The 40 greatest movie soundtracks of all time, ranked
Films like American Graffiti, Dirty Dancing, 8 Mile, Pulp Fiction, and Top Gun are bursting with memorable music from start to finish
Music Lists Soundtracks
A great movie soundtrack doesn’t just compliment the film on screen. It can also elevate, invigorate, and resonate with viewers and listeners. The right mix of tunes makes a good film great, and a great film unforgettable. Of course, there’s no surefire formula for the right soundtrack—though studios and labels have tried for years to find one—as the collections on this list clearly show. Some rely on previously released material, while others turned featured songs into contemporary standards. What they all have in common is that they offer a transcendent listening experience. The 40 soundtracks here, from films as varied as Friday, The Bodyguard, Saturday Night Fever, and Pulp Fiction, are as kinetic, stylish, and satisfying as any other great album.
But before you move on, a brief word: don’t mistake this list of the greatest movie soundtracks for a list of great film scores. While scores are designed to work in conjunction with moving images, many soundtracks are designed to work apart from the films themselves. The best of these function like proper pop records, driven by hooks and hits—the key elements of any successful pop, R&B, or rock record.
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Decent list, but I’d have swapped out a number of those for Say Anything, Risky Business, 24 Hour Party People, He Got Game, The Crow, Graffiti Bridge, Donnie Darko, Vanilla Sky, The Lost Boys, Juice, Angus, Heat, Straight Outta Compton, Once, and Stealing Beauty.
Once should definitely be on the list!
Say Anything for “Lloyd, Lloyd, all null and void.”
And speaking of, where tf is Almost Famous?
As a runner up, I’d include The Blues Brothers: “Shake a Tail Feather”, “Think”, “Minnie the Moocher”, “Jailhouse Rock”…..
I like it
Lots of egregious omissions already identified down here, but I’ll throw in The Commitments.
My egregious omission is Until the End of the World.
Grosse Point Blank is probably the most obvious omission for me.
But I’ll throw Pump Up the Volume into the mix too, with all its cool Leonard Cohen tracks.
The soundtrack to the almost forgotten Times Square is a great snapshot of early New York punk rock, but as it’s hard to get, I give them a pass for omission here. It’s really due for a reissue, though.
I came here to add Times Square as well! I was also thinking about Return of the Living Dead and Decline of Western Civilization.
Pump Up the Volume, Rushmore and Jackie Brown over both Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Frankly I’d even take the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack over the two Tarantinos in this list.
I have always liked GPB. I just noticed that the Let My Love Open the Door remix from the soundtrack just showed up on Spotify last month after being lost to CDs forever if that means anything to you.
Still the only soundtrack I’ve ever owned of a movie I’ve never seen.
Good Morning Vietnam should be in there too, and if Saturday Night Fever is in the list, Grease should be too. Oh, and Singles and Yellow Submarine.
Yes! GMV is great. Nowhere to Run particularly works brilliantly in the film.
Singles is there. I like the Paul Westerberg songs the best, unlike the reviewer.Totally agree on Grease. My friends and I lip synched to that a lot in the 70’s.
Mine is The Dish. It’s got both “Classic Gas” and “Spanish Flea”, and Russell Morris’ classic “The Real Thing”, featuring Molly Meldrum reading an Ampex product disclaimer, a Hitler youth choir (sample, not an actual live choir), a nuclear explosion, and more flanging than high-pressure pipe factory.
But I suppose can’t expect much of anyone outside of Aus to recognise that, so my international choice is The Beach, a pitch-perfect time capsule of late-90s techno, and, of course, the high-water mark of the brief 90s Dream Pop flash, All Saints’ “Pure Shores” – which, yeah, I love:You’ve got Faithless, Sugar Ray (because, man, c’mon), Unkle with Richard Ashcroft, Moby’s “Porcelain”, Dario G, Blur…it’s a postcard from 1999, man! Before the world closed up again…
Starred for the Molly Meldrum reference. Another part of why I (as a Canadian) love Australia.
