For as long as I can remember, orchestral movie scories have just hit different with me. One random Tuesday afternoon, shortly after I started my own business, I was sitting at my computer working through a complex issue for a client. I decided to go looking for a fresh batch of movie scores that I could build a “coding playlist” around. I stumbled on the work of Hans Zimmer (and others) for the “Pirates” movies.
“My Name Is Barbossa” (written by Geoff Zanelli) was the first piece to hit me on my new playlist.
My hands dropped into my lap. I sat back in my chair, and closed my eyes as the swells of music transported me right onto the deck of the “Black Pearl” standing next to Geoffrey Rush’s character whose hat always stays on his head no matter the fierceness of the wind.
Music seems to know that it’s always welcome to take up residence in my brain, rent free, as often as it likes, and music has a way of telling me the truth about what I’ve been sidestepping.
Barbossa’s theme does that for me every single time. So does “Drink Up Me Hearties Yo Ho.” In Barbossa’s theme, he strides into the frame like he owns the horizon, but the music gets there first. I don’t have the right words to describe it. The music carries the whole tragic majesty of his life—salt, shadow, greed, regret, sacrifice—and lays it all at his boots before he opens his mouth. He doesn’t have to explain himself. The score does it for him.
“Drink Up Me Hearties Yo Ho” closes “At World’s End” with Jack Sparrow sitting in a small dingy, his faithful compass pointing first at his rum then the place of the fountain of youth. Then, roll credits. That particular movie is jam-packed with powerful music, but the most incredible of all is relegated to the closing credits. I’ve written about this before. The whole sequence between 3:30 and 4:30 in that track blows my mind. I describe it to my wife as “music that breaks the heart and lifts the spirit.” I literally cried the first time I tried to explain it to her.
Then there’s Maverick—older now, and called on once again to do something impossible. There’s nothing mechanical about the way Captain Pete Mitchell flies. “Don’t think. Just do.” The music rises into something mythical. The instruments don’t highlight a moment; they tell you this is a man finishing a lifetime. A touchdown and a farewell in the same held breath. It’s strange. It’s the kind of music that convinces you that it’s okay to fly and fall apart at the same time.
It’s amazing how music does that! Words can circle something forever and still never get close. A chord hits and suddenly your whole soul remembers a story you didn’t realize you were carrying. I’ve spent months writing about emotions, but a few seconds of Hans Zimmer make all my essays look like they’re just getting started.
I’m not sure why this kind of music gets to me. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been drawn to people who arrive with more presence than volume. The ones who move through a room like their own theme is playing at a frequency only a few people pick up on.
I’ve met people like that. They’re the ones whose advice always comes softly, and whose example I often don’t appreciate until years later. They didn’t have swagger. They didn’t try to sell me their wisdom in pre-packaged courses for the low, low price of… whatever. They just lived in a way that made me rethink my own pace. I never knew what to call that quality until I realized they had their own kind of soundtrack. Not the big, heroic kind. More like a steady undercurrent you only notice when you choose to be quiet enough.
It makes me wonder if part of adulthood is learning to hear themes you used to miss.
I think about the way certain movie cues hit me. My brain remembers the feeling long before it remembers the scene. A piece of music rises and suddenly I’m not the age I am. It’s like I’m every version of myself at once. The kid who wanted to be brave. The teenager who didn’t know how to grieve. The young dad pretending exhaustion wasn’t catching up with him. The man trying not to break under a storm he refused to name.
Music doesn’t care about your timeline. It just tells you the truth.
And maybe that’s why these scores stay with me. They carry the weight I don’t have language for. They let me sit inside moments I’ve outgrown but never resolved. They remind me of who I wanted to be without scolding me for who I became.
Some days, when I don’t know what to feel or how to say it, I put on a soundtrack and let the strings sort it out. Zimmer does more for my emotional life in four minutes than I can do in a week of thinking.
I still don’t fully understand why certain notes undo me. Or why a fictional pirate can make me feel more human than a motivational podcast ever could. Or why the right chord progression makes everything in my chest line up like a flock of birds figuring out where to fly next.
But maybe I don’t need to understand it. Maybe the music knows the weight I’m carrying before I do. Maybe it holds it for me for a minute, long enough for something inside to settle.
For now, that feels like enough.
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