The film music of 2020.

Man, were there a lot of scores to wade through this year. More on that in a bit, but it's gratifying that the global situation didn't quash the imaginations of so many brilliant composers.

My favorite scores of 2020:

(Nami Melumad and Michael Giacchino - WaterTower)

Newcomer Melumad's flavorful score - with a nicely melancholy main theme - hints at a promising new talent.

Best tracks: "Workin' for Love in All the Wrong Places", "Klezmer Fight Club", "Pickles, Suite or Sour"

(Bear McCreary - Sony Classical)

Winning and colorful Stalling-style score, with a rich assortment of melodic material.

Best tracks: "Animal Crackers Overture", "Zucchini Chase", "Chimera"

(Terence Blanchard - Milan)

Forceful, stirring, melancholic...makes one wish the film was able to match it.

Best tracks: "What's This Mission About?", "David and Paul Get Spooked", "Paul and Norman"

(Danny Elfman - BackLot)

An odd duck of a movie no doubt, but Elfman's expectedly delightful music - in particular, a sweet main theme - gave it cohesion.

Best tracks: "Opening", "He's Back", "Save the Queen"

(Daniel Pemberton - Milan)

Sprightly and enjoyable music for the youth detective.

Best tracks: "Enola Holmes (Wild Child)", "Marquis", "Basilwether Hall"

(Howard Shore - Howe)

Shore music for the fantasy is appealingly reminiscent of his Melies scoring from Hugo.

Best tracks: "le prince oublie", "historie finie", "c'est l'historie des oublies"

(Alexandre Desplat - ABKCO)

The sci-fi drama benefited greatly from Desplat's music; by turns moody, majestic and exciting.

Best tracks: "The Midnight Sky", "A Child", "First Alert"

(Greg J. Walker - LilliPilli)

Maybe it's the middle initial, but this mystery score has echoes of Michael J. Lewis and that's good enough for me.

Best tracks: "Antiquities Intruder", "Before the Eclipse", "The Curse Lifted"

(Mychael and Jeff Danna - Walt Disney)

Quite fitting that this multifaceted score should come from a collaboration of brothers.

Best tracks: "The World Was Full of Wonder", "Laurel in Pursuit", "Battling the Dragon"

(David Newman - Milan)

Sometimes, you aren't looking for the next masterpiece; sometimes, all you need is a stylistic 'Greatest Hits' album from a master composer.

Best tracks: "Roger Sneaks In", "Bots Chase Roger", "Emo Turns Himself In"

(Dario Marianelli - Decca)

The latest adaptation of the classic book received a nicely delicate score from Marianelli.

Best tracks: "Skipping Rope", "Kidnapping Colin", "The Fire"

(Zacarias M. de la Riva and Alfred Tapscott - Atresmusica)

I've never heard of either composer (and it's unlikely I'll ever run into the movie), but this is some of the most fun music I've heard all year.

Best tracks: "Atraco", "Autocar del Madrid", "Ya es la hora"

(Alan Silvestri - WaterTower)

Though Zemeckis's film didn't quite hit the mark, Silvestri's music is wonderfully spellbinding, easily at home in any Roald Dahl story.

Best tracks: "Witches Are Real", "Let's Make a Potion", "End Credits"

(Bruno Coulais - 22D)

A mix of evocative Coulais scoring and haunting songs, perfect for the animated adventure.

Best tracks: "Wolves", "Our Forest", "Follow Me"

(Hans Zimmer - WaterTower)

Vibrant, colorful, exciting...where has this Hans been hiding himself?

Best tracks: "Themyscira", "The Stone", "The Beauty of What Is"

Honorable mention: Artemis Fowl (Patrick Doyle), Bad Education (Michael Abels), The Call of the Wild (John Powell), The Last Vermeer (Johan Soderqvist), legado en los huesos (Fernando Velazquez), les baluges de Toto (Romain Trouillet), Little Vampire (Olivier Daviaud), Mank (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), Narcissus and Goldmund (Henning Fuchs), No. 7 Cherry Lane (Yonfan), Out of My League (Marco Cascone), Pinocchio (Dario Marianelli), A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (Tom Howe), Simon's Got a Gift (Erwann Chandon), Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (Rolfe Kent), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Daniel Pemberton), Trolls World Tour (Theodore Shapiro), vier zauberhafte schwestern (Anne-Kathrin Dern) and The Willoughbys (Mark Mothersbaugh)

My favorite CDs of 2020:

The Big Fix (Bill Conti - Varese Club) - Conti provided an appealingly quirky score for the Richard Dreyfuss mystery-comedy, helped by a delightful, Ragtime-infused main theme.