Good bloke, Molly. National treasure, gay as a bag of cats. Just keep him away from ladders.
I loved the movie the Commitments, but as an album does it really work. I mean it’s a decent cover band doing inferior covers of amazing all time songs. Hard to put that album here when there isn’t a single song on it that I wouldn’t rather listen to the original. Such a great film though.
Stand By Me, Back to the Future
Was about to post that! .
Not included, but should be: The Blues Brothers, The Matrix, Lost Highway, The Crow, Harold & Maude, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Dylan).
Yes – plus “Thank God It’s Friday” and “Car Wash” – both great snapshots of 70s soul / disco
Even I have to admit TGIF is not a good movie… at all. But what a brilliant soundtrack from Casablanca and Motown.
Pat Garrett is oddly good despite the relative lack of lyrics from a guy known for them.
The Triplets of Belleville; Amelie; Bladerunner; Swingers; Paris, Texas
You saved me a click. Wanted to see if “The Crow” was in here and of course it’s not. Thanks.
Not sure how The Blues Brothers missed the cut, I was sure that would be a top 10.Missing from the list for me: Donnie Darko, Across the Universe, and The Wall (I realize it’s a stretch/entirely inaccurate to call that a soundtrack, but I’m going with it).Also, not my cup of tea, but it seems like the Frozen soundtrack was a massive critical and commercial success, but maybe it’s just because a lot of my wife’s students sang it constantly for like 2 years after it came out.
An official The Wall soundtrack was never released with the original album being release 3 years prior.
Agreed of course about The Blues Brothers, and THANK YOU for mentioning Across the Universe. I was surprised to see it missing as well.
According to the The Wall’s closing credit there is an official soundtrack album.* Maybe it exists in the same universe as the Buckaroo Bonzai film sequel.(Of course there are unofficial releases out there. They include songs that aren’t on the original album and rerecorded/remixed versions of most of the ones that are.)
I assumed they purposefully were leaving out full-on musicals, which makes sense to me as that’s something else again. Of course sometimes with these lists you get borderline cases, but I’d say any film that has characters actually singing in a non-performative setting wouldn’t count here (so no Across the Universe or Frozen…)
That’s a pretty decent list, although I do not agree with Once Upon a Time being number one. I think the Forrest Gump soundtrack deserves the spot.
And I remember when I saw Romeo & Juliet in theaters, with a bunch of lady friends. I knew there was gonna be a new Radiohead song during the credit so I convinced my lady friends to stay put and wait for it. We all ended up crying like babies while Exit Music ( For a film ) was playing to an almost empty theater. What a song….
I just assumed that while the list has numbers, it isn’t in numerical order.
I mean, how do you judge the Pulp Fiction soundtrack vs A Star is Born? Or any of them vs This is Spinal Tap?
And if we’re including A Star is Born, then what about other musicals? Singin’ in the Rain has an incredible soundtrack of a variety of songs of its era. So does Moulin Rouge. Why don’t they get a mention?
It is true that I assumed the list was numerical. Might not be.
And I don’t see any way to judge any of these soundtrack against each other except if everybody agrees on specifics like sales number or average reviews, critics, etc. In the end, it is all subjective.
The problem with the Forrest Gump soundtrack ultimately is that there is nothing original on it. It’s basically a compilation of some of the greatest American songs of all time, a Spotify playlist before Spotify was a thing if you will. Or, the Time Life life collection of the history of American music in two easy two own CDs would probably would be more fitting.
that’s true! but many soundtrack don’t feature any new/original song.
And it might be a old-timey Spotify playlist, but it’s pretty awesome nonetheless
No Grosse Pointe Blank, Dazed and Confused, or Valley Girl?
rushmorebut also how is not a single wes movie on this list?
