Most "best soundtrack" lists are one person's gut feeling dressed up as a verdict. Ours isn't. Every album here was rated one track at a time, then distilled into a single time-weighted score — each track's rating weighted by how long it actually plays, so a towering ten-minute centerpiece counts for more than a thirty-second sting.
Here are the ten highest-scoring soundtracks we've reviewed so far. For the live, sortable version, see the full rankings.
The top 10
- Romeo and Juliet — Abel Korzeniowski · 4.80/5. Lush, aching, and astonishingly consistent. The closest thing we've found to a flawless score.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King — Howard Shore · 4.64/5. The strongest chapter of the most ambitious score in film history.
- Attack on Titan: Season 2 — Hiroyuki Sawano · 4.50/5. Modern and classical, fused with zero compromise.
- Apollo 13 — James Horner · 4.32/5. Restrained, patriotic, and quietly enormous.
- Ori and the Blind Forest — Gareth Coker · 4.31/5. Proof that a video-game score can be as moving as any film's.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Howard Shore · 4.27/5. The album that introduced a whole world of themes.
- Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas — Harry Gregson-Williams · 4.06/5. Thematic, sweeping, and endlessly easy to put on.
- First Man — Justin Hurwitz · 4.05/5. A tale of two extremes anchored by one brilliant theme.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — Howard Shore · 4.02/5. Tense, transitional, and still better than most composers' best.
- Pearl Harbor — Hans Zimmer · 4.00/5. Repetitive by design, but the main theme is pure, soaring Zimmer.
What the numbers tell us
A few patterns jump out. Howard Shore lands three entries in the top ten — no other composer comes close for sheer consistency across a trilogy. Gareth Coker's Ori and the Blind Forest flies the flag for video-game scores in the top tier. And the very top of the list isn't a blockbuster at all: it's Abel Korzeniowski's intimate, under-heard work on Romeo and Juliet.
Want to go deeper? Sort everything yourself in the rankings, browse by composer, or skip straight to the standouts in the Hall of Fame — every individual track we've rated a perfect 5 or higher.