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- #1
- Posted: 09/26/2025 05:48
- Post subject: Why are movie soundtracks rated so low by this site?
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I don’t get it.
While I get more much more people listen to regular made music than movie soundtracks…I still think the works of John Williams like his iconic Star Wars soundtracks should be ranked much much higher than they are and stuff like the Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban soundtrack and The Phantom Menace and Revenge Of The Sith soundtracks shouldn’t be rated and ranked so low.
But, that’s just me.
Last edited by GilderoyLupin on 09/26/2025 22:12; edited 1 time in total
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MadhattanJack
Just to end the list
Gender: Male
- #2
- Posted: 09/26/2025 08:33
- Post subject:
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Just for the sake of convenience, this link should call up the overall chart filtered to show soundtracks only...
In the site's defense, I might point out that the highest-ranked Creed album is My Own Prison at 8,991, while the highest-ranked John Williams soundtrack, the one for the original Star Wars, comes in quite a bit higher at 3,409. As for what the highest-ranked orchestral soundtrack is, that really depends on how you define "orchestral," which is why I included a link to the filtered chart rather than just assume that everyone will agree with me that the Twin Peaks soundtrack (#1,094) is orchestral.
As for why orchestral soundtracks aren't ranked more highly, I guess my answer to that would be that when you're talking about the Top 5,000 or so, those are mostly hit records with high sales numbers often driven by hit singles, and orchestral soundtracks don't produce hit singles. Classical albums in general don't produce hit singles... There are exceptions of course, but I suspect most of it just boils down to that. It won't seem fair to soundtrack fans, but in the modern world nothing is fair, which is why I live in the 17th Century.
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albummaster
Janitor
Gender: Male
Site Admin
- #3
- Posted: 09/26/2025 08:51
- Post subject: Re: Why are movie soundtracks rated so low by this site?
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| GilderoyLupin wrote: | I don’t get it.
While I get more much more people listen to regular made music than movie soundtracks…I still think the works of John Williams like his iconic Star Wars soundtracks should be ranked much much higher than they are and stuff like the Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban soundtrack and The Phantom Menace and Revenge Of The Sith soundtracks shouldn’t be rated and ranked below the likes of stuff like Creed, Britney Spears, Bon Jovi, Nelly Furtado, Nickelback, etc…
But, that’s just me. |
Not sure why people perhaps don't consider them in the same way alongside other albums. There's obviously a distinction between music scores v soundtrack compilations (such as the original Top Gun or Dirty Dancing various artist compilations etc). I personally enjoy soundtracks of both types. The original Star Wars soundtrack is obviously iconic, but there's not an easy answer as to why people wouldn't pick it for a chart. (EDIT: crossed over with MJ)
Some of my own favourites:
Soundtrack From Twin Peaks (1990) by Angelo Badalamenti 
C'Era Una Volta Il West [Once Upon A Time In The West] (1969) by Ennio Morricone 
Blade Runner (1994) by Vangelis 
The Harder They Come (1972) by Various Artists
Last edited by albummaster on 09/26/2025 09:02; edited 1 time in total
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Johnnyo
Gender: Male
Age: 66
Location: London Town 
- #4
- Posted: 09/26/2025 08:54
- Post subject:
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First of all, welcome to the site GilderoyLupin. Hope you enjoy your time here
I think that Madhattanjack makes some valid point.
I'd also ask whether people who haven't seen the film buy the soundtrack album? My gut feeling is that they wouldn't. That might account for part of it as you are reducing the number of people who might realistically own the album.
I have a number of soundtracks in my charts but they aren't generally the "classical" soundtracks that you are highlighting i.e. Star Wars. They are soundtracks like Saturday Night Fever which consist of individual songs touching on Madhattanjacks point about singles
I'm not quite as ancient as Mad as I live in the 18th century!
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Johnnyo
Gender: Male
Age: 66
Location: London Town
- #5
- Posted: 09/26/2025 08:59
- Post subject:
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| MadhattanJack wrote: | | Just for the sake of convenience, this link should call up the overall chart filtered to show soundtracks only... |
Thanks for sharing this. Creates a very interesting chart.
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doombringer
Location: Fehmarn 
- #6
- Posted: 09/26/2025 11:42
- Post subject: Soundttrack Ratings
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Hi Gilderoy
Soundtracks are for Film-Nerds (like me) , We don`t care
about rankings . As long as they are mentioned and included
on this here site , it`s fine with me .
Artists like Morricone ; Williams ; Glass etc .have their own listings here .
Check them out ....