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don’t mistake this list of the greatest movie soundtracks for a list of great film scores. While scores are designed to work in conjunction with moving images, many soundtracks are designed to work apart from the films themselves. But the line between soundtrack and score gets blurred more when someone like John Williams comes along and produces his own soundtrack of his own score and intends for the soundtrack to work as a listening experience apart from the film (as he says he does in multiple soundtrack liner notes).
As for my pick for a great soundtrack of songs (that just happens to also have a pretty decent score too): Labyrinth. David Bowie man. ‘nuff said.
Immediately checked the slideshow to see where The Crow soundtrack was listed and I am not seeing The Crow soundtrack. I’m assuming this is because there’s a “FIRST first” article dedicated entirely to The Crow soundtrack. I’ll wait.
Same!
As others have mentioned, the two most glaring omissions from this list are The Blues Brothers (a top-5 candidate) and Grosse Pointe Blank (probably not top-10, but certainly in the top-30).
15. Above The Rim (1994)Glad someone at AVClub has heard of Above the Rim. You might want to clue Ian in.https://www.avclub.com/best-basketball-movies-ranked-1850221272
Let’s send this article back to re-write. Remove Batman ‘89 (really?) and Once Upon A Time (hmmm… and at number one no less) and insert The Blue Brothers and The Crow.
I’d have to throw in Sid & Nancy, and the sound track to The Big Easy. I can’t do without either one of those albums.
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Even with the self-imposed restriction of songs having to involve the moon or wolves or werewolves, American Werewolf in London is another top contender.
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Mortal Kombat?
I’d also raise a query about O Brother Where Art Thou’s “depression-era” verisimilitude. It’s a very Bluegrass soundtrack, and bluegrass only really took off in the 40s.
There’s actually no Bluegrass on that album. It’s all Appalachian folk, country or blues. Bluegrass did not exist before the 1940s. Bluegrass as a genre emerged from Bill Monroe’s band which featured the banjo playing of Earl Scruggs who popularized a three finger style of picking that probably existed before him but wasn’t played as fast or as well. Bluegrass also focuses on virtuoso performance as opposed to Appalachian folk. In any case, there was no Bluegrass before 1940.
What about in Kentucky?!
Seems worth a mention that Footloose screenwriter Dean Pitchford co-wrote all the original songs on the soundtrack. Imagine the residuals.
There’s just too many styles of soundtrack and movies in general for this to work. I was waiting to spot all my dumb favorites like Mortal Kombat, Hackers, and Spawn (the silliest gimmick soundtrack ever and it’s great).
That sound you hear is members of my generation screaming about the omission of ‘The Lost Boys.’
I only just now noticed that his outfit includes a codpiece.
I only found out recently he was Tina Turner’s saxophonist!
Did you find that out (as I did) from the video of her at the NRL Grand Final?
It’s probably from that, but I found out from a FB post entitled “TIL that…” and this was the learnin’!
Thanks to her long association with the NRL during the 90s, I thought she was Australian for like the first twelve years of my life. Also, SBS solved one of our nation’s greatest mysteries:https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/is-this-how-tina-turners-nutbush-became-our-unofficial-national-anthem/emw1ndoxq
https://gizmodo.com/the-true-story-of-the-lost-boys-sax-man-1842774832
Here here!!!!
If you are going to do Pretty In Pink, you have to do the superior Valley Girl (with Nick Cage!).
This was going to be my addition! The original release didn’t include Melt With You but when they re-released in like the 2000s they got the rights to it. But it’s an incredible new wave/punk collection.
Some Kind of Wonderful, you mean.I’d add She’s Having a Baby, too.
Yes! I commented before I saw your comment. It is THE quintessential early eighties soundtrack. Hell, even the Psychedelic Furs cut is superior to the one on PIP.
Just off the top of my head: Dead Presidents. Reservoir Dogs. Josie and the Pussycats. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse.
