As films less and less frequently have soundtracks that are anything more than mediocre, or not even worth focusing on past the few seconds it takes to recognize their lack of quality, the best uses of music in movies or video games could stand out all the more in their isolation. Music can help completely change the tone of a scene, or even of a whole film (or game) if it is used correctly. A somewhat recent scene from 2017's Alien: Covenant exemplifies this--avoid reading beyond this point if you are not fine with major spoilers. As it is revealed who the true villain of the movie is, it is not some subhuman life form devoted strictly to killing and breeding, but the android David who opposes the human crew of the starship Covenant out of his arrogance and malice. He has been stranded on a planet of the beings who created humans, the Engineers, having exhausted his best options for test subjects as he callously experiments with torturous genetic fusions. Yes, a version of the xenomorph, which other films indicate has already been around in a different variation long before humans made David, is the result of the android's experimentation with a pathogen left by the humanoid Engineers.
When a group of humans land on this planet of David's residence, David first welcomes them, though he is delighted to find a pale xenomorphic creature feasting on the corpse of one of the crew members. This alien had been produced when the pathogen infected a separate human earlier in the movie. Captain Oram of the Covenant finds David trying to tame this beast, and after killing it against David's wishes, he demands to hear what has happened on this planet. David brings him down to a room filled with the iconic "ovomorphs," or xenomorph eggs from which facehuggers leap out at victims to orally rape and impregnate them. Oram suffers this very fate. Upon regaining consciousness shortly before his death, the captain screams when a xenomorph begins forcefully exiting his body, and so David's first black xenomorph enters the outside world.
I have written about elements of this scene before [1]. It is a very pivotal plot point in the film, and it does a masterful job of conveying David's characterization and a way of perceiving the xenomorph that is altogether absent in most of the Alien movies. After all, Alien as a franchise, except for the more action oriented tone of Alien vs. Predator, a horror series, and the xenomorph is the primary antagonist. However, as the first chest burster emerges from Oram's torso in Alien: Covenant, David's awe, the xenomorph's bonding gestures to him, and the music very clearly convey that this scene is supposed to focus on the personal triumph of David in finally creating what he hopes is his "perfect organism" that will vindicate him after humans designed his kind unable to create (in a general sense, as he plainly can create, just more indirectly and by allowing the laws of nature to do most of the work for him). Even watching this part in isolation from the rest of the movie conveys this.
Thus, what would be a scene aimed at instilling terror or disgust is presented in spite of the graphic outward bursting of the baby xenomorph as a scene of wonder--on David's part, though the music is used to orient the tone of this portion right around David. Most other movies, including most other movies in the Alien franchise, would not have taken this route. The death of a protagonist and the birth of a new creature, especially one intended for use as a biological weapon in the metaphorical hands of a malicious AI, would not be a scene typically used to make such a savage villain (both David and the xenomorph) as sympathetic as this. Even just leaving David's smile as the xenomorph kills Oram in its birth, stands upright, and uses its arms for the first time without the selected musical track would have been very tonally different. You can see the clip below:
Music does not have to involve lyrics of any kind, but it has a special capacity for expressing all kinds of personal experiences even if music is not a language as some people claim (only the lyrics used amidst music are language). It is indeed true that music alone can change the entire tone of art when it is handled in a certain way, and the general drama and horror of Alien: Covenant can be alleviated for a few moments in this way. David's extreme cruelty, selfishness, and assumption-driven desperation to create all come to the surface of the scene's tone as his chest burster stands in the corpse of its human male "mother." The subtle smile and way that David invites what quickly develops into a large, black xenomorph to imitate his motions could have had a very sinister, urgent tone if the music was changed, but instead, wonder and relief are what mark these shots, in no small part because the music reflects the perspective of the murderous David and not the human victims. Emotion is subjective, and people can misunderstand or ignore the tonal context of a scene. Tone is still an objective feature of the creator's intentions and the execution of the different aspects of art. Alien: Covenant shows just how thoroughly the emphasis can be flipped when nothing is changed but the soundtrack.
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