Danny Elfman
- This topic has 43 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 23 hours, 47 minutes ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Elfman was my second favourite film composer for almost 3 decades (after John Williams). I became a completist. But over the last 10 years, he’s fallen a bit. Now he’s just outside my top 10. But yet, I’m still a completist. Once you start down that road, it’s hard to just stop. So that’s a weird paradox right there.
Top 5:
1. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
2. The Nightmare Before Christmas
3. Midnight Run
4. Wisdom
5. Black BeautyAt a certain point I lost track of what he did. I never was a super fan.
Micht have to do with the fact, that I also was struggling with Tim Burton’s style in his movies. I never really like his kind of kitsch, that was disguised as some kind of quirk, but in the end it was just kitsch.
Yes, I liked Elfman’s Edward score and Beetlejuice a bit. Batman Returns and Nichtmare Before Christmas I enjoyed for some time. And very much so Sleepy Hollow. And there was a time, when I listened to his Mission Impossible score a lot. Then my attention was caught again by his Spiderman score.However, what really enflamed me for Elfman’s music was his violin concerto Eleven Eleven. To date I rather like his concert works. Serenada Schizophrana, the ballet Rabbit and Rogue or his percussion concerto. From there I again payed more attention to some of his filmwork and found treasures like Terminator Salvation, Red Dragon and Alice in Wonderland. But there is a very lot that I don’t care for. Sometimes I am even annoyed by his style. It comes and goes.
But I can almost always enjoy his concert work.I am also no super fan but like quite a lot by him. I have no real order but EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMANS (also love the movie), MIDNIGHT RUN and BEETLEJUICE are on the list. And a bunch of his TV themes like SIMPSONS, THE FLASH and TALES FROM THE CRYPT maybe. Probably also BATMAN as I think that was the score I got aware of him.
His newer output in scores often leaves me rather cold. But the concert I know so far works are indeed great.
I like quite a bit of Danny Elfman’s music; I first took notice of him in the 1980s. He had done the theme for the funny TV series SLEDGEHAMMER, and then of course came the two punch when he scored Tim Burton’s huge hit BATMAN and the theme for the still running THE SIMPSONS.
My favorite Danny Elfman scores? Hmmm… off the top of my head:EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990)
Just a beautiful score… love it from start to finish.ALICE IN WONDERLAND & ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (2010/2016)
Danny Elfman meets Philip Glass with chorus.PLANET OF THE APES (2001)
I didn’t care for the movie, but wow, what a score. At the time I said it sounded like the Vienna Philharmonic took acid and started banging and clanging on anything that made noise. Forget “heavy metal”, this is much more in your stomach.FIFTY SHADES OF GREY/DARKER/FREED (2015-2018)
These scores for the silly “pseudo-BDSM” love story show a different side of Elfman. While the movies are of course high-concept fan-fiction nonsense, the music is elegant and has class, and goes well around the selection of classical pieces and pop songs also used in the movie.DOLORES CLAIBORNE (1995)
Elfman provides a restrained and brooding score for one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever.Bonus mention:
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993)
Of course, it’s a film score, but basically it’s a musical, so I mention it apart from this others. But yes, I love it. Great, fun songs, lots of good music. And the album with Patrick Stewart’s narration is just perfect.I mentioned only film scores, I put his concert works aside for now and did not include them in consideration.
Planet of the Apes and Terminator Salvation are great examples of Elfman adapting a old quite bulky scores and making them his own in a good accessible way.
And then there are scores like “Men In Black”, “The Frighteners” or “Hellboy and the Golden Army” which have that typical Elfman quirk and bore me after 10 to 15 minutes.
With Elfman I really have an up-and-down relationship. At times I am a little annoyed by his music.
But still I think, he would have been a perfect match as composer for one of the Harry Potter movies. Williams’ Double Trouble from HP 3 already sounded like a leftover track from A Nightmare Before Christmas. His Sleepy Hollow style would fit very well into tha Wizzard world. Never understood why he wasn’t offered that.