Any list that doesn’t include: Fast Times at Ridgemont High; The Commitments; and Almost Famous isn’t worth the time spent to read said deficient list.
No Wes Anderson movies. Thank you.I assume you forgot about The Harder They Come.
The title must’ve gotten chopped off.The 40 greatest movie soundtracks of all time, ranked (that aren’t The Harder They Come)
The Harder They Come is pretty close to perfect.
Yeah that could easily be #1. So good.
I hate it when someone wants to turn me on to a band or artist they like and they start with “This will change your life” or something like; because I’m most likely not going to like it as much as they think I should and they’ll inevitably get all righteously insulted on said band’s behalf and I’ll probably end up just hating said band without really even giving them a try just because number one superfan is having a fit that I’m not jumping up and down to their satisfaction.
Did that ever happen to any of you?
My poor partner keeps trying to get me to love the Dead. “This will change your life” has been uttered. Unfortunately for all involved, I’m OCD with an antipathy towards change. The fact that every time they play a song, it’s different (!), is almost like it’s designed to annoy me. But hey, he sat through my Secret Policeman’s Third Ball replay without complaint, so I’m learning to like (outwardly tolerate) the Dead. Some of it is actually growing on me. Or at least I thought it was until I realized that the Scarlet Begonias I love is by Sublime.
oof, it’s got to be worse when it’s your partner.
My wife came to see my fave band with me and she liked them. Not as much as me, but enough to enjoy the show without ruining it for me.
I alway make the effort to be positive when he plays the Dead. We went to see Jorma Kaukonen together and it was great! I just kept calling him Jorma Taccone. NOT the same person. Much embarrassment.
No WAY! Aforementioned fave band is Hot Tuna!
No! That is hilarious! We saw him in Melbourne a couple of years ago and I was blown away.
Good for you for giving it a shot. I love the Dead and they did change my life but no worries if its not for you.
The Dead is rough if you have a nitpicky ear as far as intonation goes. I find them completely unlistenable.
My poor partner keeps trying to get me to love the Dead. Isn’t that illegal?
No, but for some reason it makes me think of this:
Tron Legacy is missing. This list is meaningless without it
score vs soundtrack though? there a ton of fantastic scores, but generally soundtracks are an entirely different category
Man i am with you but it is in a weird middle area, where it was like 50/50
A great, unappreciated ‘80s soundtrack is About Last Night.
(Soundtrack queen here – my iTunes shows 541 albums under that genre. Scores—355—are listed separately.)
The absence of The Crow and Clerks is so wild to me
I shit on a lot of the lists put up by websites like Kotaku and while my list might be different, this is solid as a fu*&king rock. There were times when I felt like I might have been the only person to even see movies like Velvet Goldmine, to the point you start to think maybe I just made it up in some dream. To see albums like that on this list, I just can’t find fault with it. To add a few I’ve seen in the comments, The Commitments is good, but it’s also just a lot of inferior covers of better songs, but Grease and Pump Up the Volume would be good additions. Not sure which ones I’d take off the list, but I’d just add them.
AVClub… you missed on this one. The lack of Grosse Point Blank sent me to the comments, but the comments made me realize this listicle needs a re-write.
Thanks for this comment! I was curious if it was on the list, but unwilling to click through 40 pages to find out.
If you click “start slideshow”, there’s a “list slides” button at the top of each page that will take you to the overall list.
Thank you! I’d seen that referenced before, but since I hadn’t started the slideshow I didn’t see an obvious link. I’ve clearly missed it every time I have paged through one of these in the past.
“Matador” – Los Fabulosos Cadillacs is one of the better deep tracks on any soundtrack.
Notable Absentees:Blues Brothers, TRON:Legacy (Daft Punk’s best album), and Highlander (why isn’t Queen on this list?)
“Ice Cube made the leap to the silver screen with Friday”So he he wasn’t quite on screen when he was in in Boyz N The Hood 4 years earlier?
Thank you.
