The 10 best film sound­tracks of 2021

As the usu­al flur­ry of ​‘film of the year’ lis­ti­cles flood our time­lines, we’re turn­ing our atten­tions and tun­ing our ears to some of the amaz­ing scores and sound­tracks that accom­pa­nied our favourite releas­es of 2021. Here are 10 of the very best, which not only ele­vat­ed their respec­tive films but pro­vid­ed rich lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences in their own right.

Questlove’s Sum­mer of Soul is the year’s best music doc­u­men­tary, exam­in­ing the lega­cy of the 1969 Harlem Cul­tur­al Fes­ti­val, a leg­endary event that pro­vid­ed joy and hope at a time when Amer­i­ca was unrav­el­ing. Although this isn’t an orig­i­nal score, the music that The Roots’ drum­mer curates through­out the doc­u­men­tary con­sis­tent­ly hits the right notes, pro­vid­ing a snap­shot of artists like Sly Stone, Nina Simone, Ste­vie Won­der and BB King when they all were shift­ing the con­scious­ness of Black Amer­i­ca and tak­ing soul music to new heights.

The score for this touch­ing film about a trou­bled jour­nal­ist (Joaquin Phoenix) going on an impromp­tu road trip with his lit­tle nephew (Woody Nor­mon) is a love­ly thing. These ambi­ent songs are stripped back and min­i­mal­ist, but they car­ry an unde­ni­able ten­der­ness and there’s a smart con­trol of pac­ing that makes you feel like you’re in the mid­dle of a euphor­ic lucid dream. It’s like­ly the Dess­ners’ work on upcom­ing musi­cal Cyra­no will steal the head­lines and be seen as the nucle­us for big­ger and brighter things, but this inti­mate score deserves just as much attention.

Cap­tur­ing the sound of 20^th cen­tu­ry Italy is a huge task, but one com­pos­er Dan Romer man­ages with Disney’s com­ing-of-age fan­ta­sy Luca. There’s beau­ty in every direc­tion, with focused dos­es of accor­dion, man­dolin and pizzi­ca­to strings cap­tur­ing the gor­geous­ness (and slight eccen­tric­i­ty) of a small coastal Ital­ian town that pins all its hopes and dreams with the mys­ter­ies washed up by the waves. The sweet melan­choly of ​‘That’s the Dream’ and the bliss­ful adven­ture of ​‘Ves­pa è Lib­ertà’ are a great mix of tra­di­tion­al Euro­pean sounds and Leg­end of Zel­da-esque magic.

Cru­cial to the suc­cess of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is Hans Zimmer’s ambi­tious music, which has the scope of an orches­tral score, yet is exe­cut­ed through dread-induc­ing touch­es of elec­tron­i­ca. ​“There’s no orches­tra any­where in Dune,” Zim­mer told Vari­ety, ​“most sounds are from spe­cial­ly com­mis­sioned instru­ments and new syn­the­sis­er mod­ules”. By repli­cat­ing a deep brass sound through elec­tric cel­lo and com­bin­ing ethe­re­al chant­i­ng and dark synths with Scot­tish bag­pipes and niche wood­wind instru­ments like the Armen­ian duduk, Zimmer’s music becomes an exten­sion of a sto­ry that’s all about dis­rupt­ing tra­di­tion and tak­ing a step into the unknown.

It was anoth­er vin­tage year for Jon­ny Green­wood, with the Radio­head gui­tarist at the musi­cal helm of Jane Campion’s The Pow­er of the Dog and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Liquorice Piz­za. But his work on Pablo Larraín’s Spencer felt par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial, the com­pos­er nail­ing what it feels like to be caught some­where between a dream and a night­mare. Jazz notes light up ​‘Arrival’ and ​‘Call­ing the Whip­per In’, which both con­vey Princess Diana’s free spir­it, while the strained sax­o­phone cries and pierc­ing Bernard Her­mann-esque strings on ​‘Frozen Three’ evoke psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror. This is music that swings vio­lent­ly between safe­ty and dan­ger, just like the film’s trag­ic subject.

