I love a good film or television score. I especially love a good electronic film or television score. An electronic score is particularly suited to genres like sci-fi and horror, so you’ll see several of each on this list, including some of the most iconic films of the modern era. Without further ado, here are twenty-five of my favorite electronic scores, in no particular order.
- Fight Club – The Dust Brothers
FUN FACT #1: Director David Fincher asked Radiohead to compose the film’s music, but lead singer Thom Yorke declined, citing exhaustion from the band’s recent tour in support of OK Computer (Yorke would eventually work as a film composer, most notably for the soundtrack to the 2018 remake of Suspiria). Fincher then commissioned breakbeat producers the Dust Brothers, who were best known for their work with artists like The Beastie Boys and Beck (two PBandJulie favorites). Their Fight Club score – utilizing samples, scratches, and drum loops – was a perfect fit for Fincher’s polarizing, post-modern meditation on toxic masculinity.
FUN FACT #2: “Corporate World” is currently my phone’s notification sound.
- Firestarter – Tangerine Dream
FUN FACT: Germany’s Tangerine Dream are electronic music titans who have influenced countless other artists, including Air (see next entry) and Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (more on them in a bit). The Duffer Brothers also used three Tangerine Dream songs – “Green Desert”, “Exit”, and “Horizon” – in Stranger Things in addition to Dixon and Stein’s kick-ass score. Tangerine Dream have scored several iconic films, including Thief, Risky Business and Legend, but my favorite of their scores is Firestarter, the 1984 adaptation of the Stephen King novel. Some of the effects are pretty cheesy now, but the music combined with Drew Barrymore’s heartbreaking performance still gets me every time.
- The Virgin Suicides – Air
FUN FACT #1: In 2014, New Musical Express listed The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut, at #11 on its list of the greatest film soundtracks of all time. It’s also Pitchfork‘s pick for fourth-best movie score ever. The album has some of the most gorgeous cover art I’ve ever seen (featured image).
FUN FACT #2: Sofia Coppola met her future husband – Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars – while working on The Virgin Suicides‘ soundtrack. Mars, under the pseudonym Gordon Tracks, co-wrote and provided the vocals for “Playground Love”.
- The Social Network – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
FUN FACT #1: Reznor and Ross have collaborated with David Fincher four times, but The Social Network is the best of the bunch. Oscar voters agreed, giving Reznor and Ross one of the film’s three Academy Awards (it should have won more, including Best Picture, but I can bitch about terrible Oscar decisions another time).
FUN FACT #2: I’m adding a bonus score here. In 2021, Reznor and Ross shared their second Oscar with Jon Batiste, who wrote the jazz segments for the Soul soundtrack. Reznor and Ross’s ambient score for the metaphysical scenes brings me endless delight.
- Blade Runner – Vangelis
FUN FACT: Vangelis earned an Oscar (and a #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100) a year earlier for his iconic Chariots of Fire score, but it’s Blade Runner‘s haunting music that has always stuck with me. Vangelis did not receive an Oscar nod for Blade Runner, but he did get BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations.
- The Shining – Wendy Carlos
Wendy Carlos is an electronic music pioneer who won three Grammy Awards for 1968’s platinum-selling Switched-On Bach. Carlos also composed the music for A Clockwork Orange and 1982’s TRON (modern electronic titans Daft Punk scored the 2010 sequel), but she is best known for her work on Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of claustrophobic dread, The Shining. Unfortunately, much of Carlos’ catalog is out of print and unavailable for streaming.
PRIDE MONTH FUN FACT #1: Wendy Carlos (pictured below with her Moog synthesizer) was the first transgender recipient of a Grammy Award! 🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
FUN FACT #2: The Shining‘s “Main Title” incorporates the “Dies Irae” section of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. This excellent video from Vox‘s “Earworm” series explains why this specific sequence of notes is so spooky (spoiler alert, it’s about death).
- Christine – John Carpenter & Alan Howarth
Carpenter has scored many of his own films (more on a notable exception next); his score for Halloween is among the most iconic horror themes of all time. Of his scores, I’m singling out Christine mainly because it’s my favorite of Carpenter’s films (my blog, my rules).
