Top 10 Film Scores of 2024

2024 turned out to be a musically blessed year, maybe not so blessed in terms of Films and Television (w.r.t. 2023). The domain may or may not be quite limited yet the range the year offers is spread wide in terms of film scores. While the world debates the exclusion of Zimmer’s score for Dune 2 from Oscar race, and as 2025 gears up for atleast Two Greenwood albums, here are the Top 10 film scores of 2024, that will continue to reverberate long after the year ends. Let’s start with some honorable mentions first:

HONORABLE MENTIONS: The Outrun (Jan Miserre, John Gürtler); Sterben (Lorenz Dangel); The Substance (Raffertie); Dune: Part Two (Hans Zimmer); Nosferatu (Robin Carolan), La Cocina (Tomás Barreiro).

10. “All We Imagine As Light” (Topshe)

Payal Kapadia’s feature debut has taken the world by the storm. A richly curated soundtrack as well as a soulful score by Topshe imparts an impressive sonic range to the film. Topshe’s score is simple yet effective with melancholic synths setting the appropriate tone for the film. Despite the film’s warm reception throughout the world alongside a Grand Prix at Cannes this year, her film struggles to get a proper wide release in the home country. Nonetheless, the film will stand the test of time and we hope the best for Kapadia.

Track Recommendations: “Imagined Light”, “Anu’s Song 1”, “What She Could Not Say”

9. Mars Express (Fred Avril, Phillipe Monthaye)

While it may feel much of a naked babe compared to the classics of this genre, yet the grounded way this Cyberpunk Noir examines the co-existence of android and humans is worth looking into. Fred Avril and Phillipe Monthaye’s electronic and ambient score is a great mood setter, and an important pillar strengthening the world-building, which feels just as atmospheric on an independent listen.

Track Recommendations: “Mars Express”, “A Million Miles Away”, “Sky Glitch”, “Exode Des Robots”

8. Conclave (Volker Bertelmann)

For a film focussed on convexities, Bertelmann’s Conclave score provides a concave surface for the thriller aspect of this vape-core, diva-coded papal thriller to bloom with a natural progression, even when the script struggles to implement the same at times.

Track Recommendations: “Postlude of Conclave”, “Seal the Room”, “Overture of Conclave”

7. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)

Bonello’s audacious swing, a story spanning centuries, juxtaposes melodrama and sci-fi in an earnest way with a drizzle of surrealism. The dark ambient score by Bonello himself helps in constructing the atmosphere of the film, where both visual and aural complement in a way that emphasizes the rawness of understated emotions which do lead to a gut-punching catharsis. A banger soundtrack consisting of tracks from Roy Orbinson, Gino Paoli and many more, is a cherry-on-top.

Track Selections: “Salon de thé”, “L’attente à l’usine”, “Visite à l’usine”

6. Kinds Of Kindness (Jerskin Fendrix)

Fednrix’s score in Kinds of Kindness finds a resonance in dissonace of its characters and their idiosyncratic world. At times iterative with a single note, at times chorally sublime, Fendrix’s score allows a smooth path for Lanthimos to transition from stories, whilst maintaining the thematic core. Lanthimos breaks the anthology curse with this film, the peculiarity with which he dramatises an incoherent situation naturally leaves a fertile ground for dark humour to germinate. Fendrix, who also makes a cameo in the film, through his score is able to realise the spaces where the characters and their world frictionlessly infuses with each other.

Track Recommendations: “Hymn (all of them)”, “Kindness (Dream)”, “King Lear (Demo)”

5. The Brutalist (Daniel Blumberg)

Everything about The Brutalist feels grandiose and so does the score featuring 32 tracks. Daniel Blumberg creates a mood with the first three overtures to begin with, the first overture consisting of a build-up leading to a frission loaded brassgasm. That buildup, as Rahad Jackson sez, I love that part. For all the majestic quality of the movie, the piano pieces of the film feels intimate, evokes calm and peace that piano pieces usually do, only for the following jazzy pieces to razzle-dazzle the listener (complementary). The Brutalist is a film of many moods and Blumberg seamlessly manages to capture them with such a raw finesse.

