Studio Ghibli Soundtracks

I love Miyazaki and Ghibli. The films are emotional and personal. A big part of that is due to the perfect interplay of music and story. Now the original soundtracks are available on the iTunes store.1

Here’s my personal rating of the soundtracks (not the movies):

  1. Spirited Away (so many feelings. so many.)
  2. Kiki’s Delivery Service (makes me want to drive a convertible through the hills of Tuscany)
  3. My Neighbor Totoro (this sounds like what playing with my kid feels like)
  4. Arrietty (lots of pop and strings and maybe the most modern sounding of the bunch)
  5. The Cat Returns (a wonderful lightness and magical feel to the entire soundtrack)
  6. Ponyo (fun and evocative and there’s something in my eye)
  7. Castle in the Sky (the genres are all over the place and that’s good)
  8. Porco Rosso (bombastic and fun with a bit of Charlie Brown)
  9. Princess Mononoke (dramatic and dark but fewer decapitations than the film)
  10. Howl’s Moving Castle (like a typical movie score. Nice but not all-tingly nice.)
  11. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (a bit too synth pop video game like for my taste)

This stuff has been pretty hard to find in the past and these soundtracks are great. My kid loves them all so it was a fun surprise for me to start playing the tunes and her to yell out the movie name. Kids are smart.

That Spirited Away soundtrack just about brings a tear to my.

While Beats Audio is missing all of the original soundtracks, there’s one album with a bunch of familiar tunes.

Just imagine how great it would be if Disney sold these through iTunes. That’s crazy thinking.

By way of Tools and Toys and my iTunes landing page.

  1. Affiliate links pay for my motivation. ↩︎