2015 Muriel Awards: Best Music

As a rule, this category is pretty hard to pin down. Granted, some of that is by design – if you take a look at this category on the Muriels site, you’ll notice that its full name is “Best Music: Original, Adapted, or Compiled.” Therefore, our winners have encompassed a wide range of styles throughout the years, from assembled collections of largely pre-existing material (Inside Llewyn Davis) to full-on scores (The Dark Knight), with the two Wes Anderson films we’ve awarded here falling somewherein between. This year was definitely an original score kinda year. Plenty of worthy contenders for a voters to choose from this year, from the throwbacks and homages to cutting-edge music. Who took the prize? Drumroll, please…

Third place:

It Follows (score composed by Disasterpeace) [147 points / 23 votes]

Second place:

Carol (score composed by Carter Burwell) [159 points / 25 votes]

And the Muriel goes to…

The Hateful Eight (score composed by Ennio Morricone) [217 points / 32 votes]

“Quentin Tarantino, who famously had never worked with a composer to score any of his previous films, preferring to spot them with songs and bits of scores of his own choosing, was reportedly surprised when he received Ennio Morricone's initial work for The Hateful Eight. ‘...At first it had been a shock. He had expected something completely different. But I didn't give that to him, because I didn't want to give him something he knew already,’ said Morricone in an interview. If this is true, it's hard to imagine what Tarantino was expecting, because the score Morricone delivered is perfect for the film: menacing, propulsive, and undeniably of a piece with both the classic spaghetti westerns of the '60s and also the many giallos that Morricone composed in the '70s.

“It may be a case in which a collaborator understood the film better than the writer/director, because while The Hateful Eight sometimes rambles into fruitless tangents, Morricone's contribution remains focused on the underlying danger and hostility in the air. Add to this the additional cues that Tarantino imported from Morricone's score for The Thing and a few carefully chosen pop songs, and you have a soundtrack that does exactly what it should: highlight the strengths of a film and fill in the weaknesses. That Morricone is capable of music this strong and nimble after 55 years of composing is something to behold.” ~ Jeff McMahon

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