Creativity Quote by Jonny Greenwood

Greenwood is doing two things at once here: canon-making and confession. By anointing an unreleased soundtrack as his favorite, he elevates a piece of music that lives in the margins of official culture. Not the pristine, algorithm-approved “best film scores” list, but a ghost object you have to chase. That’s the tell. His admiration isn’t just for the notes; it’s for the scarcity, the sense that great music can exist half-hidden, attached to images, never granted the dignity of a standalone album.

The line about “having to go and get the film and just make a recording” is punk in the quiet, an act of fandom that borders on theft but reads more like devotion. It’s also a snapshot of a pre-streaming mindset: if you want something, you don’t summon it, you hunt it. Greenwood frames himself less as a famous composer and more as a determined listener, willing to do unglamorous work for a sound that mattered to him.

The subtext is an argument about where musical influence really comes from. Not always from the officially preserved masterpieces, but from incidental scores, imperfect transfers, the stuff that seeps into your brain because you had to fight for it. Coming from a musician known for meticulous, high-art polish, the admission lands as a useful contradiction: the most refined sensibilities are often built on bootlegs, obsessions, and private archives.