Which (if any) JW OSTs do you think are perfect and why?

[artguy360 1,843]

Thinking in terms of the quality of the music, the performance, the sound mix, the editing and album flow, which (if any) JW OSTs do you think are perfection? 

 

To me this is an incredibly difficult question because I so often disagree with the editing and track order of JW's OSTs, especially when important musical highlights or developments are left off the OST, or a cue from the 1st act of the movie is placed near the end of the album and the tone just doesn't fit. 

 

Having said all that, the Schindler's List OST is nearly perfect. Lincoln would be perfect to my ears except I don't care for the more source-cue-ish tracks and the jiggy period tracks. Other than those parts, the Lincoln OST is nearly immaculate. Maybe HP1? That's a pretty great album front to back, full of highlights, nearly all killer, no filler. On the other hand, TFA OST has so many tracks I edit out all together.

 

What say you? What are your perfect JW OSTs? What makes them so?

[GerateWohl 4,357]

To me The Witches of Eastwick is such a perfect OST.

It fulfills my requirements for that:

• I like listening to it from beginning to end.
• The way the themes are introduced and handled makes sense to me.
• No feeling of much redundancy.
• Great highlights and dedicated concert suites for major themes.
• I don't miss anything substancial what makes me long for an expansion.
• No songs

 

[Chewy 2,388]

War Horse definitely! This one has a great flow, keeps the chronology and doesn't omit anything major.

[Jurassic Shark 12,063]

JP

JAWS

E.T.

[bollemanneke 3,342]

That one sucks, too  repetitive. I wish I had bought Jaws, though. The OST flows so perfectly.

[Thor 7,494]

All of them.

[Jurassic Shark 12,063]

I didn't see that one coming!

[Antonb 118]

Close encounters and ET and Superman. 

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,433]

War Horse and The Force Awakens both have a perfect flow and are among my favourite to listen to.

But I agree with Thor all are perfect

[GerateWohl 4,357]

1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

JP

JAWS

E.T.

All these are perfect album, but they always left me with an "I want more" feeling. Especially for E.T. there is so much great music not contained in the OST. A perfect OST is one that leaves me with the feeling "that is all I need from that score." (I know, Thor, that is exactly how you feel about all of them. But I don't.)

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Rosewood.  That’s one where, of course I love having the complete score, but the OST remains my primary listening experience for that soundtrack.

[GerateWohl 4,357]

2 hours ago, Antonb said:

Close encounters

The OST never did much for me. I liked the bonus single with the synthesizer version.

The CD-bootleg was a little better.

But the 1998 ARISTA CD release for the special edition of the movie then was the big revalation for me. From that on I really enjoyed the score ultimately.

So much, that I never longed for the LLL 2-CD set.

[Jurassic Shark 12,063]

32 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

The OST never did much for me.

 

 

32 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

I liked the bonus single with the synthesizer version.

 

[Antonb 118]

Having just got it, I highly recommend the La La Land release of close encounters, the sound quality and presentation is superb.

[Andy 4,122]

I might get hate for this, but Hook is a superb OST.  And I love expansions, and I love much of the material missing from it.  But I'd picked up the OST after having forgotten the film, and was completely won over.

 

Far and Away is incredibly satisfying too.

 

The River is close to being perfect.

 

Then you've got Jane Eyre where I don't know what might be missing, but the album is wholly satisfying.

 

Images accomplishes its goal. 

 

Oh and 1941 is really nicely constructed, if not perfect.  The edits were seamless to me for years, and it completely tells the story musically.

[Tallguy 3,385]

Close Encounters. As much as I adore the latest LLL I will often go back to this one. (Can the LLL be edited to conform with the LP?)

 

2 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

I liked the bonus single with the synthesizer version.

 

That's because it's awesome!

