent music or something?

> This would basically be invoking the 'Howard Shore wrote another Lord
> of the Rings score' corollary, which doesn't really have a
> non-pandemic use case for me.

> What you're describing is basically the dilemma with putting something
> like John Powell's 2018 into consideration for COTY voting when multiple
> other composers had impressive multi-score years of output. Would I rather
> have Solo than all of, say, Roque Bańos' scores from that year?
> Yup. But 'score of the year' voting seems to handle that aspect of my
> preferences.

> As I alluded to on Edmund's top ten post, I'm not really into getting super quantitative on this kind of thing, but if you wanted to weight scores to account for their length and quality, maybe there's some metric you could use to determine like, the total minutes of excellent music or something?

If I recall correctly, Jorn Tillnes at the now-defunct Soundtrack Geek had a 'minutes of excellence' percentage that was resoundingly mocked in some corners of the interwebs. Maybe he was on to something lol.

> If I recall correctly, Jorn Tillnes at the now-defunct Soundtrack Geek had
> a 'minutes of excellence' percentage that was resoundingly mocked in some
> corners of the interwebs. Maybe he was on to something lol.

I wrote the phrase "total minutes of excellence" and then decided the joke would be too heavy-handed so I reworded it. Guess I should err on the side of unsubtlety.

> I used to rate composers' years like this, but I don't anymore, because i
> realized that (e.g.) a composer who wrote 1 great score, 2 good scores and
> 2 kinda uneven ones that still had some decent material had a better year
> than another composer who just wrote 2 good scores.

> That, and not all scores are created equal in stature. In the case of
> something so unusually large-scale as Rings of Power, that seems to
> me like it should weigh the scale a lot heavier than (say) Werewolf by
> Night. I could see it being enough to give McCreary the argument for
> CotY even if he wrote no other scores this year.

You have this really irksome habit of niggling about Michael Giacchino, like you resent him for securing franchises that you wish John Powell got—despite the latter's strict philosophy regarding what projects he'll work on, and despite reducing his workload in the wake of his wife's declining health and eventual death. It's fucking weird.

> You have this really irksome habit of niggling about Michael Giacchino,
> like you resent him for securing franchises that you wish John Powell
> got—despite the latter's strict philosophy regarding what projects he'll
> work on, and despite reducing his workload in the wake of his wife's
> declining health and eventual death. It's fucking weird.

So I guess there are two possibilities here:

1. You're a long-time lurker who's decided to start posting. If that's the case, welcome, glad you're joining the conversation! However, I recommend not leading off with multiple posts personally attacking another poster. Let's talk about the music!

2. You're a regular who's decided to adopt an alias in order to specifically harass another poster on a silly website where we discuss film music, which would be, to put it charitably, "fucking weird." Lord knows I've had my issues with Edmund and other posters here in the past but I call them out directly instead of making a burner account.

> You have this really irksome habit of niggling about Michael Giacchino,
> like you resent him for securing franchises that you wish John Powell
> got—despite the latter's strict philosophy regarding what projects he'll
> work on, and despite reducing his workload in the wake of his wife's
> declining health and eventual death. It's fucking weird.

It really has nothing to do with either Giacchino or Powell (who I'm not even sure why you're bringing into the conversation) - I was just curious about how Jon came to his conclusion about composer of the year, given that his list would seem to suggest a different result.

> 1. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1
> 2. Avatar: The Way of Water
> 3. God of War Ragnarök
> 4. Turning Red
> 5. The Batman
> 6. Jurassic World: Dominion
> 7. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
> 8. Ms. Marvel
> 9. Bullet Train
> 10. Strange World

This reads like the most mainstream of lists... until Bullet Train.

> Composer of the year: Michael Giacchino

Hmm, two titles in your Top 10... yeah, it checks out. Admittedly Giacchino was in the front-running for a long time until McCreary completely stole the show later in the year. Oh, and Howard Shore delivered two great genre efforts. Can't forget Vik's Shore Chant.

> My runner-up is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. 1-5 got *****. The
> others got ****˝.

