Today, John Powell is best known as the musical maestro of the biggest animated hits of the last decade, including his epic masterpiece, How to Train Your Dragon. He’s also famous for creating the most groundbreaking and imitated thriller scores of the last 20 years for the Bourne movie franchise. However, before he was one of the top composers in the business, Powell got his start with a range of gigs, just like any working composer.

Nobody will confuse his score for the (rather unjustly) forgotten 1999 romantic comedy Forces of Nature with being one of Powell’s seminal works. That said, it’s a lovely, cheerful, unexpected early work from the composer.

Forces of Nature is the delightfully quirky tale of buttoned-down Ben (Ben Affleck), a writer so out of touch with himself that he’s only capable of writing blurbs for other novelists. On the way to his wedding, his flight encounters mechanical trouble, and he finds himself stuck at Washington Dulles Airport.

Ben and fellow stranded passenger Sarah (Sandra Bullock – the definition of a manic pixie dream girl here) decide to team up to get to Savannah by whatever method possible – train, car, bus. Along the way, they have adventures and misadventures and discover a spark between them, causing Ben to question his plans to get married.

However, if you’re expecting it to play out like any of a thousand other romcoms, don’t be so quick to judge. The film is keenly aware of cliches and plays intelligently with our expectations. It’s also beautifully directed, with unusual visual flair for a romcom, by the gifted Bronwen Hughes.

This was only Powell’s fifth credited feature film score. While he had an extensive career in jingle-writing behind him, he was still finding his voice as a film composer, as he freely acknowledges in the extensive liner notes to the new release from La-La Land Records.

At the time, in the late 1990s, romantic comedy scores were usually lush, thematic works, quite often by the brilliant James Newton Howard. Director Hughes was clear that she did not want a conventional melodic orchestral romantic comedy score for Forces of Nature; she wanted something different.

Hughes told Powell she wanted him to write something that would “sound less like film score and more like the music I listen to.” Powell recalls her referencing Björk and The Propellerheads in their meetings and that Hughes had already temp-tracked the film extensively with existing pop songs, or “needle drops.”

As Powell puts it, “she would have quite happily done it all with needle drops… she was looking for somebody that could create bits of score that sounded more like needle drops, but fitted more appropriately than what she could find, and maybe give a consistent tone to elements of the story”

Instead of a score that would exist as a full, self-contained symphonic musical work, filled with leitmotifs for characters and plot elements, Hughes wanted specific score cues that would unify the pop songs and fill in certain emotional beats.

As Powell puts it, “you’re not trying to be epic, you’re in the cracks of emotions.” He describes this as an exceedingly difficult task, which resulted in reams of music being written for the film that went unused, and which he repurposed in later scores.

“Can Anything Else Go Wrong?” – John Powell

As a result, this is an exceptionally short score, running only 28 minutes on the album, including two early demos. It’s also an eclectic mix of sounds, with many different opposing colors, based on the needs of individual scenes.

“Airport Ride” – John Powell

At times, the score leans into funk. At other times, the music borders on what can only be described as a porno score, as Powell laughingly admits in the liner notes. At certain points, though, it is much closer to classical film scoring – lovely and lyrical – especially toward the end, as emotional truths get revealed in the film and Powell elevates them with a simple purity.

“Balcony Scene” – John Powell

Just be to be clear, although it’s a beautiful, breezy listen, I would hesitate to recommend this score to casual Powell aficionados who might know him more for his muscular, thematic animation and action scores. This is an album aimed more at Powell completists who want to explore the growth of his musical voice… and also at fans of this overlooked little gem of a film.

There was a soundtrack album when Forces of Nature was released by DreamWorks in 1999, containing the movie’s various pop songs, but this is the first commercial release of Powell’s score. We can be grateful to La-La Land Records and Powell’s own label, 5 Cat Studios, for rescuing this early Powell score and issuing it on CD. La-La Land has pressed only 1,000 copies, so pick one up quickly while they’re still available.