Conan the Barbarian has one of the most amazing soundtracks. I was disappointed NOT to see it on this list of 100 Best Movie Soundtracks.
When I looked into it deeper, I found Conan on a a list of The 101 Great Film Score Milestones. This is an excerpt from the description, you can see the whole list here.
It was compiled by John Caps, in the November-December 2003 issue of Film Comment magazine in an article titled “Soundtracks 101 – Essential Movie Music: A Listener’s Guide.” The list was created to mark the 70th anniversary of the film score in 2003. The article also provided a brief history of film music in the introduction, and further details on each of the choices.
Predictably, one-fourth of the list was taken by the six giants of the Golden Age (Steiner, Waxman, Korngold, Newman, Rozsa, Herrmann). Yet the author also recognized some of the great, but seemingly forgotten, figures of the recent past: Laurence Rosenthal, Richard Rodney Bennett, Dave Grusin, David Shire, and Basil Poledouris.
OK, I feel better now.
Absolutely! This soundtrack was never given the respect it deserved because it was from an Arnold movie. I really think it set the standard for all fantasy film music that came after.