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- #7
- Posted: 09/26/2025 14:18
- Post subject:
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Yeah, I guess I should’ve rephrased my question to “why aren’t my favorite film soundtracks rated higher” on this site, as I see the original Star Wars film and The Empire Strikes Back have good ratings and are ranked in the top of John Williams’ discography (which makes sense as those were the original Star Wars soundtracks for the original movies).
And I guess I should be happy that the soundtracks I mentioned in my above post are even included at all on this site (and that the TPM soundtrack and the original Harry Potter soundtrack both have an average rating of 75 or higher which isn’t at all bad.)
I guess I could start my own Top Albums list and include the soundtracks I want to include if I want to…which I will.
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Johnnyo
Gender: Male
Age: 66
Location: London Town
- #8
- Posted: 09/26/2025 15:16
- Post subject:
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| GilderoyLupin wrote: | | I guess I could start my own Top Albums list and include the soundtracks I want to include if I want to…which I will. |
It’s always fun checking out other’s chart. You should definitely build your own and the more you engage with the site the more points you accrue and at some point you’ll be in a position to create custom charts ie my favourite soundtracks of all time
Looking forward to seeing your chart(s)
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- #9
- Posted: 11/02/2025 19:49
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Many albums are ranked unfairly low on this site, if we're talking soundtracks, why is Streets of Fire so low ?, if we're talking albums, why the hell is American Idiot so unfairly high ? 150 ?! kek, if you go on either aoty.org or RYM and compare the rankings for Green Day discography vs MCR, the difference is abysmal, a single MCR album is worth 2-3 green day ones, 3 cheers is ranked 280 on aoty, and in the top 500 on rym (here isn't even top 1k) with no green day album cracking the top 3000 in either one. Some albums I find particularly unfairly low, are Discovering the Waterfront, if it wasn't for my chart it wouldn't even be in the top 10k !, same with Collide with the Sky, among others. On the positive side, tpab is ""only"" 19th, instead of 1st like aoty/rym, and Dog Man Star is 462, also, both Absolution/Hot Fuss are also ranked (a bit too) highly, so I'd say there are positive and negatives points to BEA chart.
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MadhattanJack
Just to end the list
Gender: Male
- #10
- Posted: 11/02/2025 21:48
- Post subject:
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| Andras wrote: | | Many albums are ranked unfairly low on this site ... if we're talking albums, why the hell is American Idiot so unfairly high ? 150 ?! kek, if you go on either aoty.org or RYM and compare the rankings for Green Day discography vs MCR, the difference is abysmal, a single MCR album is worth 2-3 green day ones, 3 cheers is ranked 280 on aoty, and in the top 500 on rym (here isn't even top 1k) with no green day album cracking the top 3000 in either one. |
Technically this is off-topic, but there are three ways to answer this question, all of which seem valid to me, though maybe not to everyone else.
The first is that the BEA user base is obviously self-selecting, so most of the people doing the rankings are people who are enthusiastic about (if not obsessed with) ranking albums. That tends to favor higher-profile artists, and Green Day is a higher-profile artist than My Chemical Romance.
Second, albums are ranked here based on accumulated point totals, and that favors bands that have greater longevity and prolificness (yes, that's a real word) simply because they've collected more fans over the years. Green Day is still active after 35 years and 15 studio albums, whereas MCR only made four studio albums from 2002-2010. You could definitely argue that the best MCR album is objectively better than the best Green Day album, but here on BEA you'd have to convince a lot of people to act on that contention in order to change their respective rankings — and more of those people are likely to be Green Day fans than MCR fans.
Third, BEA was launched in the Pre-Smartphone, Pre-Internet-Saturation Era, which is to say that for its first 8 years or so the user base was probably overwhelmingly white, male, American, and over 25. That alone shouldn't account for a 4,000-point difference in Rank Scores, but MCR was (for good or ill) often labeled an "emo" band and Green Day wasn't, which could have made MCR seem "uncool" to older men, who then got on the internet, got bored one day, and decided to make a BEA chart.
I'm always interested in questions like this, and I've generally found that it's never just one thing. The reasons are often complex, and when the differences in rank are closer than this, they often come down to things like what decade it was, or what other albums were released in the same year, and so on. Nevertheless, I still have more faith in a rank-based system like BEA's than a rating-based system like RYM's, if only because it forces people to make qualitative decisions that they wouldn't have to make on other sites. It's more work for the users, which (again) feeds into the "self-selection bias," but I actually see that as a good thing - even if it does sometimes result in what appear to be "crazy" or even "dumb" rankings.
Finally, I apologize if the foregoing reads exactly like AI slop. I swear that I wrote it all myself, though of course I can't actually prove it.
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