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Top Gun: Maverick
(2022)
Album Cover Art
Interscope (American)
Universal (Japanese)
Album 2 Cover Art
Co-Composed and Produced by:

Co-Composed by:
Harold Faltermeyer
Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga)

Conducted by:
Matt Dunkley
Jasper Randall

Orchestrated by:
Bruce L. Fowler
Walt Fowler
David Giuli
Jennifer Hammond
Yvonne Suzette Moriarty
Booker White

Additional Music by:
Andrew Kawczynski
David Fleming
Steve Mazzaro
Max Aruj
Labels Icon
LABELS & RELEASE DATES
Interscope Records (America)
(May 27th, 2022)

Universal Music (Japan)
(May 27th, 2022)
Availability Icon
ALBUM AVAILABILITY
The Interscope album is a commercial international release, with CD and vinyl options. The Japanese Universal album with an additional track came in two versions, including a "Deluxe Edition" with unique packaging.
Awards
AWARDS
The song "Hold My Hand" was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe. The soundtrack album was nominated for a Grammy Award.
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Availability | Awards | Viewer Ratings | Comments | Track Listings | Notes
Buy it... if you love the blissfully nostalgic tone of the film itself, for the sequel's soundtrack is appreciably thoughtful in its continuation of the 1986 film's themes.

Avoid it... if you expect Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer to supply refreshingly compelling or complex new material that is not derived at least in part from the prior score or the new and returning songs.
Review Icon
EDITORIAL REVIEW
FILMTRACKS TRAFFIC RANK: #1,975
WRITTEN 1/27/23
Balfe
Balfe
Faltermeyer
Faltermeyer
Zimmer
Zimmer
Top Gun: Maverick (Lorne Balfe/Harold Faltermeyer/Various) Rarely do nostalgic sequels succeed with such universal acceptance as 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, the long awaited and long overdue but ultimately perfectly timed sequel to the 1986 blockbuster, Top Gun. Paramount reunited Jerry Bruckheimer and Tom Cruise for an intelligent continuation of the original story, Cruise's character of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell still defying U.S. Navy rules in his plight to prove himself and the technology of his planes. Reassigned from testing an experimental "Darkstar" aircraft unsafely, his former competitor and now lifelong friend, Admiral Tom "Iceman" Kazansky protects and supports his career, sending him to train young aviators for a dangerous foreign mission. With one of those pilots the son of his lost flight partner from the first film, Nick "Goose" Bradshaw, tensions abound. Maverick eventually proves himself to the team, leads the mission, and rekindles a failed prior romance. The movie struck all the right feel-good chords with audiences and pleased the U.S. Department of Defense with its accuracy and positive depiction of fighter pilots in an age of increasingly unmanned weaponry. Cruise absolutely insisted upon two vital ingredients to this triumph: the emotional return of Val Kilmer as Iceman despite his difficulty speaking after battling throat cancer and, as a boon to his own payday, the refusal to sell the movie's rights to any streaming services for up-front distribution. As a lifeline for struggling theatre chains, Top Gun: Maverick collected nearly $1.5 billion in grosses, a sum only surpassed later in the year by Avatar: The Way of Water; these two spectacular visual feasts provided renewed hope for saving theatrical cinematic releases as a concept. The soundtrack of Top Gun remains among the most successful of all-time, its collection of songs and Harold Faltermeyer's score persisting as iconic representations of 1980's pop culture. It was impossible in the following ten years to avoid Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone," Berlin's "Take My Breath Away," or Faltermeyer's score anthem on radio stations or in Paramount's theme parks. They were as ubiquitous as any soundtrack in a generation.