I came in expecting to be disappointed by the lack of Above the Rim, and left VERY pleasantly surprised to see it in the top 15.
Clockwork OrangePink Floy’s The Wallare also great soundtracks.
Xanadu! Vastly better soundtrack than movie.
Okay but where is Return of the Living Dead
The fact the Top Gun soundtrack made it on here, and in a pretty decent spot consider the rest of the list, gives me great pleasure. I used to listen to my cassette of it back to front.
Reservoir Dogs is the best QT soundtrack and that is a hill I will die on.
You missed only two! One I saw another poster bring up already, Lost Highway.The other is my favorite soundtrack, Valley Girl.
Where’s Angus? Not including The Crow is a huge misstep, but not including Angus makes this list completely worthless.
Missing – Some Kind of Wonderful.Also any other soundtrack John Hughes had anything to do with.
I’d add Wonder Boys and Magnolia.
Animal House? Am I the only one here?
This looks like it might be a good list (based on the photo at the top), but I guess I’ll never know. It was a chore just to finally get this comment section to briefly show up, and there’s no way in hell I can make it through the first couple of entries without the page crashing. Does everyone else have this issue? I have problems on most AV Club articles, but there’s just no chance with these stupid slideshows. I’m using a brand new iPhone 14 and I don’t have any problems with any other site on the internet.
Good to see Clueless, Footloose and Judgement Night on there, but it also should have had: Beverly Hills Cop, Hackers, The Crow: City of Angels, Spawn, Escape from LA, Grosse Pointe Blank, Baby Driver, Reservoir Dogs, The Transformers: The Movie (1986)
The lack of Dazed and Confused here is a real problem. Honorable mention for the soundtrack to that movie’s spiritual sequel Everybody Wants Some!!.
Wow. I was literally writing that about “Everybody Wants Some!” What a fantastic movie with an amazing soundtrack. Kudos to you for your good taste!
Thank you for complimenting me on my good taste Mr. or Ms., um, McCunt.
We are friends. Cunty is fine.
Dazed and Confused even had two volumes of soundtrack releases!Vol. 2 is better than Vol. 1, for my money.
Summer Breeze makes anything better.
What a joke of a list….. Batman…. really!?
As others have said, NO Blues Brothers, or The Crow…
Wow! A Star is Born is #1 and there’s no American Graffiti? Shameful.
The fuck are the Rocky movies at?
Wait, did I slip into an alternate universe in which the Jonathan Demme movie Something Wild doesn’t exist? [checks IMDb] Nope. Something Wild exists in this universe, and therefore, the list is wrong.
OUaTiH takes first place? Fuck alllllllllllllllll the way off, now and forever.
I started saying oh, another long list with likely plenty to nitpick yada yada but then I scanned my old iTunes library and wow, this list is wild with some real egregious omissions that aren’t even in the honorable mentions.
No Wes Anderson films, presumably Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, in that order.
Nor any Sophia Coppola films, presumably Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides, in that order.
Dazed and Confused is not my fav but indisputably popular. Harold & Maude is a classic as is The Harder they Come and Shaft (if you’re ranking Superfly, which is a hybrid score, that high then this should be in).
Others that I would have in my list: Juice, Natural Born Killers, Almost Famous, The Crow, Grosse Pointe Blank.
My personal nitpick with the notes: The best part of Velvet Goldmine that isn’t mentioned is the made up Venus is Furs band with Thom Yorke, Johnny Greenwood, Bernard Butler, and Andy Mackay doing 5 of the best Roxy Music covers that drive a lot of the film. There are some listed like Batman (which is really a score) that are not good soundtracks, you just remember notable theme song singles, and a lot of films with similar unmentioned ones that are much better (like Juice > New Jack City).
Wait, no Flash Gordon?
Glad Repo Man made the list but it will always be #1 to me.
