Oscar nominations are still a few weeks away, but the Academy has already released the shortlist of nominees for Best Original Score. While some, like Isle of Dogs, Crazy Rich Asians and Black Panther would be wonderful nominees, much of the list is, frankly, garbage.

Film scores are not always something the average film-goer enjoys or even notices, but they are frequently among my favorite things about a movie. So, in lieu of writing my own Top 5 Movies list (can read the site’s picks here), I decided to rank my Top 5 Scores–and one soundtrack–of the year. Get some earphones and let’s get listening.

5. Annihilation

Many of this year’s scores included songs that stretched well past the usual 2 or 3 minutes (James Newton Howard’s soundtrack for Red Sparrow begins with an 11-minute overture and Michael Nyman’s full score for the documentary, McQueen, is essentially a symphony), but Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow’s “The Alien” from the Annihilation score is the most memorable. Director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina follow-up was criminally under-seen, but anyone who saw the film’s trailer is familiar with the song and the score’s best moment.

In the trailer, that moment plays the first time we see the goopy, iridescent walls of “the shimmer.” The five notes (which are actually four notes distorted almost beyond recognition) are clearly not like any normal bit of music we’ve ever heard and they leave the listener unnerved and intrigued. In the film, they play repeatedly over the film’s bizarre, unforgettable climax and while the rest of the score is perhaps less experimental–though no less unnerving–Salisbury and Barrow’s work on “The Alien” alone earns their score a spot on this list.

4. Mission: Impossible — Fallout

There are many reasons I saw Fallout multiple times in theaters, but one of them was so I could hear composer Lorne Balfe’s music as many times as possible in surround-sound. I wasn’t familiar with Balfe before–or had at least never noticed his music–but I looked him up the second the credits rolled.

Balfe’s work in Fallout is often low and foreboding, but it creates a constant sense of unease. Whether it’s the discordant piano scales that play throughout or the ominous choral singers in “A Change of Plan”, every note emphasizes the way Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is quickly losing control of his past and present. Best of all, though, is the way Balfe plays with the classic “Mission: Impossible” theme. The song is typically played at the unique and somewhat difficult to play 5/4 time signature, but Balfe often slows it down, breaking those foreboding, fast-paced rhythms with full-throated horn blasts of the classic theme. The scene where Hunt and Henry Cavill’s August Walker kidnap Sean Harris’s Solomon Lane is thrilling on its own, but the anxiety created by Balfe’s “The Exchange” gives it its tension.

3. Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse

We here at The Pop Break have already given a lot of love to Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse, but I’m going to give it a little more. Composer Daniel Pemberton’s score is, quite simply, one of the cleverest of the year. The film introduces half a dozen different spider-people and Pemberton gives each their own distinct theme. Miles Morales’s is full of epic brass motifs that announce him as a hero for a new audience, but the hints of drum machines and turn table tricks also remind us that he’s youthful and modern. Spider-Ham is all cartoonish slide whistles and Spider-man Noir is mostly dramatic strings.

The best theme by far, though, is for the Kingpin’s henchman, The Prowler. It’s scary and punctuated with a distorted roar sound that strikes at something primal in the same way those 5 notes in Annihilation do. It makes us fear the character just as much as his claws and that jarring music only adds to the shocking reveal of the character’s secret identity.

2. Gemini

If this list were about my favorite score composers of the year, Keegan DeWitt would be #1. Most (if any) will probably know him from the indie, Hearts Beat Loud, for which he wrote the original songs, but the score that made me a fan was for the little-seen neo-noir, Gemini.

Starring Zoë Kravitz as a star who is mysteriously murdered and Lola Kirke as her assistant who goes on the lam when she’s falsely accused of said murder, writer-director Aaron Katz’s film is full of twists and intrigue and DeWitt perfectly sets the mood for every moment. Though he uses a drum machine and a few other electronic flourishes to set the rhythm, the melody is mostly mournful saxophones or repetitive piano riffs. The result is a soundscape that is both effortlessly cool and simmering with anxiety, a perfect reflection of the mystery at the film’s center.

1. If Beale Street Could Talk

Gemini may have been my most listened-to soundtrack of the year, but even from the first trailer, Nicholas Britell’s string-heavy score for If Beale Street Could Talk put me on the edge of tears. While I found the movie somewhat less affecting, the score is strong enough to stand on its own.

Reminiscent of Shigeru Umebayashi’s work in Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love in its undeniable presence throughout the film, Britell’s score conveys all the joy and tragedy of the its doomed lovers. In the string sections of “Eros” or the bonus track, “A Rose in Spanish Harlem”, we hear Fonny (Stephan James) and Tish’s (KiKi Layne) yearning—both from before they’re even a couple and after systemic racism separates them. In the horn sections of “The Children of Our Age” or “Mama Gets to Puerto Rico,” we hear not just the film’s 1970’s setting, but the reminder that while the movie is about a single couple, it’s also about America’s flaws. And in a song like “Agape”, the reeded instruments give us the aural equivalent of Fonny and Tish’s innocence and the purity of their love—the things which make what happens to them so utterly devastating.

Simply put, Britell’s work for If Beale Street Could Talk is crushingly beautiful. It’s a timeless score that will probably win Britell an Oscar—unless he wins for Vice, which would be frustrating.

The Soundtrack: Bad Times at the El Royale

Though there were a number of films this year where music played an integral part in the plot (listening to the soundtrack for Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War basically tells you the whole story without a word of dialogue) the best is writer-director Drew Goddard’s neo-noir, Bad Times at the El Royale. Unfortunately, though the film is built around the late-‘60s pop music that plays in every scene, the most striking parts of its soundtrack are unavailable outside of the movie.

Though Broadway star Cynthia Erivo’s renditions of “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)” and “Hold On I’m Coming” are available on the film’s official soundtrack, they have added orchestration the film’s versions lack. Why that decision was made is anyone’s guess, but what made those performances (and the parts of the first song heard in the trailer) so striking is the power in Erivo’s accompanied voice. Thankfully, the movie is so good that I have no problem watching it over and over just to hear them.