Film music in 2024 refused to play second fiddle.
Crashing, crooning, and occasionally whispering its way into the soul of every frame, these weren’t mere background melodies dutifully serving the narrative; they were unruly darkhorses in their own right — challenging, elevating (Compressing/Repressing), sometimes even outright stealing the spotlight from the very scripts they were meant to support.
The year’s scores ranged from the achingly minimalist — a single piano note holding its breath — to orchestral cataclysms that wringed every last second of attention out of us. And they didn’t exist simply to set the tone; rather, they built the emotional scaffolding of their films, brick by symphonic brick.
Whether bold and brash or quiet and unsettling, the music demanded to be noticed. Together, these scores represent the full spectrum of what film music can achieve.
The music this year has been the connective tissue — the device that made every sweeping shot and quiet pause linger just a while longer. It was cheeky, strange, and gloriously unforgettable — just like the films they helped bring to life. A reminder that the right note, played at the right time, can shape a moment as powerfully as any line of dialogue or camera angle, and make a good scene truly transcendent.
The monumental and the minimal
Take Daniel Blumberg’s monumental work on The Brutalist, for instance. Here, music became sonic architecture. Inspired by the imposing concrete monoliths that define the titular aesthetic, Blumberg layered sparse piano with sudden bursts of orchestral flair, flourishes of jazz, and even retro synths. The music felt carved out of concrete — austere yet unexpectedly tender in its quieter moments. Years of meticulous recording across Europe with elite musicians paid off in spades, with the score’s jagged crescendos and delicate diminuendos constructing a towering sonic edifice that stands its ground outside of Brady Corbet’s epic.
Our top tracks: “Overture (Ship)“, “Steel”
Equally audacious were two-time Oscar-winning Nine Inch Nails duo, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, doubling their output this year with scores for Luca Guadagnino’s Challengersand Queer. For Challengers, the duo dove headfirst into French electro and techno à la Daft Punk, transforming tennis matches into euphoric raves. The rhythmic thwacks of tennis balls became percussive punctuation amid pulsating beats, turning every set into a sweaty, high-stakes dance-off.
Our top tracks: “The Signal”, “Compress/Repress”
Meanwhile, Queer saw a quieter, more meditative approach — a swirl of woodwinds and piano that melted into fevered electronic textures. If Challengers was a dash through unbridled physicality and athletic abandon, Queer was a gentle, disorienting plunge into the depths of yearning, demonstrating once again that this composer-director pairing is as astonishingly fertile as it is endlessly inventive.
Our top tracks: “Pure Love”, “LOVE.”
Volker Bertelmann, basking in the glow of his Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front, traded the chaos of the Great War for the cloistered intrigue of papal politics in his second collaboration with Edward Berger for Conclave. The German composer delivered a claustrophobic arrangement of strings that conveyed both the grandeur of the Vatican and the personal anguish lurking beneath the cassocks. The centerpiece was a three-note motif that spiraled into crescendos as unnerving as the machinations at the film’s core. Yet, in its closing track, Bertelmann allowed light to pierce through centuries-old shadows — a soaring cathartic orchestral resolution that suggested even the most entrenched institutions might glimpse redemption.
Our top tracks: “Walk Through Rain”, “Postlude of Conclave”
Subtle sounds, big emotions
Not all scores screamed for attention. Some, like Gints Zilbalodis and Rihards Zalupe’s collaboration for Flow, thrived in whispered genius. The Latvian animated odyssey of a lone cat traversing a flooded, humanless world, relied on its music to find its voice among the quiet mystery of its setting. Their collaboration combined chimes, strings, synths, and drones to create music as fluid as the englufing waters. The understated atmosphere of the score didn’t force attention, rather, it drew us into this breathtaking world where sound often said more than dialogue ever could.
Our top tracks: “Flow Away”, “Reflection”
Kris Bowers delivered something wholly different for DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot. This quirky tale of parenthood between a robot and a gosling needed a score that could balance wonder, adventure, and melancholy. Blending orchestral swells with synthetic flourishes and inventive percussion, Bowers created a wilderness that felt universal and timeless, promising a second life as playlist staples for families everywhere.
Our top tracks: “I Could Use A Boost”, “I Have Everything I Need”
Meanwhile, Alex G’s score for Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow was an act of pure, crackling defiance. Drenched in static and dissonance, the music felt less composed than conjured, perfectly capturing the film’s liminal nightmare. Each note felt like an echo from another dimension, a daring score that didn’t ask for permission to haunt your thoughts.
