Maybe it’s time to let the old ways of this almost-finished decade die, yeah? But it wouldn’t be complete without our deep dive into the best soundtracks and scores of the 2010s. It’s admittedly somewhat weird and difficult to do. Scores and soundtracks are different beasts; one original musical written for a film that gives it its emotional shape—often the secret MVP of a movie—and the other more of a mixtape, but when well-curated and used next to picture, can be just as deadly and help craft what we know as the visual and aural transcendence that’s known as cinema when it’s at its best.
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While we’ve already documented the Best Films of The Decade—Read that feature if you haven’t already will you?—and while there are definitely some corresponding scores and soundtracks, it’s not a 1:1 thing. Some movies can be junk and have a great soundtrack, a few of them might even be on this list. Other movies are good, probably on our decade list, but perhaps super high on the list because their music was the defining emotional moment that really gripped us and the collective viewer.
READ MORE: The 100 Best Films Of The Decade [2010s]
Music is tricky in movies. As some have often noted, filmmakers included, music is integral, but it can be a crutch that tells the audience how to feel if it’s overpowering, not leaving the viewer the space to feel how they’re going to feel. Music in movies can insult the emotional intelligence of an audience, even if that audience isn’t always aware consciously of what’s going on. But when it’s used well, strikes that right balance of poignant and sonorous, but also hopefully not negatively overwhelming—though that can work on occasion too, see any of the blistering Safdie Brothers scores—it can literally sweep you off your feet and lift you into the air like magic. This is the trick of cinema and when it’s nailed and perfect, it’s arguably the greatest feeling on earth. So, here we are with the Best Scores and Soundtracks of the Decade, fantastic tunes on their own, some that are integral to the movie and can’t quite be listened on independently too much, others you can take off onto your phone or iPod and dance around in the streets to. There’s never one must-have element for what qualifies as a great score or soundtrack, but you know it when you see it and hear it.
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56. “The Greatest Showman” (2017)
Sometimes the movie doesn’t necessarily live up to its stellar music. That’s the case with Michael Gracey and Hugh Jackman’s 2017’s passion project, “The Greatest Showman,” a movie musical with a ludicrous plot and incomprehensible logic, but undeniably full of show-stopping numbers. Featuring original songs written by Oscar and Tony-Award winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul before they collaborated on “La La Land,” the Grammy-winning ‘Showman’ soundtrack was so popular it sold 5.3 million copies worldwide and spawned a spin-off album, “The Greatest Showman: Reimagined,” featuring pop covers of its popular songs a year later. The highlights included the Academy Award-nominated “This is Me” featuring Keala Settle, “Never Enough” sung by Loren Allred and Hugh Jackman and the cast’s rendition of “The Greatest Show.” – Gregory Ellwood
55. “Transit” (2019)
Christian Petzold’s “Transit” is a film that looks like a classically-minded piece of international suspense cinema on its surface. And yet, repeat viewings reveal what an unusual and complex film this is: it’s another one of the director’s riveting studies of identity and statehood, and how the two are often inexorably intertwined. The original music composed for “Transit” is similarly old-fashioned, but beneath its polished, traditional exterior lies a roiling cauldron of sonic intricacies that emphasize the film’s rhapsodic, dreamily ambiguous vibe. Petzold has a good thing going with composer Stefan Will, who also wrote the string-heavy orchestrations for “Barbara” and the slinky, jazz numbers that punctuate the action in the director’s previous film, “Phoenix.” Will’s work for “Transit” sounds more like a conventional film score than any of these aforementioned works: there are even traces of the great Bernard Hermann in cuts like the solemn, foreboding “Montreal” (which acts as the movie’s unofficial theme) and “Abreise,” which sounds like it should be playing over the end credits of a lost Nicolas Roeg picture. So much of the dark joy of watching “Transit” comes its slow, patient accumulation of trepidation: a feeling that the film’s protagonist is standing on unsteady ground, that he could be found out at any moment. Will’s musical contributions add considerable layers to the film’s abundance of expectancy, tension, and intrigue, resulting in what is arguably the composer’s finest collaboration with this particular director to date. – Nicholas Laskin
