Can You Hear The Music?

While I, like most, would never stoop to rolling my eyes at news of a new blockbuster score by the likes of John Williams, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, or any of the other time-tested titans of the harmonic cinematic, I can’t help but be increasingly more excited about the widespread boom of underdog composers suddenly becoming household names. Some of my favorite film scores of the past few years weren’t works from any of the certified GOATs of the industry, but rather from independent musicians who happened to make the right connections at the right time and have their work thrust into an undeniably deserved spotlight, finding themselves suddenly ranked among the all-time best in the craft and complementing the boom of social-media savvy independent filmmakers with a symbiosis of youthfulness and distinct vision. Names like Mica Levi, Nicolas Britell, Hildur Guðnadóttir, and Emile Mosseri are uttered between virtually every other word come award season, and it’s such a remarkable breath of fresh air to see so much youthfulness and such a vast range of lived and artistic perspectives reflected in the faces of the new guard. This year in particular, though, one name is being shouted slightly louder than the rest — that’s 39-year-old Ludwig Göransson, composer of the score for Christopher Nolan’s titanic epic Oppenheimer.

Göransson has been the subject of significant praise over the last few years, most notably for his work on The Mandalorian, both Black Panther films, and Nolan’s previous outing Tenet, but something about his work on Oppenheimer has struck a chord (haha) with an incredibly broad demographic even beyond those who have seen the film. Which itself was a bit of a cultural outlier — a three-hour biographical historical epic that made almost a billion dollars and became the third highest-grossing movie of 2023. Though even still, the Oppenheimer score has gone absolutely nuclear (….) since the film’s opening weekend, with tracks like the hauntingly beautiful “Can You Hear The Music” reaching well over 69 million streams on Spotify. I’ve talked to so many folks who don’t often listen to film scores but have made the Oppenheimer score their go-to study music, workout music, driving music, etc., which honestly feels like such a massive step in the right direction for the industry. To be reaching audiences at this level with such a majorly experimental piece of pop art is staggering.  It spells really good things for not just the future success of daring, challenging films, but the promising careers of the new generation of otherworldly talented composers poised to take the industry by storm one cultural shockwave at a time.