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15 gorgeous movie soundtracks to listen to on your next hike
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items I used to be something of a curmudgeon on the question of whether or not it's cool to listen to music while hiking. Then I took a walk in a town forest during Year 1 of the Covid-19 pandemic, inserted my earbuds, and queued up the soundtrack for Terr...
Sections
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Romantic Soundtracks
Thrilling Soundtracks
Haunting Soundtracks
Romantic Soundtracks
Terrence Malick's adaptation of the story of Pocahontas (and the colonization of her world) is one of the most spellbinding films of the early 21st Century and James Horner's beautiful score captures the significance of the film's events perfectly. I...
The New World (by James Horner)
Jane Campion's The Piano remains one of the most soul-stirring love stories ever put to film: the tale of strangers (a deaf pianist and a retired sailor) adjusting to life in an unfamiliar landscape (colonial-era New Zealand) and finding something pr...
The Piano (by Michael Nyman)
Daniel Day-Lewis's last movie role (allegedly) as a renowned and high-strung dressmaker meeting his muse is a mediation on the more twisted and ruinous elements of love, and how we come to accept them as part of the whole package, so to speak. And Jo...
Phantom Thread (by Jonny Greenwood)
Sometimes falling in love seems so unlikely in its spontaneity that it can feel like a strange dream, as in Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation. And to capture that mood, she and her music team assembled the perfect soundtrack that includes hazy cuts...
Lost In Translation (various artists)
The late James Horner appears more than once on this list because his soundtracks aim for the heart. And naturally, any list of romantic soundtracks has to include his score for Titanic, which caused many damp eyes in the late 90s. This one is sweepi...
Titanic (by James Horner)
Thrilling Soundtracks
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the most epic hiking story of all time. No, really! What else would you call the tale of two Hobbits who undertake a months-long foot journey to toss an evil warlord's magic ring into an active volcano? Any of the sou...
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (by Howard Shore)
Mad Max: Fury Road (one of my favorite films of all time) is basically a two-hour car chase featuring the most numerous and nightmarish cars imaginable. And what is hiking, if not a protracted chase of scenic destinations like a sunny mountaintop or ...
Mad Max: Fury Road (by Junkie XL)
It's been almost three decades since Danny Boyle's Trainspotting catapulted British cinema into the full color and roar of the 21st Century, and the soundtrack still slaps. An exhilarating compilation of bangers from legends like Underworld, Pulp, Ne...
Trainspotting (various artists)
One of the most essential tricks that Dune: Part 1 had to pull off was capturing the strangeness, excitement, and terror of the bizarre world in which Frank Herbert's books are set. Thankfully, Hans Zimmer managed this with aplomb, and his soundtrack...
Dune: Part 1 (by Hans Zimmer)
The fourth and final (?) installment of the John Wick movies somehow managed to make the previous films feel like dress rehearsals; which is crazy because those films are awesome! The soundtrack for John Wick 4 is no exception to this escalation and ...
John Wick: Chapter 4 (by Tyler Bates & Joel J. Richard)
Haunting Soundtracks
Radiohead guitarists and legendary movie soundtrack composer Jonny Greenwood gets his second inclusion on this list with the eerie score for There Will Be Blood (the soundtrack that put him on the map for Hollywood.) It's a brooding and unsettling li...
There Will Be Blood (by Jonny Greenwood)
Not enough people saw The Northman. Robert Eggers' ultraviolent and sometimes hallucinatory viking epic is one of gnarliest period thrillers in recent years, and the soundtrack by Robin Carolan and Sebastien Gainsborough feels like something unearthe...
The Northman (by Robin Carolan & Sebastian Gainsborough)
One of the most astonishing things about Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is how it perfectly straddles the line between the wonder of discovery and the horror of consequences. Ludwig Gorranson's powerful score is integral to achieving this atmosphere...
Oppenheimer (by Ludwig Göransson)
While we're on the subject of Christopher Nolan movies, how could we forget Interstellar? Hans Zimmer's sonically understated but heartbreaking score is the sound of two people reaching across galaxies toward each other, and sometimes taking a rumina...
Interstellar (by Hans Zimmer)
No one has ever made a movie quite like The Last Emperor. Bernardo Bertolucci's telling of the life of Pu Yi (the final emperor to rule China before the rise of communist party) is a story of a powerless man whose fate is determined by forces beyond ...
The Last Emperor (by Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne)