Here is TIME's guide to the 25 best sound tracks from six decades of movie music (part 2 of 3):
This Is Spinal Tap, 1984
This Is Spinal Tap is without question one of the funniest comedies of all time. And while some of the fake rock documentary's best scenes are without music (think of guitarist Nigel Tufnel and his amp that goes to 11, or lead singer David St. Hubbins discussing his namesake, the patron saint of quality footwear), the real genius behind Spinal Tap is their music and the subtlety (or lack thereof) of their lyrics. Parody at its best is as much homage as it is mockery, and the 1980s hair-metal anthems — written by the film's stars, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer — are spot-on. "Hell Hole" is an ode to living in squalor. "Stonehenge" is a send-up of Led Zeppelin's more rambling songs about Druids and twee British folklore. "Sex Farm" is just what it sounds like. But Spinal Tap's finest tune might be "Big Bottom," a love song to ladies carrying extra baggage, featuring arguably its best lyric: "Big bottom drive me out of my mind/ How could I leave this behind?"
Dirty Dancing, 1987
As Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) said, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner" — and nobody can create a list of the top sound tracks without taking Dirty Dancing into account. Though the film is set at a Catskills resort in the early 1960s, its score is a seemingly random mix of hits from the '50s, '60s and '80s that somehow just works. The original sound track spent 94 weeks on the Billboard 200; in 2007 RCA re-released a 20th anniversary album with additional tracks. From Swayze's ballad "She's Like the Wind" to the Oscar-winning climactic number "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," it was the music — rather than the provocative dancing — that made the film a classic.
Singles, 1992
In 1992, a year that saw Nirvana outsell U2 and knock Michael Jackson out of the top spot on the Billboard 200, the definitive grunge sound track Singles arrived. Just as Nirvana was the right band at the right time, Singles was the right movie. The film's score features a virtual checklist of bands from the then exploding Seattle music scene, including Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Mudhoney, and it helped cement grunge as the dominant sound of the decade. (Further bridging art and life, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and the members of Pearl Jam made cameos in director Cameron Crowe's homage to his hometown.) Sure, at its core Singles is a fairly typical movie about 20-somethings dating and mating (occasionally both, often neither), but it's also a perfect snapshot of grunge's day in the (black hole) sun.
Pulp Fiction, 1994
Released in 1994, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction was a bloody, nonlinear, 2.5-hr.-long pop-culture stew — and an instant hit. The film racked up an impressive $108 million at the box office that year and was nominated for seven Academy Awards. (TIME praised it, calling the film "Die Hard with a brain.") But the sound track, an eclectic collection of vintage hits from the likes of Ricky Nelson and Dusty Springfield — released, one must point out, during the height of grunge — was more of a surprise success. Pulp Fiction's sound track reached No. 21 on the Billboard charts. The album combines well-known pop classics (Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man") with obscure tracks (the Tornados' 1962 surf-rock instrumental "Breakin Surfboards") and snippets of movie dialogue to create the aural equivalent of watching Tarantino's film.
Trainspotting, 1996
Rarely is a movie sound track so popular that filmmakers feel the need to release a second one. Trainspotting, Danny Boyle's film about a group of Edinburgh heroin addicts based on the book by Irvine Welsh, came out in 1996 riding a cresting wave of British pop. Its sound track deftly combines the music of contemporary bands such as Blur, Pulp and Elastica with earlier sounds by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, and it sold so well that a second volume, featuring songs from the film that didn't make it onto the first one, was released the following year. Spiked with tracks by electronica acts like Underworld and Leftfield, Trainspotting helped introduce American audiences to '90s British music beyond Oasis and the Spice Girls.
Rushmore, 1998
Think of your favorite Wes Anderson movie. Now think of your favorite scene. Is it the moment in The Royal Tenenbaums when Margo Tenenbaum steps off the bus to Nico's "These Days"? Or the one in The Life Aquatic when Steve Zissou takes his crew underwater to "Staralfur" by Sigur Ros? The most poignant moments in Anderson's films always contain music. In fact, the acclaimed indie director has said he often thinks of the songs before he thinks of the movie. If that's the case, surely his standout work came on this 1998 film.
