RIP Angelo Badalementi, TWIN PEAKS Soundtrack Composer Dead at 85

Composer Angelo Badalamenti, best known for his haunting theme music to David Lynch's Twin Peaks, has died at the age 85. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Badalamenti died of natural causes surrounded by family at this home in New Jersey, per his niece, Frances Badalamenti.

Badalamenti's long and storied career also included collaborations with a Who's Who's of music across genres. Among them: Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, David Bowie, LL Cool J, Nancy Wilson, Pet Shop Boys, Paul McCartney and Liza Minnelli are just some of the musical luminaries who's worked with the late composer.

For the 1986 movie Blue Velvet, Lynch recruited Badalamenti to work with actress Isabella Rossellini to create a version of Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet": “I met with Isabella and after a couple of hours with a piano and a little cassette recorder, we got a decent vocal [on the Bobby Vinton song ‘Blue Velvet’],” he recalled in a 2015 interview for Spirit & Flesh magazine. “So we go over to the set where David is shooting the last scene. … He puts on the earphones, listens to the recording and says, ‘Peachy keen. That’s the ticket!'”

In 1992, Badalamenti created the "Torch Theme" for the Olympic Summer Games in Barcelona, with the track played during the opening ceremony ad torch lighting.

It was 1990 when he created his most famous work: the Twin Peaks theme song. The Twin Peaks soundtrack incorporated parts of the late Julee Cruise's album Falling, which Badalementi and Lynch produced in 1989. Cruise's dreamy vocals became as vital to the show as the melancholy music beneath it.

In the video below, Badalamenti explains how he and Lynch created the Twin Peaks theme song in record time during a writing session.