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•	1990 Album

•	2021 Album

•	1990 Album

While Williams did adapt the "Smoke Gets in your Eyes" melody into two score tracks in Always, these were replaced or diminished in the film as to be of no consequence. The spotting of Williams' music is surprisingly minimal overall, several opening scenes existing without it, and Spielberg ultimately rearranged a fair portion of the composer's recordings in the final cut. The score is unobtrusive, uninspired, and uncentered, providing none of the excitement, romance, or magic necessary to elevate the film beyond its mundane confines. While swirling with promise by its conclusion, the work still fails on a surprising number of levels. First, Williams doesn't capture the essence of flight in Always. Old bomber planes have always had a romantic element to how they appear when flying, and Jerry Goldsmith very effectively addressed this emotion in Forever Young a few years later. Williams, however, doesn't evoke any soaring element here, nor does his limited action material stir up any significant amount of excitement in the firefighting and crash sequences. Once the primary character meets his angel, the score takes a back seat in the film, often consisting of only minimalistic contributions from a few meandering strings, celeste, harp, and piano, a lightly ethereal, ambient sound that Williams was just exploring at the time and would return to in Far and Away. To some listeners, this material may sound electronically "new age" for the time. The most notable exception to the understated, non-comedic music is the dread-inducing "Rescue Operation," a cue that doesn't feature Williams' usual high standard of dissonance in such kinds of writing. The lightly droning celeste, wavering string notes that last minutes, and thematic development that is so miniscule that it goes barely noticed occupies much of the playing time. The score is not without themes, but Williams rarely struggles to enunciate his ideas to such an extent as here. The main romance identity exists for the doomed pilot and his lost love, three-note phrases in rising optimistic chords in such a way as to denote trepidation, uncertainty, and lament. As such, the theme struggles to assert itself despite its frequent statements. Its most obvious placements come in the truncated exuberance late in "Saying Goodbye," fuller ensemble performances early in "Pete and Dorinda" and "End Credits," and in its passages of resounding resolution during "Among the Clouds."

The main romance theme of Always, sometimes reduced to its first two three-note figures, is far inferior compared to the secondary love theme that takes over for the female lead's character in late cues. Heard in the middle of "The Rescue Operation," the idea flourishes in "Dorinda Solo Flight" (combining with the other love theme) and is treated to a broad extension in the second half of "End Credits." Like many Williams scores, the composer offers one cue of comedic mayhem, its form in this one coming in the affable Americana chasing of "Follow Me." Aside from "Follow Me" and the score's late cues of resolution, most of Always is so understated as to be a non-factor. The music is so soft that you can actually hear a certain amount of studio noise in the latter half of "Seeing Dorinda," including the musicians shuffling around in their seats. For a film with definite supernatural or religious aspects, Always is completely devoid of enticing magic, harrowing loss, or genuine romance. It's difficult to imagine that for Audrey Hepburn's long awaited and assumed-to-be final return to the screen, Williams was unable to provide her heavenly character (or the afterlife more generally) with any kind of redeeming musical identity whatsoever. It's also interesting to compare the approach of this score to A.I. Artificial Intelligence a decade later. Both involve the concepts of love, death, commitment, and rebirth, and whereas Williams treats these ideas with great distance in Always, he would pour on the emotional syrup in A.I. with much better results. The original 1990 album for Always began with an array of light rock and country songs, including two variants of "Smoke Gets in your Eyes," before offering the bulk of Williams' score. A limited, 2021 La-La Land Records album drops the songs and extends the score's main narrative experience out to 56 minutes, though it once again supplies short cues of like character in longer combined tracks, even if that presentation defies the chronology of the score's cues. The additional material is not significant until "End Credits," and a handful of alternate arrangements will be of intellectual interest to those seeking Williams' and Spielberg's troubled attempts to find the right tone of the story. The 80-minute single-CD product is well produced but only extends a mostly lifeless but relaxing Williams' score that is as disappointing as any in that great era for the composer. There are flourishes of romantic depth in the final moments of the work, but they relegate Always to forever remaining a score best represented by a five-minute suite of the two leading themes.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

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For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68 (in 91 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.54 (in 363,497 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.