Original score composed by James Horner.
Producers: James Horner, Simon Rhodes, John Mellencamp, Michael Wanchic.
If composer James Horner's highest profile follow-up to his Oscar-winning music for TITANIC proves anything, it's that Horner is now the pre-eminent purveyor of scores for big budget films about ships in peril. The music itself is in Horner's usual accomplished but derivative vein, an eclectic mix of classical influences--echoes of Copland, Prokofiev, Mahler, and Rachmaninov--and film composers from Hollywood's Golden Age, in particular Ernest Gold.
The most interesting new wrinkle here is the occasional addition of rock instrumentation, which gives certain selections a vaguely world-beat feel (apparently in lieu of more specific New England sea shanties). John Cougar, however, seems an odd choice to sing the obligatory closing-title ballad; the song itself is pitched at the low end of his vocal register, and he sounds as vaguely uncomfortable with it as Bob Dylan did with his brief turn on "We Are the World."