Best Original Music of the 2010s
Not currently in any order. Adding more as I think of them.
List items
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Singer-Songwriter Jim Guthrie composed the music for this game, and his roots as a likable bedroom-pop composer run deep through Superbrothers. He was a perfect fit for this ridiculous yet oddly beautiful game.
Despite the fact that the soundtrack loosely attempts to create and subvert Zelda/adventure game tropes, each singular composition ends up being much more than the sum of its parts. Like his early albums, Guthrie's score feels simultaneously tiny and extravagant, full of little details that culminate in something equally idiosyncratic and moving.
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If any soundtrack sticks out to me as an immediate choice for soundtrack of the decade, it's Undertale. Toby Fox's score is, at first, a cute, nostalgic reminder of Old Games aesthetics and a friendlier time in internet discourse.
However, just like Undertale itself, the score lays the ground work for complex, emotionally impactful motifs that slowly drill into the listener's mind over the course of the game so that when they return later they have a tremendous emotional impact.
If nothing else, Undertale's soundtrack is an excellent example of music perfectly complimenting the aesthetics and thematic values of the work its married to. If there was one soundtrack on this list I would suggest is overplayed its probably this one, but it's beloved for a reason.
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Lifeformed's Dustforce soundtrack veers into 'is this music actually in sync with the game or is it just a killer album' territory, which is to say, Lifeformed's soundtrack is a great listen. Composed primarily of minimalist lo-fi pop, it's a blippy, eminently listenable score.
What elevates it is an undercurrent of melancholy. While Dustforce (the game) is about four, uh, coworkers (friends?) cleaning up the world's detritus together, Dustforce (the soundtrack) often feels lonely.
Few game soundtracks make such good walking music, though. Definitely worth a listen, even to people who haven't played the game.
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Put simply, Donut County is one of the most listenable game soundtracks of all time. Its mathematically perfect balance between humor and 'chill beats to study to' style are unbeatable. You're in a instrumental trip-hop chill-zone one second and banging your head to the Quack Anthem the next.
Like the game, the soundtrack's eclecticism and occasional forays into gloom are reflective of the time in which it was made. Absurdism is a perfectly reasonable response to the world as it is. Besides being a game about gentrification, Donut County and its stellar soundtrack capture the mood of a generation.
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Deadly Premonition is one of my all-time favorite cult classics in any medium, and that's due in no small part to its soundtrack. It's heavily reverential of Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks score, sure, but it's also way more willing to go for the fences with its absurd central themes and completely inexplicable shifts in tone.
However, folks who dismiss Deadly Premonition as a kind of video game version of The Room are in the wrong. There's a coherent central vision to the entire project, and the game calls for an outlandish, sometimes anachronistic score. If nothing else, in an era of pop musician composed scores and same-y AAA orchestras, Deadly Premonition was one of the most memorable soundtracks of the decade.
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The score for this Scott Pilgrim movie tie-in is 100% dependent on whether or not you think Anamanaguchi is a good band. I happen to think so, and this soundtrack (the first full soundtrack the chiptune band ever produced) has some of their best work.
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Red Dead Redemption was a turning point for Rockstar. There are plenty of valid criticisms to lob at RDR's narrative (oh, Irish), but presentationally there are few other games from the early 2010s that hold up as well as this game does.
Bill Elm and Woody Jackson's soundtrack is a dizzying mix of '70s guitar fuzz and splashy, kinetic percussion. It's got one of the greatest central themes of the decade - it's so iconic I actually let out a small gasped when it returned in RDR 2 eight years later. The ambient songs, which dive deep into Spaghetti Western tropes, are an equally satisfying listen. The soundtrack itself (arguably even moreso than the game) is tonally a perfect balance of Rockstar's somewhat chaotic shifts in focus between freeform video game chaos and measured, character-driven drama.
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No list of notable video game soundtracks of the 2010s would be complete without Super Meat Boy. Although the original soundtrack has since been replaced by something else, Danny Baranowsky's original music was the first time I can remember people suggesting that a game's score was a good reason to give a game a shot.
Like many soundtracks that would come after it, the Super Meat Boy soundtrack is heavily referential of older, more classic video game songwriting, but with a somewhat harsh contemporary edge. If a classic video game soundtrack could sound like garage rock but still be classic video game music, then it would be the Super Meat Boy soundtrack. Or, it is the Super Meat Boy soundtrack. You get it.
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If Super Meat Boy is the garage rock of classic video game music, then Jasper Byrne's Lone Survivor score is the indie rock of classic video game music. Besides the fact that the Lone Survivor soundtrack does occasionally dip into actual, full-on indie rock, it's also got a real DIY approach to recreating the effects of its Silent Hill and Twin Peaks inspirations.
It's a soundtrack with variety, too, and it breaths a lot of life into the game. Byrne would go on to compose music for the Hotline Miami games and has even begun a career as an electronic musician. Somehow, though, Lone Survivor still feels like his most personal work.
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Andrew and Simon Hale's L.A. Noire score is moody, genuinely involving and distinct from virtually every other item on this list. What other developer/publisher would spend this much time and money on a full-ass '40s jazz noir album as Rockstar?