Our top tracks: “Opening Theme from the Pink Opaque”, “Blue Glow”
And Bryce Dessner’s score for A24’s Sing Sing defied expectations with its chamber orchestral sounds, distancing itself from the soppy clichés of prison dramas. Dessner’s music was plaintive, pastoral, and achingly beautiful — that only served to remind that even in the claustrophobic confines of America’s sickening prison industrial complex, there is room for solace, hope and joy.
Our top tracks: “Song & Dance”, “Seven Years of Curtain Calls”
All that jazz
In Blue Giant, Grammy-winning pianist Hiromi Uehara breathed life into jazz in a way that felt electric. The story of aspiring saxophonist Dai Miyamoto needed music that could match his unbridled passion, and Uehara channeled the undying spirit of Coltrane and Rollins into a score that vibrated with raw energy. The frenetic piano riffs and triumphant sax crescendos charted the emotional highs and lows of the coming-of-age journey, making Blue Giant a symphonic masterpiece as much as a cinematic one.
Our top tracks: “N.E.W.”, “FIRST NOTE”
In Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, Umberto Smerilli’s jazzy, noir-inflected score added layers of paranoia and pathos. The music shifted between moods — moody, playful, terrifying — mirroring the protagonist’s own spiraling sense of self. It’s a clever little score as unsettling as the film’s tone, and a perfect match for Schimberg’s macabre vision.
Our top tracks: “A Different Man:, “The Chase”
Elsewhere, Payal Kapadia’s beloved All We Imagine As Light offered a masterclass in restraint. Topshe’s melancholic synths captured the film’s aching sense of disconnection, the score’s simplicity belying its emotional depth, demonstrating how minimalism can cut as deep as sweeping statements.
Our top tracks: “Anu’s Song 1”, “Imagined Light”
Nostalgia and reinvention
Naoki Sato’s orchestral thunderstorm for the Japanese icon’s first Oscar-winning outing in Godzilla: Minus One transformed the kaiju into a vessel for Japan’s postwar grief. Its seismic shifts between intimacy and bombast reflected the fragility of human resilience against nature’s wrath. By threading echoes of the late, great Akira Ifukube’s unmistakable motifs with his own droning orchestrations, Sato’s compositions are as colossal and terrifying as the titular beast itself — a score that feels both reverent and innovative, and a fitting tribute to a monster that has always been more than its size.
Our top tracks: “Godzilla-1.0 Divine”, “Godzilla-1.0 Resolution”
Meanwhile, Robin Carolan’s score for Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu leaned into gothic decadence, combining Eastern European instrumentation with disconcerting sound design to offer up a feast of terror and doomed romanticism. Carolan captures both the sweeping horror of Transylvania and the intimate tragedy of Count Orlok’s obsession, that creeps under your skin.
Our top tracks: “Come To Me”, “Lilacs”
Benjamin Wallfisch, on the other hand, took Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus into uncharted territory, weaving a score that paid homage to the franchise’s storied legacy of music, while carving its own distressing niche. Wallfisch’s score introduces three distinct themes — the hopeful, the solemn and the malevolent — all interconnected yet stylistically divergent. Paying homage to Jerry Goldsmith’s haunting original score, James Horner’s bombastic brass, and Harry Gregson-Williams’ ethereal modern motifs, Wallfisch layers nostalgia with menacing innovation.
Our top tracks: “The Chrysalis”, “That’s Our Sun”
And then there was Hans Zimmer, revisiting themes from his Oscar-winning score from the first installment for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two. While his reuse of motifs from the earlier film may have kept him out of the Oscar race this year, it hardly diminished the score’s monumental impact. This was Zimmer at his most reflective and a testament to how even amidst sandworm-riding intergalactic battles, there’s room for quieter, more powerful grace.
Our top track: “Beginnings Are Such Delicate Times”, “Only I Will Remain”
And the underdogs…
We’d be remiss without mentioning an irreverent Irish rap trio’s cinematic debut, who turned their diegetic soundtrack into a blazing manifesto of resistance. Now in the running for Oscars in two separate categories, Kneecap lend their lyrical grit and biting political commentary to their eponymous film, delivering infectious tracks that seamlessly fuse Irish and English into a celebration of rebellion that culminates in a narrative crescendo tied to Northern Ireland’s 2022 Identity and Language Act. By the end, Kneecap’s music feels like a battle cry for the underdog, a poetic capstone to the trio’s meteoric rise.
Our top tracks: “Sick in The Head”, “H.O.O.D”
(This piece includes music from films or soundtrack albums that recieved a 2024 release in India)
Published – December 20, 2024 01:40 pm IST