Reel 10 by the Plugz is one of my favorite songs of alltime
Oh ffs, they can’t include everybody’s favourite. Also, The Blues Brothers sucked. Also Also, I’d forgotten about American Graffiti but is there a better lost-love song than Smoke Gets In Your Eyes?
Good list. I really like “Something Wild,” especially Sister Carol’s take on “Wild Thing.”Boogie Nights is outstanding. The use of music like “Sister Christian” and “Jessie’s Girl” in the part where they are going to rob Alfred Molina’s character is fabulous. A perfect scene.
I would place the “Reservoir Dogs” Soundtrack somewhere in the top 10.
“Judgment Night” is the first entry in a soundtrack trilogy created by the same producers:Judgment Night – Hip-hop & Rock/Metal artistsSpawn – Rock/Metal & Techno artistsBlade 2 – Techno & Hip-hop artists
Spawn has my nomination for “Greatest Quality Gap Between Soundtrack and Movie”
Mine is a different superhero movie: Batman Forever. Not many albums have U2, Seal, Brandy, PJ Harvey, Method Man, AND Nick Cave on it.
Add me to the list of commentors complaining about the egregious absence of “The Crow”. In fact, “The Crow”, “The Crow: City of Angels” and “The Crow: Salvation” all have great rock soundtracks.
A lot of the glaring omissions have been covered, but I think also there’s a serious dearth of electronic music, which if nothing else, has ended up being one of the most influential types of music on today’s pop.For myself, the big electronic music soundtracks of back in the day:HackersTrainspotting (this one’s included, but it’s heavy on rock mentions)Human TrafficParty Girl24 Hour Party People (not my personal fave, but I recognize how big it was)I’d say SelmaSongs, the soundtrack to Dancer in the Dark, isn’t as electronic as she’d been, but I’d put it up there too. Also, Do the Right Thing should be #1 and Pump Up the Volume should be on the list and pretty high up.
The Sting (1973) resonates from start to finish with its ragtime soundtrack of Scott Joplin via Marvin Hamlisch. Also, what about Amadeus (1984)? There’s music, and then there’s MUSIC…
Last of The Mohicans had a gorgeous soundtrack.
Agreed, but as has been mentioned that was a score (music composed for a movie), not a soundtrack (existing songs picked for a movie).
It is still one of my favorite. So is Legends of the Fall.
I think it’s a crime that Highlander is not on here. An entire soundtrack made by Queen.
Maybe because there’s no official soundtrack album? Queen’s A Kind of Magic is the unofficial soundtrack.
I have three words.
XA.
NA.
DU.
That “Pump Up The Volume” isn’t on here is just criminal.
No Valley Girl? Now *that* is the quintessential early eighties soundtrack. You still can’t escape “I Melt With You.”
Natural Born Killers seems like a real omission, especially since it lead to Trent Reznor the Oscar-winning film composer.
Other should haves: Pump Up the Volume (Rollins Band covering “Kick Out the Jams”; Until the End of the World; Lost Highway; Let’s Get Lost (I know, I know…)
A few more to add the list. Daft Punks amazing Tron Legacy soundtrack. Enter the Spider-verse as well
The Lost Boys soundtrack was pretty great.
I would have expected at least one Edgar Wright movie – perhaps Baby Driver or Scott Pilgrim.
How could you leave out The Lord of the Rings?
That’s a score, not a soundtrack.
I’m genuinely surprised not a single David Lynch soundtrack made the list. Fire Walk With Me’s soundtrack is practically an album in its own right. I think I knew more people at school who owned the Lost Highway soundtrack than had seen Lost Highway. But oddly enough, one soundtrack I feel should have gotten at least a mention was the Spawn soundtrack. It had no business being as good as it was, and was basically better than the actual movie.
Bullshit, especially #1. No one has that OST.
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is the greatest soundtrack of all time.Other top choices that comes to mind: Goodfellas, Cruisin, Scarface, Nashville, anything by Jonathan Demme. I’m sure there is a lot I’m forgetting…
Just ignoring the greatness that was Clerks, eh?