> My apologies to the other ****˝ scores that didn’t make the cut: Doctor
> Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Adam,
> Lightyear, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Interview with
> the Vampire Season 1, Super Furball Saves the Future /
> Supermarsu 2, and Top Gun: Maverick, the latter the year’s most
> improbable great score.

Glad to see Multiverse of Madness and Interview... ranked highly with you. Never got around to Furball 2 and still haven't seen Top Gun 2, but the commercial album didn't endure it nearly that highly to me. Fun, but not 4.5/5 worthy.

> Owing in part to the franchise imperatives that
> drive films and television these days, there are a lot of colons in the
> aforementioned 18 works. The proctology jokes almost tell themselves.

Heh.. ha.. heh... ha.. heeeeeee

*yes, I recently re-watched The Dark Knight for the first time in years. Why do you ask?*

> My top two are boring picks because many others like one or both of them,
> so I can at least take comfort that the rest of my list is a tad eclectic.

*looks at John's list*
*looks back at his own list*

"Eclectic", huh?

> Ragnarök was better than its predecessor. If you’d told me at the
> start of the year that my #4 pick would feature more new jack swing than
> any score in history has, I’d have said you were high. Dominion and
> Dumbledore are threequels that have to juggle an insane amount of
> legacy melodies, somewhat at the expense of their new themes, but their
> many strengths outweigh their weaknesses. Ms. Marvel is the only
> MCU score that can even be in the same conversation as Black
> Panther. I thought Wakanda Forever was the weirdest major score
> of the year, and then I heard Bullet Train. Watching Strange
> World helped a lot with understanding how it was one of the year's
> most dextrous scores when it came to varying its melodies to represent
> characters as well as story themes.

> Anything I could say about The
> Batman would run the risk of just being the same thing over and over
> and over.

Oh you clever, clever man.

> The **** occupants of my top 20 are Legend of the Forest and
> Moon Knight.
>
>
> 2022 specialty releases
> Lotta goodies. Spider-Man added solid material. The
> Godfather finally overhauled the wretched sound of its original album
> release. I’ve already raved here about Tomorrow Never Dies. How
> To Train Your Dragon 2 proved there perhaps is a way to improve
> a perfect score album. The Weather Man filled a notable gap in
> Zimmer’s discography. The last score of Miklós Rózsa’s career got a long
> overdue complete release. Mary, Queen of Scots turned out to be
> even better when heard in full. The L.A. Confidential and
> Matinee expansions both earned their scores another half star from
> me. Becket was a revelation, the best “I have no idea what this
> sounds like, but here goes” release of last year, though it took me until
> early 2023 to get around to listening to it.

> But nothing can hold a candle to Intrada’s all-powerful expanded release
> of Willow (1988), which easily wins on the basis of the 11-minute
> stretch across Willow Captured, Arrival at Snow Camp, and
> The Sled Ride at the end of the first disc. The latter track’s back
> half is an unstoppable freight train of musical thrills. The release
> catapulted the score into my all-time #6 entry. I honestly don’t remember
> listening to anything else in the month of July.

> And yes, I hate that I now have to specify the year thanks to the new,
> truly desultory Disney+ legacyquel series not even bothering to have a
> different name. Kasdan’s brother at least had the decency to do that on
> his Jumanji movies.

Remakes/legacy sequels with the same name as the original has annoyed me for years, though I've (unfortunately) gotten used to having to include the year after the title for clarification.

> Almost the same note as last year: If the full set of Rózsa Polydor
> recordings (maybe my sole remaining “holy grail”) gets released in 2023,
> it wins the year. Game over. It’s in the rulebook.
>
>
> The best older works I discovered in 2022
> ****˝
> 1. Home (2015) - Lorne Balfe

> 2. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002) - Michiru Oshima
> 3. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) - Michiru Oshima

These two make my little G-Fan heart happy. Glad you discovered & enjoyed these!

