The jury may still be out on the best films of the year, but at least we can settle on which ones have the most stimulating soundtracks.
Offering ambient scores as much as precisely curated trendy soundtracks, our selection aims to streamline the bumper year of releases as to offer a well-crafted package full of eclectic musical treats. Get your playlists ready.
If love had a sound, it would probably be the swooning strings of Nicholas Britell’s sensuous score to If Beale Street Could Talk. Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to Moonlight casts a warm glow in every frame, placing love above all else despite the turmoil endured by its leading young couple.
Britell replicates this feeling: cellos sing of an intoxicating first love, tuned percussion and piano paint the innocence of youth. Britell’s score is simply gorgeous, encased in an unwavering optimism that entwines with the characters’ ability to trust love all the way.
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In Simon Amstell’s tender and loosely autobiographical portrait of a young man looking for love, James Righton (of Klaxons) pens a wistful string of songs that have the feeling of those moments after a romantic evening with someone that you play over in your head on the journey home – this would be the music playing in the background.
At once nostalgic and hopeful, the album plays as a sensitive time capsule of a relationship bursting with intimacy. With shades of Thomas Newman and Jon Brion, Righton is already claiming his stake as a serious talent to watch.
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To tell the story of his scrappy skateboarding youth, Jonah Hill curated a playlist full of 90s throwbacks to set the scene and pace his directorial debut with eclectic and raw charm. It’s not wistful but it’s still specific – from Pixies to Wu-Tang Clan, the soundtrack pinpoints moments of immature male angst and major cultural shifts with endlessly cool precision.
The film also includes four original tracks composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – restrained, thoughtful piano-led themes that let mid90s breathe with some kind of forgiveness for its angry teens every now and then.
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What makes Bo Burnham’s directorial debut Eighth Grade so remarkable is that it treats the anxieties of 13-year-old Kayla with complete sincerity. Take the moment when she arrives at a pool party. Scottish composer Anna Meredith soundtracks the walk down the stony steps with a dissonant fanfare of horns, as if she’s not entering a swimming pool, but the seventh circle of hell.
Meredith’s synth-heavy score adds grandeur to the classroom with ambitious arpeggios as wide-ranging as the emotions of a pre-teen girl learning to love herself.
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Rock biopics have made room for popstar pictures, within the canon of music films. Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux juxtaposes the horrors of terror attacks with the inescapable bright lights of mass-produced pop music, with pretty abrasive and impressive results.
The film’s music is astonishing in its audacity – the late, great Scott Walker composes an operatic score that brings immense gravitas to every minor word, while pop powerhouse Sia writes a string of original songs to feature in the back catalogue of Corbet’s fictional star, Celeste. Standouts include Wrapped Up and Private Girl, but the whole garishly wonderful album plays like a treat.
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In the counter-cultural epicentre of Scotland’s rave scene, the beverages are alcoholic, the rules are non-existent and the music is good enough to dance to. Beats is a rallying cry against the 1994 act that banned music ‘characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats’, and as such, its soundtrack, curated by Optimo’s JD Twitch, features enough tunes to start your own rave.
The Prodigy, LFO and Ultra-Sonic may seem devoid of emotional power, but when they’re accompanied by the journey of two friends who accept that they must grow apart, even club beats can unearth some hidden melancholy.
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Blame or thank the internet with its never-ending stream of information for broadening the horizons of today’s teens. One look at the soundtrack to Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut Booksmart proves that the kids of Gen Z are omnivorous in their tastes, musical or otherwise.
Echoing a generation whose ears are constantly tethered to Spotify via the headphone cable, each defining moment of a wild night out is punctuated with the sounds of everyone from Alanis Morissette to Run the Jewels. In the film's standout scene, the crescendoing guitars of Perfume Genius encapsulate the descent from euphoria to heartbreak far better than words could ever muster.
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There's no real surprise here – it was always going to be a comforting, if knowingly safe, delight to revisit Elton John's oeuvre with his unabashedly camp biopic.
But where Bohemian Rhapsody irked some viewers for offering nothing more than karaoke renditions, Rocketman gives leading actor Taron Egerton the chance to prove his worth by singing every note himself – still honouring Elton, but through his own impressive voice.
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For the lost and lonely rockers in 80s Leningrad, music was all they had. The greatest discovery in the soundtrack to this laidback biopic on Russian musicians Mike Naumenko and Viktor Tsoi is the music of its subjects: the infectious slacker rock of their respective bands Zoopark and Kino.
A rotation of reliable hits from Talking Heads, David Bowie and T. Rex accompany the film’s most unconventional notes in which characters break out into song, expressing their frustration with the world. The tracks may seem like rudimentary picks for the pair who market themselves as revolutionary, but the sounds of the west in oppressive Russia are also the sounds of rebellion.
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Joanna Hogg's stunning portrait of a young woman in 1990s London is rife with surprising and sensitive details refracting her own memories and reaching out to an attentive audience too.
Her carefully crafted playlist of tracks spans new wave rock and festive bangers without remorse, understanding the contradictory nature of a transitional period. Come for the Psychedelic Furs, stay for a Moonlight Serenade.
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