L.A. Noire's score may be built on the foundation of just two or three central themes, but listening apart from the game it works as an album. L.A. Noire's compositions aren't particularly complex, but they're a perfect tone-piece for the game's seedy, police procedural world. The 2010s were obsessed with fast-paced '80s nostalgia, making L.A. Noire's jazz slowdown a refreshing change of pace.
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You can't talk about video game music in the 2010s without acknowledging Hotline Miami. While probably better remembered for their soundtracks than their original music, the Hotline Miami scores are phenomenal nonetheless.
If one's criteria for ranking music is 'styyyyle' than there is no better choice than the Hotline Miami soundtrack. The influence of the film Drive on Hotline Miami in general is obvious (and stated directly in the game's credits), but Hotline Miami is more horror film than a realistic subversion of the patriarchal '80s action hero.
As such, its score is harsher, louder, and more off putting than the film that spawned it. Drive is a minimalist film; Hotline Miami is a maximalist video game. It's an overwhelming listen. It's also *really* good gym music, incidentally.
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Although I preferred the aimless, freeform quality of prior Animal Crossing games, I don't think any Animal Crossing score is as perfect an execution of the series' woodsy, peaceful video game vacation jams as New Leaf. They're the kind of tracks that sit at the forefront of your mind while playing, but don't ever really distract or overstay their welcome.
The instrumentation to the Animal Crossing games has always been interesting to me. I can't think of another franchise that so frequently makes use of the accordion. And then there are the K.K. Slider tracks, which, unlike every other medium in history, do not try to disguise the fact that they are using a midi keyboard to generate guitar tones, but actually seem to *celebrate* the tinny, unreal nature of midi. Excellent, all around.
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Of all the scores on this list, Ape Out's music is easily the most impossible to listen to out of context, but discluding it from the list would be a mistake.
Ape Out isn't interesting exclusively because it uses an A.I. program to procedurally generate a percussive '70s jazz extravaganza tailor-made to your experience in each level - it's made interesting because it does it *so well.* Ape Out is such a magnificent explosion of loud stylishness that it would be totally possible to play the game and assume it's score was handcrafted so perfectly that it was being played live in front of you that very moment.
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Life Is Strange is ostensibly about vulnerable people being put in awful situations. Jonathan Moralis' score reflects the fragility of Life Is Strange's story. Unlike a lot of video game scores, Life Is Strange's music is there to make you feel something other than despair, wonder or empowerment; like the game, it seeks to explore nostalgia, a familiarity with its setting, a sense of discomfort and the tenderness of putting yourself out there.
There are a few central themes for settings in Life Is Strange that are rewritten for each episode depending on the new context they appear within. By the end of the game, you've been so accustomed to Blackwell and its inhabitants that once the score kicks in yet again, you really start to feel like you know the place.
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Utilizing the glistening, glitchy electronica of Hudson Mohawke to underline Watch Dogs 2's sense of youthful rebellion and high tech escapism was a genius choice. Mohawke doesn't go for strong central themes or memorable riffs, necessarily, but instead for thumping percussion and larger-than-life walls of synth. It's an excellent example of a score working wonders that you might not even consciously notice is there.
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Doom's soundtrack is quite literally just some high impact melodic death metal mixed with some heavy synth ambiance. Like the Wolfenstein reboot, Doom goes all out, but unlike Wolfenstein, it barely at all tries to sound like its cinematic. It's just a barrage of wide-scale, instrumental metal. I don't even necessarily like metal, but you gotta respect the mask-off nature of a choice like that.
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Outer Wilds' score is the perfect combo of woodsy campfire tunes and sci-fi synths. It can be alternately melancholic and thrilling, but it most always has the undercurrent of wonder. Of course, there's also the bittersweet nostalgia at the heart of it all. Probably one of the best scores of all time.
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Like the game itself, Cuphead's score could've genuinely coasted on its old schhol cartoon aesthetic but instead managed to fashion an identity all its own within its referential framework. Kristofer Maddigan's big band score has the quality of a locomotive about to fly off the rails. It's also got great, catchy hooks, and can easily be listened to on its own as a concept album.
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NieR's world is an absurdist spectacle, its world of robots replicating human behavior and theology with so little nuance that it approaches parody - NieR's score, however, is a soaring, empathetic, extravagant send-up of what humanity left behind. It's key, in fact, to understanding the emotional realities of its otherwise stone-faced cast of murder machines.
On top of all that, its a gloriously weird mix of Gregorian chants, synthetic dissonance, war drums and operatic vocals. Like NieR itself, the score comes with the baggage of some over-serious anime-ish direction, but the score is so vivid and eloquent that it's easy to look past, even for an anime hater like myself.
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Tetris Effect is an impossible success - there's no reason why Tetris Effect should be moving, or revelatory, or a visual masterpiece, and yet it is. Same goes for the score, which is full of soaring contemporary pop anthems, experimental noise compositions, gorgeous string arrangements and at least one rap track. The soundtrack includes a collection of infectious, joyous, undeniable songs that grab you by the shoulders and insist - no matter how ridiculous it sounds on paper - that this Tetris game is about to change your life.
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