The Bounty score by Vangelis

In time for this second entry in a series about some songs I sometimes listen to, I have discovered I can perhaps do an embedding thing for Spotify tracks on WordPress. Seems fancy, I guess we’ll see if it actually works:

For those of you who don’t Spotify, you can also listen to this soundtrack on YouTube.
I actually prefer the YouTube experience on this one – apparently the reason why it’s hard to find the full score on Spotify is simple – there is no official release for the score.

This is the score for 1984’s film The Bounty, a film about the famous mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty in 1789. It could be argued this story has been a best seller ever since Captain Bligh’s publication of his journal a few years later. Who was “right” in their actions leading up to and during the mutiny is still being debated. (After reading a book about the mutiny maybe two decades ago, I fear I might be team Bligh. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which book it was. But it made a strong argument that Bligh was confusingly progressive for his time, which the crew largely failed to understand or appreciate, and an incontestably magnificent navigator, although he does also seem to have been cursed with a temper, a sometimes inappropriate stubbornness, and a scabrous tongue. Dude could not shut up to save his life.)

There have been five major film productions retelling and depicting the historic mutiny. I’ve seen this 1984 film a couple of times now, the latest time about two years ago. The last time I watched it, I couldn’t decide if it was a 3 star or a 3.5 stars out of five film for me – there’s something about it that just… misses somehow. Perhaps it’s due to over-length, I find most films don’t need to be over two hours, and this one is about two hours and ten minutes. And yet this is a very good looking film, and it has sailing ships, and I find it’s hard to say no to a film with sailing ships.

The score is troubling. I remember after rewatching this film the last time, thinking “gosh, that’s an annoying score.” And yet… it haunts you. It keeps coming back up from your mind. And it was the first “movie music” I searched out when I was setting up my Spotify playlist.

After adding this music, composed by Vangelis, to my Spotify list, the algorithm started sending me many more Vangelis scores – he was very prolific as a film composer, and responsible for the score to Bladerunner, for a famous example, and I didn’t mind hearing these songs, particularly, for awhile, although I haven’t kept any of the others on my list.
The algorithm also eventually took my interest in film music, willingness to listen to synthesizers, and interest in learning German and sent me a track that kinda kicked me in the belly one day.

Perhaps that’s the next one we’ll talk about.
Or maybe I’ll talk about sandstorms instead. Stay tuned!
Or not. Your choice. No need to mutiny over it.