As an Elfman collector, it’s a bit frustrating that so many of his recent scores have had no physical release. I mean, it’s good for my (empty) wallet, but it creates holes in my OCD-like completism. I count these as not having any physical release:
DOLITTLE
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
WHITE NOISE
WEDNESDAY
65Also waiting for whatever happens to BLOODY BRIDGET and DRACULA.
And then some that only have vinyl releases, DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, DARK UNIVERSE, BULLET TIME. Or am I missing something?
Well, CDs niche within the niche for some time 😉 And not to speak of the prices… As long as thing are not streaming only and I at least can get a (lossless) download I am fine. But downloads are already a similar niche like CDs salewise…
Yes. At least the teenagers I know don’t know artists or albums. They just now playlists. And they chose them by subject, title or recommendation.
But you know what I miss most from the old times? The B sides.
When know a favourite artist of mine releases a single it’s just that song. But the single always was for the radio and the public. The B sides were the goody for the fans.
But the B side vanished from the business somehow.
And I get it. Why make a B side if noone buys singles?Yes. At least the teenagers I know don’t know artists or albums. They just now playlists. And they chose them by subject, title or recommendation.
Me too. But “collectors” were always in the minority. Many were just content with the radio and the random playlist is just the equivalent (even better probably as no annoying moderator ;-))
And I get it. Why make a B side if noone buys singles?
Probably becasue there were no “sides” even with CD singles anymore 😉 I also remember those maxi singles with extended or different versions. Now they just release the track on streaming and as a video on youtube.
Well, CDs niche within the niche for some time 😉 And not to speak of the prices… As long as thing are not streaming only and I at least can get a (lossless) download I am fine. But downloads are already a similar niche like CDs salewise…
Even more niche. Digital Downloads are the smallest niche when it comes to owning music.
And I can see why. To get the most out of it, you need more hardware set-up than either CD or “out of the box” streaming. You don’t get anything “physical” either, so digital downloads are super niche. I still like them, but I guess few people nowadays bother, certainly no casual listeners.Yes, I know. For the fun of it I have looked up the German market values of 2024:
- 84.1% Digital
- 78.1% Streaming
- 1.6% Downloads
- 4.4% Other like ring tones, video streaming
- 15.9% Physical
- 8.7% CDs
- 6.4% LPs
- 0.4% physical various
- 0.4% Music bluray/dvd
I still like them, but I guess few people nowadays bother, certainly no casual listeners.
Well, most are just “radio type listeners” that don’t care that much and just listen. I even know people that rarely listen to music over the day (of course on work you probably can’t generally) but even otherwise.
And of course we especially were within a super niche when I stared to dive in end of 80s/early 90s and we actually still are 😉
Since Spotify now also features lossless it may be another nail to the coffin of CDs and downloads… (We maybe should have our own topic about physical vs digital media instead of hijjacking topics ;-))
Well, it would just repeat bits and pieces, perhaps some replies could be moved. But I might open a topic sometime, too 😉
Elfman has been contributing to the latest album by rapper A$AP Rocky. I have no connection to A$SAP Rocky, rap or hip hop (other than some of those early 80s pioneers, like Grandmaster Flash and Sugar Hill Gang), but that was a neat hook-up. He participated in their music videos, and also appeared with them, on drums, in the SNL performance a few days ago. Hard to believe Elfman is 72 years old!
I am not a hip hop/rap fan but after hating it in the 80s/90s I come to accept and like some forms of it – result via some German acts I admit – as the range is quite wide.
Hard to believe Elfman is 72 years old!
Indeed, but as with all artists doing what you love keeps fresh apparently. See Williams being over 20 years older, even if the age sadly nowdays peaks a little more…
John Williams looks like he’s at death’s door these days, sorry to say (I just saw the pictures from last night’s Boston concert), but 93 is a lot more than 72. One ages rapidly in those 20 years. But I have a feeling Elfman can keep chugging for a long time. He has a very Iggy Pop thing going on! My dad is 75, he looks nowhere near this.
Yes, Williams sadly looks very fragile on those photos.
But the Elfman comparison with Iggy Pop is fitting 😉
It’s strange, because Elfman HAS written a rather large amount of scores that don’t really do anything for me, but he’s still my second favourite film composer after Williams. It might be that I identify with him as an angsty weird nerd with a lot of self-doubt and a very interesting journey from theatre musician, drummer, pop/rock musician and performer, into film composer and later a more classical composer. And his work that speak to me, REALLY speak to me in a big way. He’s just done so much different stuff.
