[Nick Zwar]

Yes, that’s true of course. Whereas classical music albums always (even in LP days) came with extended liner notes, the original soundtrack album releases usually didn’t have any. But that is because for the most part, especially in the 1970s to the 2000s, the “Original Soundtrack Album” was a promotional tie-in product. There is no room for a (critical) assessment, overview, and background information about the music or scoring process. That was not the audience these albums were made of. That’s like the “making of” featurettes on current movie releases often feature little more than a few actors telling each other how great working together was. It becomes more interesting when older movies get remastered releases, when you find sometimes very interesting features, background stories, etc. (With THE HEART OF DARKNESS documentary being almost as interesting as the movie APOCALYPSE NOW itself.)
So on those older soundtrack albums, you may get a nice note from the director (if you’re lucky), or nothing but a few stills and album credits. They were more produced like “pop” albums, where you usually only get a few stills of the artist and credits (and if you’re lucky, the lyrics of the songs, always liked that), more isn’t needed.
Though it’s been a while that I bought a soundtrack CD of a then more or less concurrent movie release… not sure… maybe INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY was the last one.