Tim Greiving

The opening theme music from a TV show can become an earworm — just think of Mission: Impossible or Peter Gunn. For composers, coming up with something catchy is like trying to write a Top 40 hit.

Tom Holkenborg draws on his history as trance DJ Junkie XL for the bombastic electronica-meets-orchestra music he has composed for Mad Max: Fury Road, Batman v. Superman, and now The Dark Tower.

His sound has helped define David Lynch's work since Blue Velvet and was an essential character in the original Twin Peaks. Now, Badalamenti and Lynch are reuniting for the show's revival.

Goldsmith scored more than 200 films, including Alien, Chinatown and the first Star Trek movie. While his career paralleled that of John Williams, he never enjoyed the same kind of name recognition.

The show originally aired in the '90s and helped spawn the entire attitude of the Internet. Sure, it had a silly premise — but it also had a cult following. The reboot's first season drops on Friday.

Composers Brooke and Will Blair got some notice last year for their music for the cult hit Green Room, starring their brother Macon. Now they're scoring his directorial debut.

The Academy has a history of baffling picks for Best Score — but this year's nominees are so daring and startling that it's hard to go wrong.

The score for the new film, which stars Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy grappling with the death of her husband, was written by 29-year old English composer Mica Levi (a.k.a. Micachu).

The team behind the new animated film tapped Hamilton auteur Lin-Manuel Miranda and Samoan musician Opetaia Foa'i in hopes of creating a culturally sensitive musical story with breakout potential.

"We are part of the universe, and the music is the code," Vangelis says. The composer of Chariots Of Fire fame has released a new album, Rosetta, named after the recent European Space Agency mission.

The composer passed away a little over a year ago. Two final works, a film score for The Magnificent Seven and a horn concerto, prove that his emotional approach to storytelling endures.

British composer John Powell swore off working on action movies for years, unsettled by their violence. The latest in the Bourne series, for which he's scored every film, marks his return.

When tapped to write the score for the Ghostbusters reboot, composer Theodore Shapiro knew the trick to getting laughs: a soundtrack of serious music.

Jean Michel Jarre helped take electronic music mainstream with his 1976 album, Oxygene. His latest project, Electronica, Volumes 1 & 2, features some of his fellow pioneers.

When a film starts, "you have anywhere from two to 10 seconds to get the audience's attention," score writer Bear McCreary says. He gained this and other advice from his mentor, whom he met by chance.

You might call composer Carter Burwell the third Coen brother. His work isn't as well-known as the T-Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack albums for O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis, but he has been part of Joel and Ethan Coen's creative team ever since their feature-length debut, ...

At creator Chris Carter's request, composer Mark Snow tried to make the X-Files theme sound like The Smiths. In the process, he stumbled on a very different sound — that would become iconic.

Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's last film, Birdman, sparked Oscar controversy with its spare music. The Revenant features a swirl of sounds, anchored by the work of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.

The journey a film score takes, from the composer's brain to what comes out of the speakers at your local theater, is a long and complicated process. In the case of the new Pixar film The Good Dinosaur, the work began seven months ago. Audiences will hear it for the ...