54. “Queen Of Earth” (2015)
Outside of Danny Bensi & Saunder Jurriaans, perhaps no name was bigger and more important in indie scores in the 2010s then Keegan DeWitt. Which is probably why it’s so difficult to make one pick here. Starting out in mumblecore scores for filmmaker Aaron Katz, DeWitt’s jazzy stylings quickly evolved. The musician created some terrific works this decade, the Woody Allen-esque score for “Listen Up Philip,” the synth-y score for “Land Ho!,” the poignant simple tunes for “This Is Martin Bonner,” the pacific, jazzy-EDM evening breezes of the mysterious noir “Gemini.” But if you have to pick one, pick, DeWitt’s collaborations with Alex Ross Perry and specifically, the emo, melodrama horror of “Queen Of Earth,” Perry’s riff on Polanski and Bergman-esque loss of self and sanity-losing gaslighting. Utilizing creepy bells, eerie piano and lonely harmoniums, DeWitt helps shape the soundtrack to a woman under the influence of outside forces and the freakish terror of being mentally pulled apart. – Rodrigo Perez
53. “Man Of Steel” (2013)
It’s extremely difficult to pick just one Hans Zimmer score for the Best of the Decade (don’t worry, we gave up, you’ll see later). Zimmer had a banner decade. 2010 brought “Inception” and the BRAAAM—Edith Piaf slowed-down and distorted—and that terrifically thrilling song, 2012 delivered “The Dark Knight Rises,” and the chilling, fanatical, deshi basara/fire rises chant, later on there was terrific collaborations with Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave,” “Widows“) and the outstanding throbbing sonic lava of the “Blade Runner: 2049” soundtrack. On any given day, one of these soundtracks goes on this list and it’s all a bit arbitrary. And yet, there’s one Zimmer soundtrack, we can’t shake and it’s for an very uneven movie: Zack Snyder’s “Man Of Steel.” But if any thrilling soundtrack elevated a film, and made it soar to heights it perhaps didn’t even deserve to, that’s certainly the case with Zimmer’s redefining Superman score. Look, superheroes dominated this decade, but put a gun to your head and what themes do you really know aside from say, “The Avengers” theme song? Zimmer really brought the iconic theme song back with his outstanding, “Look To The Stars” motif built on a two-note piano riff that keeps building, crescendoing and ascending into something godly, celestial, heroic, and poignant (it really take off in “Flight”). Sewn throughout the score, the movie keeps coming back to this glorious theme, sometimes thunderously so, and in its glorious, blinding glow, it typifies hope like no other superhero score this decade. – RP
52. “Sing Street” (2016)
Inspired by director and screenwriter John Carney‘s teenage years in ’80s Dublin, the coming of age comedy musical showcased a teenage band coming together to the music of the era. The soundtrack featured classics from artists such as Duran Duran (“Rio”), Hall & Oates (“Maneater”), and The Cure (“In Between Days”) while the original tracks were headlined by the absolute banger, “Drive It Like You Stole It,” and ballads reminiscent of Carney’s “Once,” such as “To Find You” and “Up.” Credited to up to five songwriters, the songs managed to touch on specific styles of the era without sounding reductive or, even worse, like parodies. Not an easy thing to do almost 30 years after the fact. – GE
51. “Enemy” (2013)
Sparse, atonal, and enigmatic, like the film it complements, Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans’ score for Denis Villeneuve’s terrific thriller of doppelgangers and masculine disquiet is a summary lesson in minimalist unease. Utilizing surprisingly classical instrumentation, the rising indie composers (who also scored “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Simon Killer,” “Last Days in the Desert,” and over 50 film and TV projects this decade) employ lone cellos or single clarinets in simple, discordant drones before fleshing out the music for brief stretches with layers of strings and roiling percussion. These more expansive parts are both anti-melodic and strangely lush, so much so that at particular moments it can sound almost Hitchcock-ian. Mostly though it’s pared-back and uncanny, mirroring the unsettled mind of the “Enemy” protagonist Jake Gyllenhaal. It may not be the kind of album one’s going to pop on for background noise all that often, but within the context of the movie, it’s completely unnerving. Bensi and Jurriaans, who became go-to-indie-film-composers this decade, cemented their career here, creating that sense of creeping eeriness that “Enemy” delivers more single-mindedly than most films released this decade. – Jessica Kiang