For Top Gun: Maverick, the production clearly sought to extend its mission of nostalgia to its soundtrack, and the results are largely successful at that task. The Loggins song, "Danger Zone," returns, as does the source usage of "Great Balls of Fire." The two new songs leading the soundtrack are "I Ain't Worried" by OneRepublic and "Hold My Hand" by Lady Gaga, the latter a retro rock ballad clearly meant as a substitute for the Berlin song. Half a dozen other songs litter the film but do not feature on the soundtrack album. The Lady Gaga entry is the awards bait from the presentation, a pleasantly belted number except for the awful vocal manipulations at its start. Hans Zimmer was tasked with tackling the score for Top Gun: Maverick, a simmering mess which he approached with trepidation out of a fear that he would yield an inferior product compared to the 1986 soundtrack. In an effort to maintain the same character and quality of Top Gun, he reached out to Faltermeyer and moved him into the Zimmer-led Remote Control Productions (RCP) complex for close involvement on the new score. After initial tumult with the score, frequent Zimmer collaborator Lorne Balfe took the lead in coordinating its composition, though because of the usual, frustrating legalities of contractual credit, Balfe doesn't receive a compositional nod in the film itself. (He does, however, lead the compositional credit on the album.) Balfe and Zimmer teamed up for their usual synthesizer programming duties, and they closely involved Lady Gaga in the construction of several cues that adapt her song's melody, leading to her receiving top composer credit as well. (Faltermeyer, interestingly, disliked sharing composing credit with Lady Gaga, taking his displeasure public.) While scores adapt song melodies without credit all the time, Zimmer and Balfe insist that Lady Gaga's collaboration with them was significant enough to merit the top line credit. Not as fortunate, of course, is the army of Zimmer (and now Balfe) clones wandering the halls of RCP and contributing to this score as ghostwriters. Leading these aspiring souls are Andrew Kawczynski, David Fleming, and Steve Mazzaro, along with five other arrangers and hordes of assistants and "music consultants." Zimmer earns his pay collecting all this talent for projects such as this, though the results vary in quality.

On the surface, the soundtrack for Top Gun: Maverick is just as much a success as the film itself. Zimmer and Balfe strike the right balance of Faltermeyer's 1980's character and the more contemporary techniques that have made Zimmer's music popular in more recent decades. The product as a whole is a decent modernization of the prior soundtrack, with more than enough references to Top Gun at the proper times to suffice. Something has to said for Zimmer and Balfe in their ability to please a crowd. At the same time, the score for Top Gun: Maverick offers extremely simple, repetitive new themes and no really complex constructs anywhere, the density sparse and the rather bonehead techniques of brooding instrumental tones and tired action ostinatos consistent to Zimmer and Balfe's most standard styles. In short, this is dumb but mostly satisfying music, and few viewers will be expecting high art in this circumstance. The Zimmer technique of constructing a cue around one long crescendo of repeating chords, a habit adopted by Balfe, is extremely tiresome and is applied a few times here. The synthetics and orchestra are heavily weighted towards the bass region, emphasizing masculine heroism without much lofty treble interference. The action music is the weakness in the score, a really obnoxious, slurring bass pitch effect against pointlessly slapping rhythms causing annoyance in "Tally Two" and "Canyon Dogfight," the latter cue mashing the score's themes together inelegantly and concluding with orchestral stinger effects that are extremely grating; these passages are reportedly the work of Andrew Kawczynski, though cue sheet attribution is tough to trust on a project like this. Outside of these cues, you do receive the standard ostinatos chugging through their anonymous low string mannerisms, and overblown melodrama from Zimmer's earlier days does influence "Dagger One is Hit." Perhaps more interesting are the shadows of Crimson Tide in "Give 'Em Hell," a cue credited to Zimmer himself. Most audiences will be far more interested in the anthemic and romantic portions, however, and these cues are better handled by Zimmer and Balfe. The simplistic nature of the performances suits these aspects of the score, their style prevailing well over their substance as they convey the easily digestible themes from the franchise.


Ratings Icon
VIEWER RATINGS
259 TOTAL VOTES
Average: 3.09 Stars
***** 48 5 Stars
**** 52 4 Stars
*** 72 3 Stars
** 50 2 Stars
* 37 1 Stars
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Track Listings Icon
TRACK LISTINGS
Interscope Album Tracks   ▼Total Time: 41:49
• 1. Main Titles (You've Been Called Back to Top Gun) (2:30)
• 2. Danger Zone - performed by Kenny Loggins (3:35)
• 3. Darkstar (3:01)
• 4. Great Balls of Fire (Live) - performed by Miles Teller (1:54)
• 5. You're Where You Belong/Give 'Em Hell (5:46)
• 6. I Ain't Worried - performed by OneRepublic (2:28)
• 7. Dagger One is Hit/Time to Let Go (5:06)
• 8. Tally Two/What's the Plan/F-14 (4:34)
• 9. The Man, The Legend/Touchdown (3:54)
• 10. Penny Returns (Interlude) (2:47)
• 11. Hold My Hand - performed by Lady Gaga (3:45)
• 12. Top Gun Anthem (2:28)
Universal Album (Japan) Tracks   ▼Total Time: 45:07

Notes Icon
NOTES AND QUOTES
The inserts of the Interscope album and regular Japanese Universal album contain extensive credits but no extra information about the score or film. That of the Japanese Universal "Deluxe Edition" variant features a 7-inch cardboard sleeve and contains a sticker and poster.
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or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Top Gun: Maverick are Copyright © 2022, Interscope Records (America), Universal Music (Japan) and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 1/27/23 (and not updated significantly since).
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