> 4. Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) - John Barry
> 5. Walkabout (1971) - John Barry
> 6. The Haunted Mansion (2003) - Mark Mancina
> 7. Presumed Innocent (1990) - John Williams
> 8. Zulu (1964) - John Barry
> 9. Only You (1994) - Rachel Portman
> 10. Toy Soldiers (1991) - Robert Folk

> **** runners-up:
> - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Don't Tell Tales (2017) -
> Geoff Zanelli

*ahem*

"Dead Men Tell No Tales", you mean.

> - Kong: Skull Island (2017) - Henry Jackman
> - Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) - Julian
> Nott, Rupert Gregson-Williams, Jim Dooley, Lorne Balfe & Alastair
> King; produced by Hans Zimmer
> - And, to throw Riley a bone, Flyboys (2006) - Trevor Rabin

> Not scores, but still great:
> - Tapestry of Nations (1999) - Gavin Greenaway
> - Dream & Variations (2007) - Don Harper

> This is the third straight year I’ve decided to call out a score discovery
> that rated below 4.5 stars but provided at least one addictive track, with
> last year’s being the Western-infused romp The Bad Guys / Hit Me / Car
> Trouble / Flying High from Looney Tunes: Back in Action and the
> first instance being the groovy medieval jazz in the suites of The
> Monks of St. Thomas Affair from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Season
> 3 (RIP Gerald Fried). This year’s winner is Guns from The
> Rundown, which is about as badass as film music gets.

> Full breakdown:
> Newly heard scores - 227
> - Part of MV/RC rundown - 188 (Zimmer 29, HGW 18, Jablonsky 17, Balfe 16,
> Rabin 15, Powell 12, Djawadi 10, Morris 9)
> - Others - 39 (Jerry Goldsmith 5, Barry 3, Beltrami 3, Horner 3, Mancini
> 3, Oshima 3, Tyler 3, Waxman 2)

> Catch-up on 2021 - 48, the best being Benedetta, Eternals,
> Fear Street Part Two, Spirit Untamed, and Succession
> S3

> Expanded releases - 20, the best being The Godfather, HTTYD
> 2, Spider-Man, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Willow

> Non-score works - 5 - Gavin Greenaway’s IllumiNations: Reflections of
> Earth and Tapestry of Nations, Elliot Goldenthal’s Fire
> Water Paper, Don Harper’s Dream & Variations, and Craig
> Armstrong’s The Edge of the Sea

> Concert recordings - 2 - The Wings of a Film and Hans Zimmer:
> Live in Prague

> Compilation re-recording - 1 - The Golden Age of Hollywood

> Finally owned legitimately - 1 - Star Trek III
>
>
> 10 favorite tracks, in no particular order
> - The “oh snap, is the track of the year out already?” wows of the
> Galadriel suite, the floor-shaking Numenor-centric duo of White
> Leaves and Sailing Into Dawn, the beguiling True Creation
> Requires Sacrifice, and the seductively haunting Where The Shadows
> Lie from The Rings of Power (had to limit myself to five).

> - The relentless The Batman and the whispers of John Barry in
> Catwoman from The Batman.

> - Suite, Suite Dino Revenge from Jurassic World: Dominion,
> mainly due to that out-of-nowhere 90s Goldsmith arrangement of the new
> Satler / Grant love theme.

> - The jazzy, elegant opening track from The Outfit.

> - The dazzling Make or Brake from Bullet Train.

> The next batch: The thrilling thematic summary in the Main Titles
> from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; the glorious
> build-up in Wyvern Rescue and the emotional explosion in He
> Sought to Kill, I Sought to Protect from Fantastic Beasts: The
> Secrets of Dumbledore; the giddy nonsense of The Aunties and
> the absurd synthesis of traditional music, boy bands, and beatboxing in
> Pandas Unite / Nobody Like U (Reprise) from Turning Red; the
> bustling Main Title Theme from The Gilded Age Season 1; the
> cultural fusion in the Ms. Marvel Suite and the gorgeous tension in
> Answered Prayer from Ms. Marvel; the moving End
> Titles from Notre-Dame on Fire; and Lorne Balfe’s energetic
> take on the Top Gun Anthem for the end credits of Top Gun
> Maverick.