Track Recommendations: “Overture (Ship)”, “Overture (Bus)”, “Library”, “Pennsylvania”, “Erzsebet”, “Construction”, “Search Party”, “Train Crash”, “Building Site”, “Gordon’s Dinner”, “Epilogue (Venice)”

4. Challengers (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)

This pulse raising techno score for Challengers is the most rave thing TR&AR have done so far. The duo goes all electric. In Luca’s film, the score in itself becomes a character as the actors, yet one does not have to have seen the film necessarily to enjoy this score. The tracks do feel repetitive at times and some of them are cut-off abruptly, it’s a banger album nonetheless. One of the most pleasant surprise on my first listen was Compress/Repress with Reznor’s vocals.

Track Recommendations: “I Know”, “Yeah x10”, “The Signal”, “Brutalizer”, “Brutalizer 2”, “The Points That Matter”, “Final Set”, “Match Point”, “Compress/Repress”

3. Queer (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)

In Challengers, the duo were at their most electric, however in Queer they are at their most orchestral. Queer or The disembodied man’s quest for yage, in an atmosphere soaked with Reznor and Ross music, is the second swallow for the Guadagnino-TR&AR joint this year (and third overall), needless to say it’s all summer for them. Not only are the words of Burroughs reflected in the lyrics of “Vaster Than Empire” but also all the titles are lifted directly from the author’s final journal entry, July 30, 1997. Alongside the expressive atmospheric tracks, there are tracks that offer mild doses of surrealism. Therefore, the album is a bonus for musically-oriented-readers who wish to read this novel. It’s such a joy to see a director-composer pairing this fertile and consistent. May it keep blooming.

Track Recommendations: “Vaster Than Empires”, “Pure Love”, “Love Would Shatter”, “The Saddest Man in the World”, “Wouldn’t You”, “No Final Satori”, “No Final Solution”, “LOVE”

2. A Different Man (Umberto Smerilli)

Umberto Smerilli provides music for the film with smartest screenplay of the year. Smerilli’s first American production and Aaron Schimberg’s third feature, is a clever thought experiment, a cosmic dark joke about a guy who seeks and sought but is also baited. Smerilli’s score for A Different Man captures the paranoia, anguish, repressed-cum-corrosive jealousy, melancholy and metamorphorsis of the film’s protagonist. The score acts as a tool to frictionlessly merge the characters with their location, in this case a nitty-gritty noir New York. It’s a playful score equal parts moody, jazzy and terrifying. I hope Smerilli gets more opportunity to shine in future, even when this film is getting an omission from many awards circuits.

Track Recommendations: “Main Theme”, “Melancholy”, “Metamorphosys”, “End Credits Suite”, “Going Mad”

1. Evil Does Not Exist (Eiko Ishibashi)

Normally I won’t say that all the scores I mentioned above on one side and Ishibashi’s score on the other – occupying an altogether different stratosphere with ethereal air – but something about this one man. This score has got a certain je ne sais quoi about it, and probably I may fumble externalizing what it made me feel internally. I love this score so dearly, it’s not just the year’s best, it’s one of the best of this decade so far, and yes, I prefer this over Ishibashi’s score for Drive My Car, which also happens to be a jazzy banger in its own way. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, physically incapable of making a bad movie, ventures into the wild with this one, capturing the beauty of the nature, onto which life is showered by Ishibashi’s score, the individual and universal are combined almost frictionlessly, with a denouement, darkly humourous and apt to its thematic argument, that’ll amplify the viewer’s desire to talk about it with someone.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the first swell of Ishibashi’s score in the opening scene of this film literally shot up all my nerves, a relentless wave of goosebumps all over my body (maybe a tear or two as well), not an out of body experience but maybe something like that. It’s a beautiful thing to have ears, don’t let your ears be untouched by this brilliant piece of work and if hyperbole is your thing then let me say it’s one of the 1001 albums you must listen to before you die. One of the best films of this year and one of the best scores of this decade.

Track Recommendations: ALL OF THEM (IN ORDER)

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