You’re reading The Amplifier newsletter. Every week, we provide an alternative to the algorithm — a real, live human helps you discover songs you’ll love. Enjoy the edition below, and look for future newsletters in your inbox on Tuesdays. My 5 favorite film scores of 20255 songs, 14 min 39 sec
Dear listeners,As I was putting together my annual list of my favorite albums of the year, I realized how much time I spent in 2025 listening to film scores. This isn’t a novel experience for me; as an incurable movie buff, I have my own personal pantheon of favorite film composers — Nino Rota, Bernard Herrmann, Michel Legrand, Wendy Carlos and Giorgio Moroder, if you’d force me to name just a few — and often put on their records when I want the mundane moments of my life to feel more cinematic. I find that I clean my living room with much more vigor and urgency if the “Midnight Express” score is playing in the background. Earlier this year, I got a chance to geek out about film scores with two people who also spend a lot of time listening to them, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Reznor and Ross live double lives as members of the industrial rock group Nine Inch Nails and acclaimed movie composers who have worked repeatedly with David Fincher (“The Social Network”) and Luca Guadagnino (“Challengers”). My favorite of the three feature-length scores they released this year, for the sci-fi action flick “Tron: Ares,” allowed them to unite those sides of themselves: It’s the first score for which they are billed not as Reznor and Ross, but as Nine Inch Nails. And given that its bone-shaking, retrofuturistic aesthetic is influenced by two of my aforementioned favorite film composers, Carlos and Moroder, I’ve had it in heavy rotation since it came out. Since I wanted to keep my main albums of the year list focused on pop music, I thought I’d use today’s Amplifier to spotlight some of my favorite film scores of the year. Nine Inch Nails’ “Tron: Ares” made the cut, as did a few others by artists who straddle that line between composer and rock star, like the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and the National’s multi-instrumentalist Bryce Dessner. Sometimes my love of a film score is directly connected to my love of that film. For example, I was totally spellbound when I recently watched Clint Bentley’s Denis Johnson adaptation “Train Dreams,” and listening to Dessner’s score feels like a way to crawl back inside the movie’s enveloping atmosphere. That doesn’t always have to be the case, though. Even though I’m generally a fan of Benny Safdie, I was disappointed by his Mark Kerr biopic “The Smashing Machine,” which I found to be disjointed and oddly insubstantial. But I’ve been returning over and over again to its bewitching score, composed by the jazz musician Nala Sinephro, so much so that it’s by far my most-listened-to score of the year. I’d recommend it even more than I would the movie. Consider today’s playlist a brief sampling of five larger works that I’d encourage you to check out in their entirety. And given that the films containing two of my most anticipated scores of the year — “Marty Supreme” and “The Testament of Ann Lee” — haven’t been released yet, consider it subject to change. I’m no Nino Rota, I don’t know the score, Lindsay
Listen along while you read.1. Jerskin Fendrix: “Bees”When Jerskin Fendrix began working on his score for “Bugonia,” his third collaboration with the Greek provocateur Yorgos Lanthimos, he hadn’t yet seen a script or even a synopsis. Lanthimos gave the composer just three words of guidance: “bees,” “basement” and “spaceship.” From this prompt, Fendrix created an epic and wonderfully unsettling score, performed with requisite grandeur by the 90-piece London Contemporary Orchestra. Given that “Bugonia” concerns a protagonist who believes he is trying to save humanity from aliens, “The score is basically there in the background,” according to Fendrix, “saying, the stakes are high.” ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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The Amplifier Playlist
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“My 5 Favorite Film Scores of the Year” track list
Track 1: Jerskin Fendrix, “Bees”
Track 2: Nala Sinephro, “Dawn”
Track 3: Jonny Greenwood, “One Battle After Another”
Track 4: Bryce Dessner, “The Gadabout, Pt II”
Track 5: Nine Inch Nails, “New Directive”
Bonus Tracks
Regular Amplifier readers know I love a good needle drop. A few of my favorites of the year — Marlene Dietrich’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”; the Cleaners from Venus’s “Corridor of Dreams”; Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” — also come from the films on today’s list, but since I don’t want to spoil them for you, I won’t tell you which. If you know, you know!
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