Imagine walking down the street next to someone who changed the world but not having any idea who they are. John Williams is precisely this person. Most of my fellow classmates have never heard of Williams but would recognize his music in a heartbeat.

When it comes to motion pictures, whether it be TV shows, live television, sports, or movies, one of the most overlooked aspects of motion pictures are the sounds and music accompanying them. Yet the very first thing and the very last thing in motion pictures the viewer experiences is the music.

People who go to the movies go for the action, adventure, romance, horror, and mystery of a movie. People don’t go for the music score. However, the unique nature of music is what sets films apart from others.

Williams has changed the way we listen to movies, yet is still seemingly unknown. Whether it be from the terrifying score of Jaws, the heroic theme of Superman, or even Indiana Jones theme song, Williams has made an impact our movie experiences.

And it’s not just films Williams has changed. He is also responsible for creating the Olympic Fanfare, the theme for the Olympics, as well as the theme for Sunday Night Football, which is watched by millions of Americans every Sunday.

Still, Williams remains unknown to the majority of society.

If someone were to look up billboards Top 100, there would be no mention of Williams anywhere, which is to be expected. People just don’t listen to film scores, but if someone were to look up the top ten selling movie franchises of all time, there would be three franchises in which Williams wrote the original score: Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Jurassic Park.

I believe the reason more people don’t know who Williams is is due to the fact that for the most part of a composition for his films, there are no lyrics and lyrics ultimately describing what the song is about. However, in a movie it is the other way around – if the movie is the background music, the score are the lyrics.

I know this seems a bit far fetched, but take away the score of Harry Potter, or the Star Wars main theme, or even the Indiana Jones main theme, and it loses a lot of the magic within the film. Without Hedwig’s theme, or, in other words, the main theme song for Harry Potter, the movies would be completely different.

The interest in music today is for pop stars, country stars, rock stars, but not classic composers. Pop star Taylor Swift, for example releases, a new single every few months, compared to a movie composer who releases a new score once or twice a year at most.

Williams has the second most Academy Award nominations at 49, second only to Walt Disney. Collectively, Williams has won five Academy Awards, three Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, and a whopping 22 Grammys.

Compared to Williams, Hans Zimmer, the composer for Interstellar, The Dark Knight series, and a very successful film composer in his own rights, has a mere nine Academy Award nominations with only one win.

Williams is by no means unknown within the cinema community, but he is nowhere near a household name. This is due to the fact that, for the most part, people don’t care about the music of a movie but instead what is happening in the movie itself.

Williams has changed our lives without most of us knowing it. Imagine Darth Vader without the Imperial March in the background, warning the viewer danger is coming, or Indiana Jone running away from the boulder in silence – it just loses a certain something.

While John Williams is one of the world’s greatest composers, he remains a complete stranger to most of the world. It would be easy to walk down the street right past him and have no idea who he is, which is precisely why you should bother to find out.