Is John Williams the GOAT?

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With strains of John Williams' music once again animating and inspiring the summer blockbuster season — as heard in Jurassic World Rebirth, the new Superman film, and, soon, a 50th anniversary theatrical release of Jaws — we consider whether he's the greatest film composer of all time.

Note: This is an extended version of a conversation from Weekend All Things Considered, with host Scott Detrow, All Things Considered producer Marc Rivers and All Songs Considered's Robin Hilton.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you heard people saying things like palm-colored people?
0:03.7	That would be white people.
0:05.4	Or unalive.
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0:19.2	That's on Code Switch from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:24.0	It's all songs considered.
0:25.6	I'm Robin Hilton.
0:26.9	Summer Blockbuster season is well underway.
0:29.5	We've got a lot of big movies out right now.
0:31.8	There's Jurassic World Rebirth.
0:34.1	There's a new Superman movie.
0:35.9	Even got a 50th anniversary version of Jaws that's coming to
0:39.5	theaters. That's that's coming out in August. And you can't really think of these movies without
0:44.9	thinking about John Williams and all of the amazing music that he has done over the years for these
0:50.9	big film franchises and of course for so much more. And given how big he is and how
0:56.7	present his music is and how important it is to so many people, we started asking a question that
1:03.0	maybe a lot of music geeks have asked, and that is whether or not John Williams is the greatest
1:08.8	film composer of all time. So Weekend All Things Considered host
1:13.6	Scott Detrow asked me to join him and producer Mark Rivers to talk about it. This is an
1:19.6	extended version of our conversation. You could call it a director's cut of what originally
1:25.9	aired on Weekend All Things Considered.
	...

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