FUN FACT: Alan Howarth, who began his career as a musician and later a sound designer, collaborated with John Carpenter on several movies, including Christine, Halloween II and III, Escape from New York, and Big Trouble in Little China. Howarth has also done sound effects for films like Poltergeist, Gremlins, Total Recall, and Army of Darkness.
- The Thing – Ennio Morricone
FUN FACT: John Carpenter has written the music for most of his films (including Halloween, Escape from New York, and the previous entry, Christine), but for The Thing, Carpenter enlisted the help of one of the most acclaimed and prolific film composers in cinema history, Ennio Morricone. Morricone garnered six Oscar nominations during his lifetime, finally winning on his last try, for 2016’s The Hateful Eight. His most iconic work is certainly The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, one of several scores he composed for Italian director Sergio Leone. For The Thing, Morricone used a combination of a traditional orchestral score with the electronic approach favored by Carpenter.
- Arrival – Jóhann Jóhannsson
FUN FACT: Jóhann Jóhannsson, who tragically died in 2018 at the age of 48, was known for blending electronica with traditional orchestral elements. He earned Oscar nominations for The Theory of Everything and Sicario, but my personal favorite is his gorgeous, haunting score for 2016’s absolutely brilliant Arrival.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street – Charles Bernstein
FUN FACT: Charles Bernstein composed the music for several other ’80s horror films, including The Entity, Cujo and April Fool’s Day (a PBandJulie favorite), but A Nightmare on Elm Street is by far his best-known work. Bernstein utilized electronic music for his Nightmare score because it’s far cheaper to produce than an orchestral score (the film’s $1.1 million budget was tiny even for 1984).
- Profondo Rosso – Goblin
FUN FACT: Profondo Rosso (“Deep Red”) was the first of many collaborations between Italian prog-rock outfit Goblin and giallo filmmaker Dario Argento (they also worked together on 1977’s Suspiria). But Goblin wasn’t Argento’s first choice – or even his second. Argento initially hired Italian jazz pianist Giorgio Gaslini to create the score, but he was unhappy with the results. Argento next sought Pink Floyd, but they passed, so the director went back to Italy and found Goblin. The title track to Profondo Rosso was a #1 hit in Italy.
- Moon – Clint Mansell
FUN FACT: Mansell is perhaps best known for his work with Darren Aronofsky, having scored six of Aronofsky’s films, including Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan. But my favorite of his scores is 2009’s mind-bending Moon, the feature directorial debut of Duncan Jones.
- Stranger Things – Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein
FUN FACT: When the Duffer brothers were pitching Stranger Things to Netflix, they put together a mock trailer and used a song called “Dirge” by electronic band S U R V I V E. Once Netflix greenlit the project, the brothers reached out to S U R V I V E members Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein and begged them to work full time on the project, and an iconic television theme was born.
- Birdy – Peter Gabriel
FUN FACT: One of my favorite musical artists of all time, Peter Gabriel has scored three films, beginning with 1984’s criminally underrated Birdy. Though his second film score, The Last Temptation of Christ, garnered Gabriel more acclaim – as well as a Grammy Award and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score – it’s his work on Birdy that I love the most. By the way, if you’ve never seen this lovely little gem of a movie, directed by the late, great Alan Parker and starring Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage, do yourself a favor and check it out; it’s available to stream on Amazon Prime.
- Drive – Cliff Martinez
FUN FACT: For the soundtrack to his action neo-noir Drive, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn was looking for a retro ’80s europop vibe. Refn initially hired Johnny Jewel, with whom he’d worked on his previous movie, 2008’s Bronson, but he wasn’t happy with the results. Enter Cliff Martinez, former drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who’s best known for his collaborations with Steven Soderbergh. Refn was so pleased with Martinez’s score, the pair re-teamed for two more films, 2013’s Only God Forgives and 2016’s Neon Demon. For the former, Martinez won the Robert Award, the Danish version of an Oscar.
