The arrival of The Odyssey heralded a sea change not just in the world of Academy Awards predictors, but for Grammy-spotters as well. Christopher Nolan‘s go-to composer Ludwig Göransson is a three-time winner in the Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media category, including a victory for his last collaboration with the director, 2023’s Best Picture-winning Oppenheimer.
With Göransson’s recent win for Sinners only a few months in the rearview, another Grammy statuette in this category would make him a back-to-back category champ and put him into some exclusive company. To date, only four other composers have won Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media two years in a row. The most recent repeat winner was Hildur Guðnadóttir, who took home Grammys in 2020 and 2021 for scoring Chernobyl and Joker, respectively.
Hildur Guðnadóttir at the 2020 Grammy ceremony
Before Guðnadóttir, almost 20 years had passed since previous occurrence of back-to-back wins. In fact, Howard Shore’s trio of Grammys in the early 2000s for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies were a three-peat. The composer won the category for The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King — despite only winning Oscars for the first and third entries.
A decade before that, Alan Menken took home two Grammys for his work during the height of the Disney renaissance. Both Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin were the winners for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media in their respective years. But that achievement still pales in comparison to the man who first pulled off the repeat.
Steven Spielberg and John Williams at a 2106 AFI Tribute to the composer
From 1978 to 1983, John Williams was the only person to win in the category. The composer behind some of cinema’s most iconic themes won the award six years in a row — a run that included Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman: The Movie, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
So even with six Grammys, three Oscars, and two Emmy Awards, there are still some mountains to climb for Göransson on his way to awards glory. Here’s hoping there are more Grammys, and no Cyclopses, waiting for him at the top.