On first lis­ten, Mica Levi’s score for Zola sounds a lit­tle like a fairy tale. With all the whistling harps and wind-up music box melodies, you’re basi­cal­ly wait­ing for Snow White to start singing. But this Dis­ney­fied sound dis­in­te­grates into brash trap synths, chill­ing piano, and crash­ing hi-hats, as Levi per­fect­ly cap­tures the tone of the film’s edgy road trip, which is filled with both adven­ture and dan­ger. Levi’s work can some­times feel over­whelm­ing­ly dark, but with some­thing like ​‘500’ and its pletho­ra of bright sounds, you can feel her smile light­ing up the record­ing stu­dio. This is play­ful exper­i­men­ta­tion from a mas­ter eager to try some­thing new, and our only hope is that Levi releas­es a four-minute ver­sion of ​‘Here We Go’ so 2 Chainz can rap over it.

What­ev­er your thoughts on Nia DaCosta’s Can­dy­man reboot, there’s no deny­ing the bril­liance of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s score. The com­pos­er focus­es pure­ly on dread, syn­the­sis­ing the sounds of bees and his own voice and then manip­u­lat­ing it all to repli­cate the har­mon­ic depths of string and wood­wind instru­men­ta­tion. ​‘Rows and Tow­ers’ is espe­cial­ly unset­tling, while ​‘Music Box’ updates Philip Glass’ orig­i­nal Can­dy­man theme and makes the film less like a Goth­ic romance by bend­ing it out of shape, with frag­ment­ed elec­tron­ics that brace you for ter­ror. One can only hope Lowe is asked to score more hor­ror films in the future.

In Julia Ducournau’s bold fol­low-up to 2016’s Raw, Jim Williams’ score becomes increas­ing­ly dis­tort­ed as the extent of the changes to pro­tag­o­nist Alexia’s human­i­ty is revealed fol­low­ing a car crash which result­ed in a tita­ni­um plate being fit­ted to her head. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing how this music com­bines dark mechan­i­cal sound­scapes with tran­scen­dent clas­si­cal motifs to artic­u­late the con­flict hap­pen­ing inside Alex­ia. ​‘Jus­tine Kill’ will make the hairs on your arms stand up, with the string sec­tion sound­ing like it’s let­ting out a death rat­tle, while the dark yet holy fore­bod­ing present on ​‘Sara­bande’ is sim­ply mesmerising.

A pre­scient sto­ry about rev­o­lu­tion, insti­tu­tion­al racism and betray­al, Judas and the Black Mes­si­ah intro­duced a new gen­er­a­tion to the sto­ry of activist Fred Hamp­ton, who was mur­dered by the state in 1969. Sit­ting some­where between funky and avant-garde, the film’s jazz-inflect­ed score uses rapid drums which sound like machine gun fire (‘Rooftop’), and swag­ger­ing sax­o­phone (‘The Inflat­ed Tear’) to mir­ror char­ac­ters who are hunt­ed one minute and treat­ed like kings the next. Most of these songs don’t last more than a minute, which means the music doesn’t over­whelm the film. Craig Har­ris and Mark Isham deserve huge cred­it for cap­tur­ing the dual­i­ty of the two lead char­ac­ters in a way that feels entire­ly natural.

A film about the Amer­i­can Dream viewed through the lens of Kore­an immi­grants, Minari explores the sac­ri­fices involved in assim­i­la­tion and the idea of embrac­ing tra­di­tion while also cre­at­ing new rit­u­als for you and your fam­i­ly. The orches­tral score by Emile Mosseri is instant­ly reas­sur­ing. Cap­tur­ing still­ness, ​‘Gar­den of Eden’ is the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of star­ing at a per­fect sun­set, while ​‘Rain Song’ and its trag­ic vocals (“Lift your gaze as it departs to bid farewell to the sea­son,” sings the film’s star Han Ye-ri) hint at grow­ing pains.

Unusu­al­ly, this mov­ing, earthy score was cre­at­ed ear­ly on by Mosseri after read­ing the script, which meant direc­tor Lee Isaac Chung let the com­plet­ed music inform and inspire his cre­ative deci­sions dur­ing film­ing. The result is a film and a score that are per­fect­ly in sync, with the del­i­cate piano and super­nal har­monies on ​‘Find It Every Time’ allow­ing you to feel the light breeze on the Yi fam­i­ly farm.