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Curated playlist

Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners

  • John LennonJohn Lennon was ordered to leave the United States in 1973. His anti-war activities had alarmed President Nixon.
  • Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin was in a workhouse twice before he turned nine. By 26 he was among the world's highest-paid people.
  • Academy Award for Best Original ScoreThe Academy Award for Best Original Score exists in part because of a film with no credited composer. In 1938, Charles Previn won the scoring prize for One Hundred Men and a Girl, a picture that leaned on pre-existing classical music. The…
  • Prince (musician)Prince once changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol to protest his record label.
  • Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney traded a trumpet for a guitar and wrote his first song on it. His father had given him the trumpet.
  • Aaron CoplandComposer Aaron Copland planned one year of study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger but stayed three.
  • John WilliamsSteven Spielberg laughed at John Williams's two-note Jaws theme, thinking it was a joke.
  • George HarrisonGeorge Harrison mortgaged his home to save Monty Python's Life of Brian. EMI Films had pulled its funding in 1978.
  • Hans ZimmerHans Zimmer, the German film composer born on the 12th of September 1957, once set out to write a sound that people would truly hate. His own words were: "I wanted to write something people would truly hate." The target was the villain in…
  • Ringo StarrRingo Starr's first drum was a cotton bobbin used to tap the cabinets by his hospital bed.
  • Trent ReznorTrent Reznor once worked at Right Track Studio in Cleveland as an assistant engineer and janitor. Studio owner Bart Koster remembered his employee this way: "He is so focused in everything he does. When that guy waxed the floor, it looked…
  • David ByrneDavid Byrne was turned away from his middle school choir, which judged him "off-key and too withdrawn". That boy grew up to be an American musician, writer, visual artist and filmmaker. Over his career he has received an Academy Award, a…
  • Michael GiacchinoMichael Giacchino used pieces of a real airplane fuselage as instruments on Lost.
  • Ludwig GöranssonComposer Ludwig Göransson was not Christopher Nolan's first choice for Tenet.

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