 

Star Wars and Superman are marvels. They both take so much great material and condense it to make every note perfect. They still feel huge but no longer feel sprawling. The Empire Strikes Back as well. But there are too many pieces that I love in them that are missing. I'm not sure why Raiders is not in this group for me. It probably should be.

 

I think the Far and Away OST could be a lot tighter.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

36 minutes ago, Hedji said:

The River is close to being perfect.

 

I always enjoyed this OST a lot, but I have to admit that since the Matessino edition came out, I have much preferred the more natural feeling flow of the C&C presentation.

[Bespin 8,480]

All the OSTs before "Home Alone", so done as a LP program, are quite all good.

 

E.T. holds a particular place, because the OST contains a lot of suites written especially for the album, so it's a real good companion to the entire score.

 

[GerateWohl 4,357]

18 minutes ago, Hedji said:

Then you've got Jane Eyre where I don't know what might be missing, but the album is wholly satisfying.

Right! Big time.

 

I was thinking as well about the double LP of The Empire Strikes Back, but after all I always struggled with how parts were plugged together that belonged to different scenes.

[Tallguy 3,385]

12 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

I always struggled with how parts were plugged together that belonged to different scenes.

 

I went from a) not knowing that was happening to b) knowing it and trying to pull out the chronological cues (on tape!) to c) being astounded at how artistically it was done! Inner City (Star Wars, I know) is an AMAZING track!

[Datameister 2,042]

War Horse and (to a lesser degree) TFA come to mind. Great distillations of their respective scores, with nothing so blatantly shuffled as to distract a listener familiar with their films, and nothing truly essential missing.

 

Of course, I'll order expansions of both as soon as they become available; enjoying the album presentation doesn't have to preclude wanting access to still more music.

[BB-8 3,472]

BfG

[Naïve Old Fart 9,515]

6 hours ago, Thor said:

All of them.

Very. Well. Said.

[BrotherSound 2,242]

Has no one said The Fury yet? Some of his best album-only reworking of cues, the LSO in its prime, and the haunting Epilogue, composed specifically for the album.
 

Nixon is also a very effective, if brief OST, that nevertheless manages to cherry pick all the major highlights of a very long score.

 

2 hours ago, Tallguy said:

I'm not sure why Raiders is not in this group for me. It probably should be.

Well, the others you mentioned were double LPs, which Raiders, Close Encounters, Return of the Jedi, etc. all would have greatly benefitted from.

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,433]

The Fury is indeed a terrific album

 

7 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

JP

JAWS

E.T.

No Stepmom?

[Holko 9,520]

The ones I keep on my phone, meaning actually paid for and listen to, are

 

- Images: great assembly.

- Lincoln: masterpiece, I'm not sure knowing the complete score well would change that opinion

- Memoirs of a Geisha: from what I recall, not much is missing, mostly a lot of alternates, and it's not too messy. Perfect placeholder until we get the real deal.

- Rosewood: Tried and failed to get into the score multiple times, until I listened to the OST with the breezier program, good selections and lovely gospel pieces punctuating it and fell in love.

- Seven Years in Tibet: a huge mess of cues that ends up still being a great strong program, one of the very few times he ever really succeeded with that IMO.

- Attack of the Clones: very very strong distillation of the complete score.

- The Force Awakens: textbook near-perfect example of how to cut a score down to 1 disc.

- The Post: love it, good assembly, doesn't overstay its welcome

 

 

And the controversial ones:

- Return of the Jedi: IMO he took the limitation and turned it into a strength, where many other 1LP shortenings of his fail miserably in my eyes, this one succeeds at being an extended "Suite from Return of the Jedi", he picked and newly composed pieces perfectly and arranged them really well.

- Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: not knowing the complete score at all probably helps a lot but I really really like it, the quiet but tense cues balancing the bigger action, a strong beginning and an overall good growth to a strong finale

 

I'm also keeping Witches of Eastwick on download on Tidal until we get a complete release, I don't hate it at all, and Accidental Tourist is in the grey zone of like but enough to buy or not so it got the same fate.