Casper (James Horner - La La Land) - Horner ably walked the film's unusual tightrope of serious afterlife rumination and wacky slapstick with his terrific score.

Darkman (Danny Elfman - La La Land) - In the wake of Batman came this take from Sam Raimi, with a marvelously brooding score from Elfman.

Dolores Claiborne (Danny Elfman - Varese Club) - Elfman's streak of powerful dramatic opuses (Sommersby, Black Beauty) continued with his doleful work on the Stephen King adaptation.

The Don is Dead (Jerry Goldsmith - Intrada) - Goldsmith's score for the Godfather knock-off eschews themes in favor of an effectively dour (and ARP-laden) mood.

Endless Night (Bernard Herrmann - Quartet) - The world can never have enough releases of Herrmann, and this re-recording of the obscure thriller score proves that.

Mystery Men (Stephen Warbeck/Shirley Walker - La La Land) - What's the first thing you do after winning an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love? An idiosyncratic superhero comedy, of course. Aided by Walker's terrific additional tracks, Warbeck's music made for a colorful accompaniment.

The Order (Pino Donaggio - Quartet) - No doubt one of the more unusual Van Damme vehicles (he shares scenes with Charlton Heston, ffs), this thriller featured an exciting Donaggio effort, highlighted by an amusing end title cue.

The Seven Per Cent Solution (John Addison - Quartet) - Quartet's celebration of Addison's 100th birthday included this engaging wry score for the speculative mystery.

Tremors (Ernest Troost/Robert Folk - La La Land) - Okay, so the Mystery Men situation isn't new to Hollywood, much less Universal. Folk's rousing cues nicely complement Troost's flavorful music.

Other great CDs:

Agatha (Howard Blake - Dragon's Domain)

A Bridge Too Far (John Addison - Quartet)

From Beyond (Richard Band - Dragon's Domain)

Jacob's Ladder (Maurice Jarre - Quartet)

The Land Before Time (James Horner - Intrada)

Munchie (Chuck Cirino - Dragon's Domain)

The Swarm (Jerry Goldsmith - La La Land)

Swashbuckler (John Addison - Quartet)

Take Her, She's Mine (Jerry Goldsmith - Intrada)

Two Mules for Sister Sara (Ennio Morricone - La La Land)

- In listening to albums to prepare my year end list, I ran across more than a few of them that ran upwards of an hour and a half and while some were worth listening to, others were not. Not naming names, but 90 minutes of go-nowhere synth music? I can name scores I love that don't stand up to 90-minute presentations. It's called judicious spotting, motherlover! Do you speak it?!

- And let me pour one out for the terrific scores that I thought were from 2020, but actually came from 2019: Christophe Heral's le voyage du Prince, George Kallis's Lev Yashin: the Dream Goalkeeper, Michael Lira's Nekrotronic and Olivier Cussac's Terra Willy. Sorry, but rules is rules.

- As far as specialty releases go, there were some gems, as well as some titles where I'm like "...what?!". A 3-CD Inchon and a 4-CD Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves were headscratchers, but I think the crown should go to the complete release of Species II, all from Intrada, if you can believe it. If you're able to dig up the old review in Film Score Monthly, you'll definitely be as shocked as I was. For real, would a complete Count of Monte Cristo from the same composer not have been a better seller?

- I'm man enough to admit that there are a number of composers that, under most circumstances, fail to fill me with joy, mainly when I hear that they have been announced to score a movie instead of someone I hold in perpetually higher esteem. Still, a number of these bottom-tier composers really stepped up this year: Lorne Balfe* (Bad Boys for Life), Tom Holkenborg (Sonic the Hedgehog), Steve Mazzaro (The Rhythm Section), Aaron Zigman (The War with Grandpa), Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Soul and Mank). You'd think that Steve Jablonsky would be missing here and while Spenser Confidential was kind of a shrug, Bloodshot worked in various moments.

* - On Twitter, I responded to a newsbite about Balfe returning for Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 with a gif of Ralphie saying 'Fudge' and it got a like...from Balfe himself. It's hard to be completely against a man willing to be so self-deprecating.