Anderson originally wanted to fill his story of a precocious high school student, an idle millionaire and the teacher they both love with songs by the Kinks, but he soon changed his mind and went for a broader British Invasion theme. From the opening credits' "Making Time" by the Creation to the concluding song (the Faces' "Ooh La La"), Rushmore is an exercise in quirky indie sentimentality that still seems refreshing and original.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000
It's not often that a movie sound track wins a Grammy for album of the year. (In fact, it's only happened three times in history.) But O Brother, Where Art Thou? was so popular that it was widely acclaimed as not only one of the year's best albums but one of the finest sound tracks in years. It weaves together bluegrass, country, blues and gospel and features some of each genre's most soulful singers, including Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris. Krauss's version of the church standard "I'll Fly Away" is achingly beautiful, but the entire sound track is held together by the recurring "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow." An old folk song covered numerous times (it was even recorded by Bob Dylan in the early 1960s), the song becomes a hit for the film's fictitious trio, the Soggy Bottom Boys (for the sound track, it was recorded by Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen and Pat Enright). A spare blues riff that ascends to incredible heights on the back of its subtly changing melody and soaring harmonies, it became a real-world hit as well, reaching No. 35 on the country charts.
Garden State, 2004
Scrubs star Zach Braff not only made his debut as a film director with 2004's Garden State; he also wrote the script and handpicked the songs on the movie's sound track. Fans of Bon Jovi and the Boss beware: despite its title, Garden State goes easy on the New Jersey rock 'n' roll, opting instead for a perfectly curated collection of ennui-inducing mid-2000s indie rock. Included are tracks by Thievery Corporation, Iron & Wine, Frou Frou and two songs by the Shins — a group whose popularity skyrocketed after the album won a Grammy for Best Compilation Sound Track for a Motion Picture. Of his musical choices, Braff said, "Essentially, I made a mixed CD with all of the music that I felt was scoring my life at the time I was writing the screenplay."
Those's the 25 best sound tracks from six decades of movie music.[]
This Is Spinal Tap, 1984
This Is Spinal Tap is without question one of the funniest comedies of all time. And while some of the fake rock documentary's best scenes are without music (think of guitarist Nigel Tufnel and his amp that goes to 11, or lead singer David St. Hubbins discussing his namesake, the patron saint of quality footwear), the real genius behind Spinal Tap is their music and the subtlety (or lack thereof) of their lyrics. Parody at its best is as much homage as it is mockery, and the 1980s hair-metal anthems — written by the film's stars, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer — are spot-on. "Hell Hole" is an ode to living in squalor. "Stonehenge" is a send-up of Led Zeppelin's more rambling songs about Druids and twee British folklore. "Sex Farm" is just what it sounds like. But Spinal Tap's finest tune might be "Big Bottom," a love song to ladies carrying extra baggage, featuring arguably its best lyric: "Big bottom drive me out of my mind/ How could I leave this behind?"
Dirty Dancing, 1987
As Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) said, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner" — and nobody can create a list of the top sound tracks without taking Dirty Dancing into account. Though the film is set at a Catskills resort in the early 1960s, its score is a seemingly random mix of hits from the '50s, '60s and '80s that somehow just works. The original sound track spent 94 weeks on the Billboard 200; in 2007 RCA re-released a 20th anniversary album with additional tracks. From Swayze's ballad "She's Like the Wind" to the Oscar-winning climactic number "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," it was the music — rather than the provocative dancing — that made the film a classic.
Singles, 1992
In 1992, a year that saw Nirvana outsell U2 and knock Michael Jackson out of the top spot on the Billboard 200, the definitive grunge sound track Singles arrived. Just as Nirvana was the right band at the right time, Singles was the right movie. The film's score features a virtual checklist of bands from the then exploding Seattle music scene, including Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Mudhoney, and it helped cement grunge as the dominant sound of the decade. (Further bridging art and life, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and the members of Pearl Jam made cameos in director Cameron Crowe's homage to his hometown.) Sure, at its core Singles is a fairly typical movie about 20-somethings dating and mating (occasionally both, often neither), but it's also a perfect snapshot of grunge's day in the (black hole) sun.