 

Of the ones I do have but don't listen to much, I do like:

- Monsignor: the program I listen to is the OST boosted by a couple film cues

- Superman: really good distillation of the score, but I have the score to listen to instead

- Dracula: not a bad assembly, but I do have the score to listen to instead

- Far and Away: another good 1 disc distillation, I actually even took a combo idea from it and applied it to the LLL main program

 

 

 

 

 

struggles

 

 

I'll uh... stay away... from... saying which ones I loathe... that's not what this thread's... about...

[Jurassic Shark 12,063]

6 minutes ago, May the Force be with You said:

No Stepmom?

 

Goes without saying.

[Tallguy 3,385]

35 minutes ago, Holko said:

And the controversial ones:

- Return of the Jedi: IMO he took the limitation and turned it into a strength, where many other 1LP shortenings of his fail miserably in my eyes, this one succeeds at being an extended "Suite from Return of the Jedi", he picked and newly composed pieces perfectly and arranged them really well.

 

That's controversial all right. I revisit the Star Wars and Empire LP tracklist quite often. I pretty much never listen to this one.

 

I wonder if it's because for six years we were taught what a Star Wars LP should feel like. Sure it has all of the themes and a lot of the big action cues. But there's nothing like Inner City or Lando's Palace. It doesn't have the "connective tissue" that the other two had. Every track has pretty much a single idea.

 

1 hour ago, BrotherSound said:

Well, the others you mentioned were double LPs, which Raiders, Close Encounters, Return of the Jedi, etc. all would have greatly benefitted from.

 

I'm on the edge with Raiders. (I mean, obviously a double LP would have been terrific.) And I just gave my opinion of Jedi. But Close Encounters is so perfect just as it is. Nothing against the LLL disc, which is ALSO perfect.

 

 

[Holko 9,520]

1 minute ago, Tallguy said:

That's controversial all right. I revisit the Star Wars and Empire LP tracklist quite often. I pretty much never listen to this one.

And I never ever listen to SW and Empire because I think they're an awful mess full of bad decisions!

Dammit you made me.

2 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

It doesn't have the "connective tissue" that the other two had. Every track has pretty much a single idea.

Yes, that's why my brain switched onto it as a "Suite from Return of the Jedi".

[Disco Stu 15,495]

1 hour ago, Holko said:

The Post: love it, good assembly, doesn't overstay its welcome

 

It's very nearly the complete score anyway, so I'm not sure there would've been a way for it to overstay its welcome!

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,433]

Just listened back to War of the Worlds (Intrada) and even though the C&C presentation is extraordinary I have to say that the original OST has an extremely good flow

[Jay 37,347]

"Perfect" is very ambiguous term to use when describing an album of music.  I don't know what that even means to me, let alone what a general usage of the term in this context that would make sense for most people would be.

 

So, I'll just say the OST albums I feel Williams best distilled his complete score down to a listenable album that feels like it captured the essence of the whole score, and also flows really well, and is just overall a very satisfying listen:

1. Jaws (1975)
2. Star Wars (1977)
3. The River (1984)
4. SpaceCamp (1986)
5. The Accidental Tourist (1988)
6. Stanley and Iris (1990)
7. Rosewood (1997)
8. War Horse (2011)
9. The Force Awakens (2015)
10. The Post (2017)

There may be others that would fit my criteria if I had seen their films / knew more about their complete scores.  Like for example I've never seen The Reivers, so can't possibly comment on how good of a job I feel Williams did assembling that album.  I love what's there, but I have no idea what else he recorded for that project that he left out.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

I definitely interpreted the use of "perfect" here to be an emotional one, not quantifiable.  Which albums "feel" perfect to you in a wishy-washy sense.

[Jay 37,347]

Most OST albums that I loved when I first heard them, I eventually grew to be dissatisfied with as I learned more about the rest of the music he recorded for the same project, but didn't release.

