K-pop bands using their singing to create a “Honmoon” shield against soul-feasting demons? Chalamania introducing the catalogue of Bob Dylan to a new generation? A blues musician whose music is so extraordinary it can pierce the veil between the living and the dead and bend space and time? It’s been a banner year for film soundtracks, so allow NME to round up some of the best.
Words: Gary Ryan
Young Fathers rightly dubbed Danny Boyle “King of the Needle Drops”. The Mercury-winning Scottish band, described by Boyle as “The Beach Boys on steroids”, were enlisted by the director to provide the haunting apocalyptic score for his sociological zombie sequel. They proved to be a safe (albeit blood-stained) set of hands, as they majestically ramped up the insularity, horror and emotion. It even includes Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s clamorous ‘East Hastings’ – in a musical callback to the iconic opening of 2002’s original 28 Days Later, where Jim (Cillian Murphy) famously walked through an eerily deserted London.
Best needle-drop: Young Fathers’ ominous ‘Remember’ accompanies a gut-wrenching scene at the Bone Palace.
Donning the Wayfarer shades of Bob Dylan is a tough task, but Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated portrayal was utterly convincing thanks to his impressive dedication to the role. He learned 40 of Dylan’s tracks for the film; 23 ended up on the attendant soundtrack. Through his raw, live renditions of ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’, Masters Of War’, and going electric with ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, he sells the visceral thrill of hearing these classic tracks for the first time.
Best needle-drop: Even the most sceptical Bobcat was won over by an early, touching scene where Timmy Dylan sings ‘Song To Woody’ at the hospital bedside of his dying musical hero, Woody Guthrie.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ macabre oddity about the kidnapping of Emma Stone’s pharmaceutical chief executive Michelle by demented conspiracy theorist Teddy (Jesse Plemmons), who believes she is an alien, saw the director team up with his musical muse – former Black Midi collaborator Jerskin Fendrix – for a third time. Given the key prompts ‘bees, basement and spaceship’, Fendrix came up with an inventive, discordantly alarming orchestral score.
Best needle-drop: Narrowly beating out Michelle singing along to Chappell Roan’s weapons-grade banger ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ (a tune suggested by Stone) is the deployment of pop-punk stalwarts Green Day. After Michelle is shackled and shaved, Teddy ups the ante by hooking her to an electroshock torture kit. As he flips the switch, their 1994 hit ‘Basket Case’ plays; its lyrics (“Sometimes I give myself the creeps/Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me/It all keeps adding up/I think I’m cracking up”) seemingly providing a perfect character-précis of him.
In this officially-branded Formula One action juggernaut, about Brad Pitt’s maverick driver returning 30 years after a near-fatal crash, Hans Zimmer adrenalised the hot-rod thrills with sleek synth-pop and orchestral bombast, to give us the most exhilarating music involving helmets since Daft Punk. Following in the slipstream of the movie was a companion soundtrack featuring Doja Cat, RAYE, Rosé and Peggy Gou.
Best needle-drop: Taking place at 24 Hours Of Daytona, the high-octane opening scene is revved up by the pumping riffs of Led Zeppelin‘s ‘Whole Lotta Love’.
Recruiting producers who have worked with BLACKPINK and BTS, Netflix did their homework when devising this omnipresent phenomenon’s irresistible K-pop soundtrack. Soon fictional girl group HUNTR/X achieved the same chart domination and intense fandom IRL that’s portrayed on screen. Sugar-rushes like ‘What It Sounds Like’ (which was influenced by Lorde’s ‘Green Light’) and ‘Soda Pop’ – sung by (literal) demon-twink boyband Saja Boys – were both Velcro-catchy and upped the narrative stakes.
Best needle-drop: The larynx-busting ‘Golden’, the Midas-pop smash in the film, crossed over to achieve the same feat in the real world.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s dizzying epic about stoner revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) topped NME’s 20 Best Films Of 2025 list, and its soundtrack is no slouch either. In his fifth collaboration with Anderson, Johnny Greenwood’s exceptional, eccentric score (which sometimes sounds like a cartoon cat manically running across the keys of a piano) ties the out-there film together, and means a runtime of nearly three hours flies by.
Best needle-drop: Amid an abundance of canny sonic cues from Steely Dan, The Shirelles and The Jackson 5, its climatic use of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ supercharged ‘American Girl’ ends the movie on a note of optimism.
It speaks volumes about the dazzling use of music in Ryan Coogler’s genre-mashing blues horror that a bunch of Riverdancing vampires, led by bloodthirsty Irish folk-favouring Jack O’Connell, isn’t the standout moment. Instead, that accolade goes to Sammie (Miles Caton) and his breathtaking performance of ‘I Lied To You’, about a preacher boy embracing music in defiance of his dad – which is so powerful, it shatters the bonds between space and time, past and future.
Best needle-drop: The one-shot phantasmagorical ‘I Lied to You’ scene summons up the ghosts of Black music past and future, including a ‘70s funk-guitarist, record-scratching DJs, breakdancers and tribal drummers.
When he was cast as Bruce Springsteen, Jeremy Allen White hadn’t even held a guitar. Merely six months later – and with the aid of a 1955 Gibson J-200 gifted to him by Springsteen himself – he was frankly, er, Bossin’ it. The first time we glimpse White’s jaw-dropping transformation in this anti-biopic, he’s in full pomp, cannonballing his way through the chest-beating ‘Born to Run’. It’s undeniable that a movie about the recording of Springsteen’s critically-lionised album ‘Nebraska’ would have a stellar soundtrack.
Best needle-drop: The most affecting is arguably when Springsteen, at a low ebb, and his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) bond over the track ‘The Last Mile Of The Way’ by Sam Cooke & The Soul Stirrers – a result of Strong texting The Boss with the query: “What song would you play if you were trying to save your friend’s life?”
Though it intersperses tracks from Black Sabbath and Depeche Mode (the synth-pioneers are used to help Jared Leto’s AI programme discover his humanity), it’s the pulsating score from Nine Inch Nails that is the true star (nay, saving grace) of this otherwise charmless threequel, easily living up to the retro-futuristic gauntlet laid down by composer Wendy Carlos’ timeless work on the original Tron in 1982 – and following in the robot-steps of Daft Punk’s take on Tron: Legacy more than a decade ago.
Best needle-drop: Just turn the movie’s sound down and listen to the masterful NIN soundtrack album in full – their first LP in five years, featuring four songs with Trent Reznor’s vocals.
Zach Cregger’s modern Grimms’ Fairy Tale begins with a gripping mystery. One night, 17 children in the same class rise from bed at 2.17am, and disappear into the darkness – never to be seen again. Cregger weaves a tantalising trail of breadcrumbs through different characters’ points of view, including a teacher that the town blames (Julia Garner) and a heartbroken father (Josh Brolin) – and the puzzle pieces slowly locking into place is enhanced by a bewitching score overseen by Cregger, alongside composers Ryan and Hays Holladay.
Best needle-drop: The supremely creepy opening narration scene – where the children run out into the night, arms outstretched like airplanes – is chaperoned by a deeply unsettling Pied Piper-like use of George Harrison’s 1970 solo track ‘Beware of Darkness’.
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