Pulp Fiction, 1994
Released in 1994, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction was a bloody, nonlinear, 2.5-hr.-long pop-culture stew — and an instant hit. The film racked up an impressive $108 million at the box office that year and was nominated for seven Academy Awards. (TIME praised it, calling the film "Die Hard with a brain.") But the sound track, an eclectic collection of vintage hits from the likes of Ricky Nelson and Dusty Springfield — released, one must point out, during the height of grunge — was more of a surprise success. Pulp Fiction's sound track reached No. 21 on the Billboard charts. The album combines well-known pop classics (Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man") with obscure tracks (the Tornados' 1962 surf-rock instrumental "Breakin Surfboards") and snippets of movie dialogue to create the aural equivalent of watching Tarantino's film.
Trainspotting, 1996
Rarely is a movie sound track so popular that filmmakers feel the need to release a second one. Trainspotting, Danny Boyle's film about a group of Edinburgh heroin addicts based on the book by Irvine Welsh, came out in 1996 riding a cresting wave of British pop. Its sound track deftly combines the music of contemporary bands such as Blur, Pulp and Elastica with earlier sounds by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, and it sold so well that a second volume, featuring songs from the film that didn't make it onto the first one, was released the following year. Spiked with tracks by electronica acts like Underworld and Leftfield, Trainspotting helped introduce American audiences to '90s British music beyond Oasis and the Spice Girls.
Rushmore, 1998
Think of your favorite Wes Anderson movie. Now think of your favorite scene. Is it the moment in The Royal Tenenbaums when Margo Tenenbaum steps off the bus to Nico's "These Days"? Or the one in The Life Aquatic when Steve Zissou takes his crew underwater to "Staralfur" by Sigur Ros? The most poignant moments in Anderson's films always contain music. In fact, the acclaimed indie director has said he often thinks of the songs before he thinks of the movie. If that's the case, surely his standout work came on this 1998 film.
Anderson originally wanted to fill his story of a precocious high school student, an idle millionaire and the teacher they both love with songs by the Kinks, but he soon changed his mind and went for a broader British Invasion theme. From the opening credits' "Making Time" by the Creation to the concluding song (the Faces' "Ooh La La"), Rushmore is an exercise in quirky indie sentimentality that still seems refreshing and original.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000
It's not often that a movie sound track wins a Grammy for album of the year. (In fact, it's only happened three times in history.) But O Brother, Where Art Thou? was so popular that it was widely acclaimed as not only one of the year's best albums but one of the finest sound tracks in years. It weaves together bluegrass, country, blues and gospel and features some of each genre's most soulful singers, including Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris. Krauss's version of the church standard "I'll Fly Away" is achingly beautiful, but the entire sound track is held together by the recurring "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow." An old folk song covered numerous times (it was even recorded by Bob Dylan in the early 1960s), the song becomes a hit for the film's fictitious trio, the Soggy Bottom Boys (for the sound track, it was recorded by Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen and Pat Enright). A spare blues riff that ascends to incredible heights on the back of its subtly changing melody and soaring harmonies, it became a real-world hit as well, reaching No. 35 on the country charts.
Garden State, 2004
Scrubs star Zach Braff not only made his debut as a film director with 2004's Garden State; he also wrote the script and handpicked the songs on the movie's sound track. Fans of Bon Jovi and the Boss beware: despite its title, Garden State goes easy on the New Jersey rock 'n' roll, opting instead for a perfectly curated collection of ennui-inducing mid-2000s indie rock. Included are tracks by Thievery Corporation, Iron & Wine, Frou Frou and two songs by the Shins — a group whose popularity skyrocketed after the album won a Grammy for Best Compilation Sound Track for a Motion Picture. Of his musical choices, Braff said, "Essentially, I made a mixed CD with all of the music that I felt was scoring my life at the time I was writing the screenplay."
Those's the 25 best sound tracks from six decades of movie music.[]
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