The Oscars are always going to be frustrating for film music addicts like myself, as they are with all film lovers. Sometimes the best scores of any given year truly do win (or at least get nominated), but even when that happens—which is kind of rare—many extremely qualified scores are inevitably left out in the rain.

I’m a big fan of all five composers nominated this year—John Williams, Alexandre Desplat, Carter Burwell, Jonny Greenwood, and Hans Zimmer—even if I don’t think the respective scores find them at their highest level or that these were necessarily the best five film scores of the year. So, in the same vein as a recent video I made for the L.A. Times on some of the all-time great scores that weren’t even nominated for an Oscar, I present to you (some of) the best unrecognized film scores of 2017, with comments from each of the composers.