> The next batch: The bombastic Getting Through from Doctor
> Strange; the mystical and playful Giantess of Ironwood from
> God of War Ragnarök; the lovely Payakan and the rampaging
> Na’vi Attack from Avatar: The Way of Water; the stylish
> Tentomushi from Bullet Train; the abstract ecclesiastical
> beauty of The Banished Angel and the powerful Love Across
> Worlds from His Dark Materials Season 3; the striking
> Constellation and the awe-inspiring Welcome Travelers from
> Moon Knight; and John Williams’ marvelous Obi-Wan theme from
> Obi-Wan Kenobi.

> Honorable mention: One of my favorite tracks from The Gilded Age Season
> 1 which astonishingly didn’t make the album was a piece from the
> season finale that started as source music for a dance, evolved into full
> score, and dramatically ended right as a carriage door slammed.
>
>
> Every other score I gave a rating to
> Other **** - Babylon, DC League of Super-Pets, Emily,
> The English, Enola Holmes 2, The Fabelmans, 5,000
> Blankets, The Gilded Age Season 1, Glass Onion: A Knives Out
> Mystery, His Dark Materials Series 3, The Lost King,
> Luck, My Father’s Dragon, Notre-Dame on Fire /
> Notre-Dame brűle, Outlander Season 6, Paws of Fury: The Legend
> of Hank, Polar Bear, Slumberland, The 13 Lords of the
> Shogun / Kamakuradono no 13-nin, Violent Night, Wednesday
> Season 1, and The Woman King

> ***˝ (round up to 4) - Amsterdam, Blueback, Death on the
> Nile, Frozen Planet II, Ghost Book / Ghost Book
> Obakezukan, Nope, The Outfit, Prehistoric Planet,
> The Railway Children Return, Thor: Love and Thunder,
> Ticket to Paradise, and The Time of Secrets / Le temps des
> secrets

> ***˝ (round down to 3) - The Book of Boba Fett, Devotion,
> The Faith of the Three Kingdoms, The Gray Man, Petra de
> San José, Redeeming Love, The Sea Beast, See How They
> Run, The Serpent Queen Season 1, She-Hulk: Attorney at
> Law, Thai Cave Rescue, Till, and Werewolf by
> Night

> *** - Ambulance, The Bad Guys, 1883, The Ice Age
> Adventures of Buck Wild, The King's Daughter, The Last
> Warrior: Emissary of Darkness / Posledniy bogatyr 3, The Legend of
> Vox Machina Season 1, The Lost City, The Witcher: Blood
> Origin, and Wolf

> Eh - Ice Age: Scrat Tales

> Meh - Dying Light 2 Stay Human, Man vs. Bee

> Oh dear - Thankfully nothing this year!
>
>

For some reason I always forget you're the one who goes all-in with the listing/categorizing/tallying of everything and thus am constantly shocked when you do one of these massive breakdowns. Oh and they're really fun to read as well.

> One other random thought
> I truly despised the Halo series on Paramount+. It was maybe the
> worst season I’ve ever watched from start to finish, and I’ve seen
> Fargo season 4! But it is surprising that Sean Callery’s music
> still hasn’t received an album release, especially since the
> streamer’s YouTube channel featured a making-of video with the composer.

I remember seeing something about a Halo TV series and then hearing absolutely zero else about it. Guess that speaks to the shows quality.

----

Great and thorough summary as usual, John! A fun read and looking forward to seeing more of your work and opinions around the Scoreboard this year!

> 'Eclectic', huh?

Hey, I said 'eclectic', not 'uniquely eclectic'.

> 'Dead Men Tell No Tales', you mean.

OOOOOOPS. All this proofreading and something like this still slips through the cracks. Ah well.

> For some reason I always forget you're the one who goes all-in with the listing/categorizing/tallying of everything and thus am constantly shocked when you do one of these massive breakdowns. Oh and they're really fun to read as well.

Thanks!

> I remember seeing something about a Halo TV series and then hearing absolutely zero else about it. Guess that speaks to the shows quality.