Where is Grease in this list? And Waiting to Exhale? What about Boomerang or Soul Food?
No Scorsese? “Mean Streets” and “GoodFellas” should easily be on there. Along with “Cooley High”, “A Mighty Wind”, “Almost Famous” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. oh! And “200 Cigarettes”.
You left out Angus
It’s hard to take any ‘best movie soundtracks’ list seriously when the greatest movie soundtrack of all time isn’t even in the honorable mentions: “The Harder They Come” from 1972. Jimmy Cliff’s opening track of the same name. “Pressure Drop” and “Sweet and Dandy” by the legendary Toots & the Maytals. “007 (Shanty Town)” by Desmond Dekker. “Rivers of Babylon” by The Melodians. “Draw Your Brakes” by the mysteriously named Scotty. The dire warning to rude boys across Jamaica – “Johnny Too Bad” by The Slickers – and other crucial reggae of the era; it’s all there. Not only is this a fantastic soundtrack album, it also exposed the world at large to what was for many their first taste of reggae music, almost a full year before Bob Marley started making a name for himself beyond his stardom in Jamaica. I realize that things of this nature are somewhat subjective, but not including “The Harder They Come” in a ‘best of’ soundtracks listing is tantamount to excluding Jimi Hendrix from a list of all-time great guitarists. But hey, I’d expect nothing less from a music critic.
Interesting list. I’m glad Prince and “Batman” were mentioned. My two favorites are “Moulin Rouge” and “Shawshank Redemption.” I have a soft spot for both. I listened to “Shawshank” on my portable CD player driving from Toledo, Ohio to Long Beach, CA and back in 1996. Great memories associated with it.
Flash Gordon (1980)Superman (1978)Conan the Barbarian (1982)The Rocketeer (1991)Star Wars (1977)Fantasia (1940)Jesus Christ Superstar (1970)Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1982)1984 (1984)Home of the Brave (1986)And that’s without even trying. I’d expect movies like Singin’ In The Rain, My Fair Lady or The Wizard of Oz for example should be included but I am less familiar with the full soundtracks.
Donnie Darko should be there somewhere. Certainly over Top Gun.
How can you only recognize “The Sounds Of Silence” from the entire soundtrack of this movie? Have you been watching “so and so reacts”?
Most obvious miss: The CrowUnderrated miss: The Saint
Y0u’re going to leave out Dazed and Confused? It’s at least better than the Guardians Soundtrack.
Rick Derringer – Rock And Roll, Hoochie KooFoghat – Slow RideAlice Cooper – School’s OutBlack Oak Arkansas – Jim DandyZZ Top – TushNazareth – Love HurtsTed Nugent – StrangleholdThe Runaways – Cherry BombThe Sweet – Fox On The RunWar – Low RiderLynyrd Skynyrd – Tuesday’s GoneDeep Purple – Highway StarKiss – Rock And Roll All NightBlack Sabbath – Paranoid
Surprised Last Action Hero didn’t make the list. Not a great movie but the soundtrack was killer.
The Heavy Metal and Fast Times soundtracks owe their white bread why are these songs here quality to a big time record biz manager and destructor of worlds named Irving Azoff. He managed and had a deep hand in the publishing of a lot of the bands.
How do we get the AVClub to stop making lists.
I want to thank you for recognizing the Repo Man soundtrack, I’ve been touting it as one of the best movie soundtracks for a long, long time. Some honorable mentions from me would include 24 Hour Party People, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Sing Street, and Baby Driver.
If “music from and inspired by” counts, let’s get The Horse Whisperer in there, and (though it was a deeply flawed movie) maybe Songcatcher.Shall we reach back for Honeysuckle Rose as well? As a movie, the reviewer who described it as “basically a celebration of the existence of Willie Nelson” summed it up pretty well, but as one might hope, it’s got a good song or two…