- Interstellar – Hans Zimmer
FUN FACT: Two-time Oscar winner Hans Zimmer is known for his sweeping orchestral scores (The Lion King, for which he won his first Academy Award, and Gladiator, to name two). But he also understands that sonic tinkering can take a traditional score to new heights. Zimmer and director Christopher Nolan have worked together numerous times, starting with 2005’s Batman Begins. Zimmer’s score for Interstellar, with ambient music design by Mario Reinsch, earned him a tenth Oscar nomination and drew comparisons to the legendary Philip Glass.
- Twin Peaks – Angelo Badalamenti
FUN FACT: Angelo Badalamenti scored films as disparate as A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warrior and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, but his greatest success was in collaboration with David Lynch, particularly Twin Peaks. Badalamenti won a Grammy for his dreamy Twin Peaks theme song; the theme provided the basis (with lyrics by Lynch himself) for Julee Cruise’s “Falling”, which was a top-twenty hit in twelve countries.
- “Tubular Bells” (The Exorcist) – Mike Oldfield
FUN FACT #1: Director William Friedkin would later say that if he’d heard Tangerine Dream’s music prior to making the film, he would have hired them to score The Exorcist. Instead, Friedkin used existing music, including classical pieces by Krzysztof Penderecki and a song by a young prog rock artist Mike Oldfield called “Tubular Bells”, which subsequently became known as the theme for The Exorcist.
FUN FACT #2: The legendary Lalo Schifrin (Mission: Impossible) wrote six minutes of score for The Exorcist‘s initial trailer that was deemed “too scary”, which WHAT? Six years later, Schifrin was nominated for an Oscar for The Amityville Horror; it was rumored that he used the scrapped Exorcist score for Amityville, though Schifrin himself denied it.
- The Terminator – Brad Fiedel
FUN FACT: The Terminator‘s main theme is in an unusual time signature – 13/16 time – because Fiedel accidentally created an incomplete loop when he programmed his Prophet-10 synthesizer. Fiedel and director James Cameron collaborated again on Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies.
- Cat People – Giorgio Moroder
FUN FACT: Moroder has won three Oscars – Best Original Score for 1978’s Midnight Express and Best Original Song for 1983’s “Flashdance…What a Feeling” and 1986’s “Take My Breath Away” – but he wasn’t nominated for Cat People. He did receive two Golden Globe nominations for the film, though: one for the score and a second one for Best Original Song for “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)”, which he co-wrote with David Bowie.
- “Axel F” (Beverly Hills Cop) – Harold Faltermeyer
FUN FACT: The Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack was stacked with pop gems like The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance”, Patti Labelle’s “Stir It Up”, and Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On”, but the film’s best-known track is the instrumental “Axel F”. “Axel F” peaked at #3 on the Billboard 100, a rare feat for an instrumental.
FUN FACT #2: Faltermeyer also composed the score for another ’80s cinematic icon, Top Gun.
- Mad Max: Fury Road – Junkie XL
FUN FACT: Dutch composer Tom Holkenborg, AKA Junkie XL, has collaborated with Hans Zimmer on several occasions, including the Christopher Nolan films Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. Brought in to meet Mad Max director George Miller and view a rough cut of Fury Road, Holkenborg’s on-the-spot suggestions won him the job.
- A Quiet Place – Marco Beltrami
FUN FACT: Beltrami earned a Golden Globe nomination for A Quiet Place; he has also received two career Oscar nods, for 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma and 2009’s The Hurt Locker. Beltrami composed the music for the first four films in the Scream franchise, as well.
- It Follows – Disasterpeace
FUN FACT: Disasterpeace is the stage name for New York musician Richard Vreeland, who specializes in a subgenre known as “chiptune” or “8-bit music”, which has its origins in vintage video games. It Follows was the first feature film Vreeland scored, and he nailed it.
- Day of the Dead – John Harrison
FUN FACT: In the first episode of Stranger Things 3 – “Suzie, Do You Copy” – Mike, Will, Lucas, and Sam sneak into a screening of Day of the Dead though Scoops Ahoy. The scene features footage from the movie that uses Harrison’s “The Dead Suite”.
As always, I’ve made a playlist that includes snippets of all the scores I’ve mentioned in this post:
PB & Julie + Julie C. Trivia 