There are 50,000 things wrong with it - or, rather, the only two things that I remember being good about it were Pablo Schreiber and Bokeem Woodbine. It feels like every 3rd or 4th scene is another meeting with various UNSC functionaries, and you think those chats are as boring as it will get, and then you get to Prophet-centric scenes and find out there's a new low you can sink to. Surprise familial relationships don't deepen any of the drama. There are a lot of child kidnapping flashbacks. It looks very cheap. There is not nearly enough Burn Gorman. I could go on.

But perhaps most bizzare is that it's a show that's constantly at war with itself about how reverent it's supposed to be to its source material.

For example, the opening sequence shows a colonized planet. People talk to each other for a while, and then some aliens attack. No one knows who or what they are, and you never hear things like Elite, Sangheili, the Great Journey, and other familiar terms. People are scared. Only an intervention from some armored soldiers saves them.

Get past the incredibly janky visual effects and you can see a possibly interesting way of approaching the concept - doing mankind's first interaction with the Covenant enemy, and thus you're discovering the opponent as the characters do. It could avoid the problem of covering narrative ground from the games without pushing away fans of the franchise.

And then in, like, the very next scene we cut away to somewhere else in space, specifically to where a giant space fortress is, and text on the screen reads something like HIGH CHARITY - COVENANT HOMEWORLD, thus basically defeating most of the narrative purpose of that opening.

Never mind that even though we're in prequel-land we're also in a 'find the thing so I can find the other thing so I can find the third thing' territory. There is a lot of rock touching. SO. MUCH. ROCK. TOUCHING.

Would Abel Korzeniowski doing the music have saved any of this? Probably not, but I doubt the version he was hired to do was anything like what we ended up getting.

> Hey, I said 'eclectic', not 'uniquely eclectic'.

*is complimented for his eclectic tastes... he thinks*

> OOOOOOPS. All this proofreading and something like this still slips
> through the cracks. Ah well.

Happens to the best (and worst) of us. It's also a tongue twister of a subtitle.

> There are 50,000 things wrong with it - or, rather, the only two things
> that I remember being good about it were Pablo Schreiber and Bokeem
> Woodbine. It feels like every 3rd or 4th scene is another meeting with
> various UNSC functionaries, and you think those chats are as boring as it
> will get, and then you get to Prophet-centric scenes and find out there's
> a new low you can sink to. Surprise familial relationships don't deepen
> any of the drama. There are a lot of child kidnapping flashbacks. It looks
> very cheap. There is not nearly enough Burn Gorman. I could go on.

> But perhaps most bizzare is that it's a show that's constantly at war with
> itself about how reverent it's supposed to be to its source material.

> For example, the opening sequence shows a colonized planet. People talk to
> each other for a while, and then some aliens attack. No one knows who or
> what they are, and you never hear things like Elite, Sangheili, the Great
> Journey, and other familiar terms. People are scared. Only an intervention
> from some armored soldiers saves them.

> Get past the incredibly janky visual effects and you can see a possibly
> interesting way of approaching the concept - doing mankind's first
> interaction with the Covenant enemy, and thus you're discovering the
> opponent as the characters do. It could avoid the problem of covering
> narrative ground from the games without pushing away fans of the
> franchise.

> And then in, like, the very next scene we cut away to somewhere else in
> space, specifically to where a giant space fortress is, and text on the
> screen reads something like HIGH CHARITY - COVENANT HOMEWORLD, thus
> basically defeating most of the narrative purpose of that opening.

> Never mind that even though we're in prequel-land we're also in a 'find
> the thing so I can find the other thing so I can find the third thing'
> territory. There is a lot of rock touching. SO. MUCH. ROCK. TOUCHING.

> Would Abel Korzeniowski doing the music have saved any of this? Probably
> not, but I doubt the version he was hired to do was anything like what we
> ended up getting.

My very meager exposure to the Halo franchise means that most of this is borderline gibberish to me, but reading the obvious annoyance and passion this show stirred up for you was highly amusing to read. Also lol'd at the "rock touching" bit. XDD