 

Like The Phantom Menace is a great album of new John Williams Star Wars music when you first hear it, that flows really well.  Then you see the film and hear all these amazing Force Theme statements, a ton of unique an interesting action cues, even more world-building and establishing music, and the album lost a lot of its luster

[eitam 364]

Schindler's List is pretty much perfect. Non wonder Williams didn't want it changed for LLL's reedition. 

 

Hook IMO is the other most consistently strong OST (though depending on your taste, it can get a bit much by the end of Ultimate War, thank God /Williams for Farewell Neverland). 

 

Other very satisfying OST that come to mind are Memoirs of a Geisha, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones 3.

[QuartalHarmony 542]

I’m going to choose to define ’perfect’ for these purposes as ‘so good that I feel no need to buy an expanded edition’. On that basis, and in no particular order:

 

JP

Far & Away

Rosewood

HP1

 

Mark

[MikeH 768]

JAWS 2 (1978) is a fantastic album with great sequencing and flow. When I finally listened to the expanded edition it was quite off-putting. The OST feels like a complete work whereas the expanded score is very cue-y and disjointed. 

[WampaRat 1,105]

It’s not one I listen to a ton, but Saving Private Ryan ost is pretty much the entire film score on one CD. 
 

I also echo how satisfied I was the TFA ost. The ost for Hook and Far and Away are also fantastic to me:)

[Tallguy 3,385]

44 minutes ago, QuartalHarmony said:

I’m going to choose to define ’perfect’ for these purposes as ‘so good that I feel no need to buy an expanded edition’.

 

By that criteria then here, as in life, perfection does not exist.

[BB-8 3,472]

Hook

[bruce marshall 1,315]

On 16/02/2022 at 1:09 PM, MikeH said:

JAWS 2 (1978) is a fantastic album with great sequencing and flow. When I finally listened to the expanded edition it was quite off-putting. The OST feels like a complete work whereas the expanded score is very cue-y and disjointed. 

But....but.... But....

It's not complete!😵

My criteria is an album I don't have to resequence.

E.T.

SW

SLEEPERS

SCHINDLER

[Andy 4,122]

On 16/2/2022 at 4:09 PM, MikeH said:

JAWS 2 (1978) is a fantastic album with great sequencing and flow. When I finally listened to the expanded edition it was quite off-putting. The OST feels like a complete work whereas the expanded score is very cue-y and disjointed. 

I agree. I actually enjoy the movie for what it is, and have seen it more than enough times to have it pretty much memorized.  I’m happy to have the expansion, but the listening experience is so disjointed, I made my own fan edit based on the album sequencing, but with the (very little) extra music peppered in for a better listening experience. So it’s complete, but not chronological. 
 

But yes, Jaws 2 is an damn near perfect example I forgot about. 

[Oomoog the Ecstatic 314]

I don't know anything perfect in popular music, just that my own works are closest to perfect.

 

The OST from Williams closest to the word perfect would be Harry Potter (namely II or I), although not his best OSTs, due to the strife for perfection at first eliminating all supplementary of the ideal. It had the most potential to reach perfection.

[King Mark 3,631]

None. Only those missing less than 5 minutes of unreleased music can be called decent.

[bruce marshall 1,315]

On 17/02/2022 at 1:40 PM, Hedji said:

I agree. I actually enjoy the movie for what it is, and have seen it more than enough times to have it pretty much memorized.  I’m happy to have the expansion, but the listening experience is so disjointed, I made my own fan edit based on the album sequencing, but with the (very little) extra music peppered in for a better listening experience. So it’s complete, but not chronological. 
 

But yes, Jaws 2 is an damn near perfect example I forgot about. 

I have it.

Only the fanatics bought the expansion I.e. everyone on this board except Thor and myself😅😝😜😅

 

 

"It's complete, but not chronological. "

 

Heretic!

😄😙