The 10 best film sound­tracks of 2020

Thanks to COVID-19 restric­tions, being able to go to the cin­e­ma has been a rare lux­u­ry for many of us this year. Yet that didn’t stop 2020 from pro­duc­ing its fair share of mem­o­rable movies. And with all that extra time indoors, there’s been plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty to become immersed in great movie sound­tracks. Here’s a look at 10 of the very best scores released in 2020, each proof that film music is in a great place as we head into 2021.

Leg­endary jazz trum­peter and com­pos­er Ter­rance Blan­chard pro­vides Spike Lee’s films with their beat­ing heart, and he con­tin­ued this run with Da 5 Bloods, a film about a group of black US mil­i­tary vet­er­ans who return to Viet­nam in pur­suit of ghosts and gold in the Jun­gle. These arrange­ments shift from soul-cleans­ing, sax­o­phone-dri­ven nos­tal­gia to thun­der­ous kick-drums that indi­cates chaos is just a land mine way. Thanks to the tran­scen­dent beau­ty of ​‘MLK Assas­si­nat­ed’ and the patri­ot­ic won­der of ​‘Bloods Go Into The Jun­gle’, it would be a crime if Blan­chard wasn’t nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar.

Whether you believe Mank is a ​“cyn­i­cal delight” or just Ed Wood with all the fun sucked out, there’s no deny­ing the effec­tive­ness of Trent Reznor and Atti­cus Ross’ score. It is full of play­ful melo­dra­ma and ten­der jazz grooves that harken back to the glitz and glam­our of Hol­ly­wood in the 1930s and ​’40s. The play­ful ener­gy of ​‘A Fool’s Par­adise’ is a par­tic­u­lar high­light, while the hum­ming dis­so­nance present in ​‘Time Run­ning Out’ feels like all the loose puz­zle pieces in Her­man J Mankiewicz’s head, just wait­ing for an out­sider to help piece them togeth­er. When you see the names Finch­er and Reznor togeth­er you tend to think of some­thing dark or nihilis­tic, but this score proves they’re still capa­ble of sur­pris­ing us.

Com­pos­er Jim Williams expert­ly uses dis­tort­ed wind chimes, squea­mish synths and stabs of dark bass to build ten­sion that you can feel right in the pit of your stom­ach, with this unhinged music the right fit for Bran­don Cronenberg’s psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror about an assas­sin that takes over oth­er people’s con­scious­ness in order to take down her tar­gets. ​‘Skin After Suc­cess­ful Skin’ is as skin-crawl­ing as its name would sug­gest, while the ambi­ent ter­ror of ​‘Oppo­site Inac­ces­si­ble Cor­ner’ is some­thing you can imag­ine David Lynch unwind­ing to. Pos­ses­sor is one of the best hor­ror films of recent years, and its twist­ed futur­is­tic score deserves a lot more recognition.

A con­tender for best con­cert film of 2020, Spike Lee’s Amer­i­can Utopia brought the eccen­tric David Byrne’s Broad­way show to the big screen. The music has that same deliri­ous weird­ness which is present in the Talk­ing Heads frontman’s best work, always prob­ing at the con­tra­dic­tions of West­ern cul­ture. These songs find whim­sy in dark places in a way only Byrne can real­ly pull off (check out True Sto­ries too). Fan­tas­ti­cal songs like ​‘Toe Jam’ and ​‘I Should Watch TV’ shift between gid­di­ness and tragedy, both feel­ing like a much-need­ed injec­tion of ener­gy amid such an exhaust­ing time for the world. Just try not smiling.

Tenet may not be looked back on as one of the great Christo­pher Nolan films, but it’s cer­tain­ly one of the great Nolan scores. Lud­wig Göransson’s music has a fid­gety cyber­punk ener­gy, let­ting up the pace only occa­sion­al­ly for moments of gor­geous self-reflec­tion (see ​‘From Mum­bai to Amal­fi’). The way the synths on Pos­ter­i­ty sound like a heli­copter spin­ning out of con­trol is par­tic­u­lar­ly exhil­a­rat­ing. By the time Görans­son forces you to take a swim through US rap­per Travis Scott’s wavy sub­con­scious­ness, you’ll be ful­ly con­vert­ed. The Swedish com­pos­er, who is a fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor of Child­ish Gambino’s, is a name you can expect to hear a lot more of in Hol­ly­wood across the 2020s.

Musi­cal duo the Mon­do Boys pro­vide a suit­ably tense score for this under­rat­ed dra­ma about a woman con­vinced she only has 24 hours left on earth. The tick­ing clock on ​‘The Morn­ing After’ sug­gests some­thing life chang­ing is on the hori­zon, draw­ing clos­er and clos­er, but giv­en the lush­ness of the music (just check out the glow­ing choir that colours ​‘Desert Through The Door’), what­ev­er it is can’t be that bad, surely?

Util­is­ing some of rap and pop music’s bright­est stars, the all-female Birds of Prey sound­track moves at a blis­ter­ing pace that rips the fig­u­ra­tive rug from under­neath you just as things threat­en to get too syrupy. Doja Cat’s anthemic EDM/​rap hybrid ​‘Boss Bitch’ will make you miss those sweaty dance floors, while Megan Thee Stal­lion call­ing dia­monds her ​“new boyfriend” tapped right into the anti-hero, fem­i­nist indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of Harley Quinn herself.

This effec­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror about Hunter, a ner­vous house­wife (played by an excel­lent Hay­ley Ben­nett) who devel­ops a wor­ry­ing eat­ing dis­or­der that com­pels her to swal­low inan­i­mate objects, sad­ly went under a lot of people’s radars. The bril­liant score by Nathan Halpern real­ly brings you inside Hunter’s psy­che, with songs like ​‘The Glass House’ and ​‘Equi­lib­ri­um’ com­bin­ing grandiose instru­men­ta­tion, which attempts to mir­ror the domes­tic­i­ty and warmth of a 1950s house­wife, with the kind of cut­ting synths you might expect to hear on a Mica Levi score. This musi­cal jux­ta­po­si­tion shows some­thing strange and sadis­tic is bub­bling just under the pic­turesque sur­face, mir­ror­ing Hunter’s char­ac­ter jour­ney perfectly.

This film about small-time drug deal­ers in rur­al Ire­land is ele­vat­ed by its score by Ben­jamin John Powe (of Blanck Mass). The elec­tro-indus­tri­al pro­duc­er con­sis­tent­ly con­jures up an oth­er­world­ly hum, mir­ror­ing the dreams of the film’s char­ac­ters, who each seem to wish they were just about any­where else. ​‘Loy­al Skins’ and ​‘Jack’s Theme’, which sounds like new-age John Car­pen­ter, are both filled with inven­tion; you’ll revis­it these songs over and over.

There’s some­thing haunt­ing about Tamar-kali’s Shirley score, with the ris­ing composer’s sparse music expert­ly tap­ping into the claus­tro­pho­bic mood of the epony­mous author’s writ­ing process. The inter­play of the string sec­tion, which pos­sess an urgent, dread-induc­ing chord pro­gres­sion, is par­tic­u­lar­ly engross­ing. Tamar-kali lends her own bluesy vocals to some of these pieces, suc­ceed­ing in giv­ing a voice to the pain that sits at the heart of Eliz­a­beth Moss’ lead per­for­mance. In our inter­view with the singer and com­pos­er, she said: ​“Music built around emo­tion and feel­ing; that’s ulti­mate­ly where I try to exist as an artist.” She cer­tain­ly suc­ceeds here.