12 great original film scores from rock musicians who became composers

Director Bernardo Bertolucci approached Talking Heads founder David Byrne about composing the music for The Last Emperor after seeing the concert film Stop Making Sense. By the time Byrne came on board the project, Ryuichi Sakamoto had already been working on his own music for the film independently. At this point in his career Sakamoto was already an influential electronica artist, and had composed the music for the film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence a few years earlier. Bertolucci decided to employ them both, as well as a Chinese composer, Cong Su. The resulting score is surprisingly cohesive for a team with such distinct styles and backgrounds, effortlessly combining East and West in its themes and instrumentation. The three of them were rewarded for their efforts with an Oscar for Best Original Score at the 60th Academy Awards.

Some scores are so tied to the films they were created for they don’t quite make sense when you listen to them out of context. This isn’t one of them. The score for The Virgin Suicides by the French electro-pop duo Air, otherwise known as Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, was always intended to stand on its own. That doesn’t mean it bears any less of a connection to the film, though. Tracks like “Suicide Underground” and “The Word Hurricane” directly sample first-time filmmaker Sofia Coppola’s dialogue, creating a sort of feedback loop that gives the words new meaning. The ephemeral score deploys analog keyboards, rock guitar, and throbbing beats that emulate the dramatic urgency of teenage hearts. Released as the band’s second album, after the critically acclaimed Moon Safari, its influence on non-traditional film scores can be heard throughout the 2000s, and beyond.

Devo member Mark Mothersbaugh turned to film composing in the late 1980s as the New Wave band was starting to wind down. He went on to contribute music on everything from TV shows like Rugrats and Pee Wee’s Playhouse to the film version of 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie, both co-directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. But his most fruitful collaborator has been Wes Anderson, who asked him to write the score for his debut film, Bottle Rocket. The two would go on to work together on Rushmore, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and this score for The Royal Tenenbaums. Most people will remember the film for its rock-infused soundtrack (which Mothersbaugh produced), but it’s the musical themes and specific instrumentation (harpsichord and harp, among other strings) of the score that most define the characters and reveal their inner lives. In addition to the score, Mothersbaugh also created the cover of The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” that plays during the opening sequence, under the name Mutato Muzika Orchestra.

Jon Brion is an artist of many, many talents. Although he’s only put out one solo album to date, he’s kept busy producing albums, doing session work, performing live, and, of course, creating lush, immersive film scores. Punch Drunk Love was Brion’s third film with director Paul Thomas Anderson, and it’s still his most technically proficient. That’s mainly because of the unusual way it was created. While the film was still in pre-production, Anderson asked Brion to create some rhythm tracks for him to listen to as he was shooting the scenes. The composer then added to those existing percussion tracks in post-production, layering treated piano melodies and other lo-fi instruments, or more percussion on top of it. He even incorporated Adam Sandler’s harmonium playing on set into the score. These innovative techniques allowed the music to be fully integrated into the pace and tempo of the scenes, reflecting where Sandler’s character is mentally and emotionally at all times. It’s simply genius.

Reznor and Ross’ new score for Challengers may be one of their best so far, but they still have yet to surpass the success of their very first collaboration together. The Social Network score remains an all-timer. Before David Fincher asked Reznor to work on the Mark Zuckerberg biopic, the former Nine Inch Nails frontman had produced soundtracks and tried his hand at scoring solo. But it wasn’t until he teamed up with Ross that things really clicked (they’ve now scored five films together for Fincher). Their haunting melodies and pulsating, electronic beats are perfectly suited to the story of a driven entrepreneur whose personality defects overshadowed his meteoric success. That push and pull is what makes it so effective, and contributed to the team winning the first of their two Oscars for Best Original Score (the second was for Soul).

For a film set in the near future about a romance between a lonely man and his digital assistant, the score for Her sounds relatively warm and grounded. Director Spike Jonze wanted to create a moody feeling not bound by any particular space or time, and the constantly beguiling music throughout the film reflects that aim. Although the band name Arcade Fire is credited as one of the contributors to the score, it’s mostly the work of band member Will Butler, alongside Canadian musician Owen Pallett (who has worked with them as an arranger and live performer on tour). For some reason, the score wasn’t officially made available to the public until 2021, six years after the film’s release and nomination for Best Original Score.

Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin is a disturbing meditation on human nature from the perspective of a predatory alien observer in the form of Scarlet Johansson. For a film this unsettling, a traditional, pretty-sounding score would not do. Enter British singer-songwriter Mica Levi, also known by the stage name Micachu. Through experimental tuning and dissonant sounds, Levi’s breakthrough score for Under The Skin skillfully conveys the sense that the main character is constantly out of sync with the rest of the world. They achieve this feeling through sustained electronic notes of varying pitch, whining viola, rhythmic drums, or percussive sounds that aren’t immediately identifiable (some of which were created by clashing microphones together). At times it’s oppressively dark, other times glaringly bright, but always just slightly uncomfortable. As it should be for a film like this.

We catch up again with Sakamoto much later in his career, on another collaborative venture with two distinctive artists. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu originally brought Ryuichi Sakamoto onto his production of The Revenant as its sole composer, but Sakamoto was recovering from throat cancer at the time and was concerned about taking on the project by himself. He enlisted the help of German artist Alva Noto (also known as Carsten Nicolai) as well as Bryce Dessner, of the indie band The National. Because the score is the work of three individual composers it was deemed ineligible for an Academy Award nomination (a rule that apparently didn’t apply when Sakamoto shared the award for The Last Emperor), which it arguably deserved. The slow, deliberate build of sustained chords and ambient sounds evokes the film’s snowy wilderness setting so acutely that listening to it immediately takes you right back there again.

It’s hard to pick just one standout film score by Radiohead lead guitarist and keyboardist Jonny Greenwood, since each one is as singular as the films they accompany. His work on the more recent films of Paul Thomas Anderson is especially exquisite. As tempting as it is to single out There Will Be Blood for its percussive strings and discordant orchestrations, or The Power Of The Dog or The Master for their individual brilliance, it’s Anderson’s Phantom Thread that best demonstrates Greenwood’s skill for creating a soundscape so thematically coordinated with the visuals it becomes an integral part of the film itself. Greenwood’s romantic, nostalgic compositions start off beautifully before descending into something much darker. With a different score, Phantom Thread would be a much different film.

Perhaps more than any other genre, horror is majorly reliant on sound to set a mood. That’s why so many horror scores have become iconic—think of Halloween or The Exorcist and you can hear their themes in your head. In his chilling score for Ari Aster’s Hereditary, Colin Stetson shifts gentle harmonic progressions into waves of intimidating sound so subtly you barely notice what’s happening until it nearly overwhelms you. Kind of like the film. Before becoming a film composer, Stetson, a gifted saxophonist, performed with a number of music acts, including Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, and Bon Iver. He’s also released several acclaimed solo albums. The dissonance between the sound of a raspy saxophone droning underneath a string-heavy orchestra is a pretty good characterization of his film work. It’s the perfect complement to an atmospheric film like Hereditary, designed to elicit feelings of anxiety and suspense in the audience.

When the members of Son Lux—a collective made up of Ryan Lott, Ian Chang, and Rafiq Bhatia—first received the digital script for Everything Everywhere All At Once they thought there was something wrong with the file. It went off on bizarre tangents for pages on end, with descriptions of things that sounded impossible to film. But after a few conversations with filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, they understood the vision, and how their score could help realize it. Their job was to create a recognizable soundscape for each universe, so when the film rapidly changes from one universe to another, it’s the music that clues you into where you are at any given time. Like the film, the score constantly shifts on you, lulling you with quiet strains of melody before exploding into a crushing wave of sound. The scale of this score is massive, with more than 100 cues (49 of which were included on the album), and a runtime of more than two hours. As if that wasn’t enough work, Lott also produced songs for the soundtrack, including the Oscar-nominated song “This Is A Life,” with David Byrne and Mitski. The film was also nominated for Best Original Score.

The score for Killers Of The Flower Moon was the last one completed by Robbie Robertson, who passed away in August 2023, just before the film’s wide release in October. He was posthumously nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards this year. Robertson, a former guitarist for Bob Dylan, was best known for his work The Band and later as a solo artist. He got into film composing through Killers director Martin Scorsese after working with him on The Last Waltz, a documentary about The Band’s final concert. Robertson wrote several great scores for Scorsese’s films, including Raging Bull, Casino, and Gangs Of New York, but as a member of the First Nations community, Killers was a project close to his heart. Eschewing a stereotypical approach to the music, he referenced quintessentially American genres, with touches of blues, gospel, and folk, woven together with indigenous instruments and rhythms. It’s an incredible final achievement that cements his legacy as one of the great musicians and composers of our time.