Angelo Daniel Badalamenti (March 22, 1937 – December 11, 2022) was an American composer and arranger best known for his work in composing for films. He is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with director David Lynch, notably the scores for Blue Velvet (1986), the Twin Peaks television series, The Straight Story (1999), and Mulholland Drive (2001).
Badalamenti also composed scores for such films as National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), The City of Lost Children (1995), Holy Smoke! (1999), and A Very Long Engagement (2004). He also recorded songs with artists including Julee Cruise (in collaboration with Lynch), Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey, Pet Shop Boys, Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithfull, David Bowie, Tim Booth, Siouxsie Sioux and Dolores O'Riordan.
In 1990, Badalamenti received the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for his "Twin Peaks Theme" at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards. Badalamenti received a lifetime achievement award from the World Soundtrack Awards's Academy in 2008 and the Henry Mancini Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 2011.
Early life
Angelo Daniel Badalamenti was born on March 22, 1937, in Brooklyn, New York, the second of four children born to John and Leonora (née Ferrari) Badalamenti. His father, who was of Sicilian descent from the town of Cinisi, was a fish market owner. He began taking piano lessons at age eight. By the time Badalamenti was a teenager, his aptitude at the piano earned him a summer job accompanying singers at resorts in the Catskill Mountains. His elder brother was a jazz trumpet player who used to improvise with other musicians. He also went to Latin American dance clubs. He attended Lafayette High School, where he wrote the processional march for his high school graduation. After graduating, he enrolled at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, but after two years he transferred to the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1958 and a master's degree in 1959. He began composing music pieces in Kurt Weill's style.
Film and television scoring
Badalamenti scored films such as Gordon's War, and Law and Disorder, but his break came when he was brought in to be Isabella Rossellini's singing coach for the song "Blue Velvet" in David Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet. Badalamenti and Lynch collaborated to write "Mysteries of Love" using lyrics Lynch wrote and Badalamenti's music. Julee Cruise, who went on to work with Lynch and Badalamenti on other projects, performed the vocals for that track. Badalamenti composed the score for the film and served as music supervisor. Lynch's request to the composer was for the score to be "like Shostakovich, be very Russian, but make it the most beautiful thing but make it dark and a little bit scary." Badalamenti appears in Blue Velvet as the piano player in the club where Rossellini's character performs. This film was the first of what would become a career-long collaborative relationship spanning television and film. Badalamenti dubbed their partnership "my second best marriage".
After scoring a variety of mainstream films, including A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Badalamenti once again collaborated with Lynch and scored Lynch's cult television show, Twin Peaks, featuring the vocals of Julee Cruise on the leading song "Falling". Twin Peaks would become the score Badalamenti is perhaps best known for, one that helped define the overall style and mood of the show. The score features different themes patterned after specific characters in the show—"Audrey's Dance", for example, is an "abstract jazzy" theme that plays when Audrey Horne (played by Sherilyn Fenn) is on-screen. Many of the songs from the series were released on Cruise's album Floating into the Night. From the soundtrack of the television series, he was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the "Twin Peaks Theme". it also earned a gold plaque from the RIAA. Between 1991 and 1993, Badalamenti and Lynch collaborated on the project Thought Gang, the results of which were released in 2018.