I like his more mature 2000s period where he was sort of leaving behind the early Kurt Weill ompa-ompa style and taking a huge left turn, becoming more heavily influenced by the Philip Glass style of patterns and ostinatos in strings and melodic percussion. BIG FISH is a huge favourite, with some really beautiful main themes in strings and woodwinds, mixed with folky guitar patterns and fiddle. Just amazing. I also absolutely love THE UNKNOWN KNOWN and STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, and also PROMISED LAND and RESTLESS. It’s interesting how he really is a completely different composer if he works for Burton, Morris or Van Zandt. Having said that, I also love a lot of his Burton stuff, NIGHTMARE is an absolute masterpiece from beginning to end. And PLANET OF THE APES is a really bold score with its brutal col legno string-slapping, tribal percussion fest and distorted synth bass trip! All of these very different scores have inspired my own work at some point.
Indeed, Eirik, your taste within the Elfman canon pretty much mirrors mine. Prefer the more alternative, downkey, “shimmering” indie scores in the last two decades, not that enthused with the noisy blockbuster stuff. My love of old-school Elfman still persists (meaning 80s up to the mid 90s), but I have to admit I’ve also outgrown it a little bit. So weirdly, even though I’m still a completist of his work (once you’ve started, it’s difficult to stop), Elfman has fallen JUST outside my top 10, after having had a secure second spot for decades.
I think I actively discovered him with BATMAN. I don’t really have top 10 but he does not get past Williams or Goldsmith for me. But he is high in rank as he is so versatile. I also love NIGHTMARE which is my favorite score for “two seasons” 😉
I saw SEND HELP today, at a press screening – the new Sam Raimi film with an Elfman score. It was a decent film (CAST AWAY meets LORD OF THE FLIES meets THE WAR OF THE ROSES) with some old-school Raimi “gore” touches, but also problematic in some ways (there is no sympathetic character, no “centre”). While I didn’t care much for Elfman’s suspense and action music here, there were some really cool bits, like wordless female vocal, ethnic percussion and the kind of lowkey music he mostly does for indie films, which is what we talked about earlier. I’m very curious to hear how it holds up on album.
Listening to the album now. It isn’t quite as interesting as I remembered it from the film. What I DO like about it is that it’s “leaner” in sound than many of his noisy blockbuster fests in recent years. But relatively meager on themes (except that lovely opening vocalise), mostly just classic Elfman suspense or horror chords rummaging around. A bit like THE FRIGHTENERS, perhaps.
The latest Elfman film score that I really, really liked remains THE CIRCLE, and that’s almost 10 years ago now. Thankfully, there have been some good concert works in the period.
Elfman’s score for the new Gus van Sant film, DEAD MAN’S WIRE, has been put up on the composer’s own site at https://www.dannyelfman.com/.
Not terribly exciting. Minimal instruments, no themes. Lots of percussion, some piano, some strings, HARP, a contrabass.Some of it sounds like an unplugged version of DEAD PRESIDENTS, although not on that level, of course. But still, better than some of those bombastic affairs he’s done in recent years.
I wonder if this means it will get no soundtrack release, neither digital nor physical. Now that he’s put it up on his own site, I mean.
Could be temporarily until there is one. Didn’t get all recent works at least a digital release? Btw, I find his siterather annoying as you cannot even link to any section or individual page… This “Enter” Intro page is something you actually don’t do anymore for years anymore… It’s not flash but behaves exactly like those annoying sites back then…
Seems he is this year again featured on some rock festival as he posted on social media.
Yeah, it’s a rather annoying site. A blast from the past, when there were all those fancy flash thingies. But leave it to him to be unusual. 🙂
Often I think, to be a true Danny Elfman fan you already must have been an Oingo Boingo fan.
If you were coming to him from a John Williams filmscore angle you might be struggling with him again and again.
Sometimes I excitedly love his work and sometimes I find his music either tiringly trivial or or annoyingly blase.
- 84.1% Digital
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.