The Titanic Soundtrack

In terms of movie soundtrack albums, there is one that towers over all of the others. The film score from Titanic is not only one of the best selling movie soundtracks of all time, but is also one of the best selling albums period. Sales of the record are over 30 million units, placing it in the same legendary status as Pink Floyd’s The Wall or Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A albums. In addition to sales figures, the film score was also received well by critics, with the movie soundtrack winning the Academy Award for Best Original Score as well as many other Academy Awards.

The majority of the music for Titanic is mostly the compositional work of the talented James Horner. However, he was not the artist that director James Cameron had envisioned for the project. The initial artist was meant to be Enya, but she declined to be involved with the project. Afterwards, James Horner took the job with trepidation as he and Cameron had previous issues while working together on the movie, Aliens. Of course, the pairing turned into musical gold with the later success of the movie and the album.

As the centerpiece of the film score that earned the Academy Award is a song titled My Heart Will Go On. James Horner worked with Will Jennings to write the song that would appear while the end credits rolled. The vocal was recorded by the pop superstar Celine Dion and her unmistakable voice brought the vision of the song to a new high. For the other songs, a choral background was used, but Horner decided to record a digital choir rather than use human voices. This convergence of typical orchestration and digitized voices resonated with listeners and has helped to make the Titanic album a timeless classic.