As any serious music fan knows, it's the songs that make good films great. Just in time for the Oscars, TIME runs down the best movie sound tracks ever.
Here is TIME's guide to the 25 best sound tracks from six decades of movie music.
Singin' in the Rain, 1952
Singin' in the Rain is best known for Gene Kelly's splash-filled dance scene to the title song, which, according to legend, Kelly filmed in one take while fighting off a 103-degree fever. While the scene is one of the most memorable and joyful in cinema history, the film also includes a number of songs that are too often overlooked. "Make 'Em Laugh," a goofy ode to slapstick comedy, will get stuck in your head. The big-band number "All I Do Is Dream of You" is equally catchy, and "Good Morning" is a classic song involving incredibly quick tap dancing. But the title song of the film is so good, it's forgivable if you've forgotten about the rest.
West Side Story, 1961
This film came with an impeccable pedigree: the original Broadway production featured lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, music by Leonard Bernstein and choreography by Jerome Robbins, and was itself an adaptation of Shakespeare's classic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Young Puerto Rican immigrant Maria (Natalie Wood) and dreamy Tony (Richard Beymer) fall in love despite finding themselves on opposite sides of a gang war brewing in New York City between the Sharks (the Puerto Ricans) and the Jets (the whites). But it's not the story so much as the music that counts, from Maria's "I Feel Pretty" to Tony's "Maria" to ensemble classics like "When You're a Jet" and "America." The sound track spent 54 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts, still a record for any album of any kind. It won a Grammy for Best Sound Track Album — Original Cast, and went triple-platinum. The film, meanwhile, won 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
A Hard Day's Night, 1964
It's a little misleading to call the album A Hard Day's Night a sound track. Yes, the songs are featured in the film A Hard Day's Night, a comic road picture following the band's misadventures on its way to a gig in London. Yes, the title track was written after Ringo Starr coined the phrase to explain his exhaustion after working on a movie set all night. But it's also a studio album, the Beatles' third, released at the height of Beatlemania in 1964. By then, American teenagers had already succumbed to the mop-topped allure of John, Paul, George and Ringo. But A Hard Day's Night helped turn the group into more than just a passing fad. The album's 13 songs, all written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, were reportedly recorded in a single day. Listen to it today — especially the tracks "If I Fell," "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Should Have Known Better" — and it's pretty clear that these lads from Liverpool were going to go far.
Mary Poppins, 1964
With its winning combination of commonsense medical advice ("A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!"), classic Disney whimsy and Dick Van Dyke's horrid Cockney accent, this movie about an unhappy English family and the magical nanny who blew in on an umbrella was a smash success. Nominated for a total of 13 Academy Awards, the film took home five, including two for its sound track. Brothers Richard B. and Robert M. Sherman composed the film's songs, which won both Best Score and Best Song (for "Chim Chim Cher-ee," sung by Van Dyke and Julie Andrews). While most of its tunes are fun, upbeat numbers such as "Let's Go Fly a Kite" and the spell-checker-busting "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," the sound track's sleeper hit is the lullaby "Feed the Birds" — rumored to have been Walt Disney's favorite song.
The Sound of Music, 1965
Six years after its successful Broadway debut, the film version of The Sound of Music became a screen hit. Scored by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, the sound track includes catchy classics like "My Favorite Things" and "Edelweiss." But what works on Broadway doesn't always work on the silver screen; critic Pauline Kael slammed the movie's music, writing, "We have been turned into emotional and aesthetic imbeciles when we hear ourselves humming the sickly, goody-goody songs." But it's precisely the feel-good, sing-along quality of The Sound of Music's tunes that have made them so endearing to audiences around the world. A 1999 article by London's Sunday Times reported that the BBC included the sound track on a programming list for an underground network of radio stations to keep Britons' spirits up in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, The Sound of Music sound track is, without a doubt, one of our favorite things.
The Graduate, 1967
The Graduate would be an unforgettable movie without Simon & Garfunkel. But their songs feel so intertwined with Mike Nichols' classic that it's hard to imagine seeing Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) driving along the California coast without "Cecilia," or watching his listless summer memories melt into a montage without "April Come She Will." And "Sound of Silence" doesn't seem right without seeing Braddock lazily drinking a beer while drifting around his parents' pool. Of course, the biggest hit from the movie — and the song most indelibly associated with it — is "Mrs. Robinson." Simon & Garfunkel's coy "dee dee dees" seem to represent Braddock's strange relationship with the sexy older woman (Anne Bancroft), loved by Jesus more than she will know.
2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
It might be the most famous snub in movie-music history. Stanley Kubrick intended to create an original score for 2001: A Space Odyssey and commissioned the highly regarded film composer Alex North (A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus) to compose the music for his interstellar epic. But during editing, Kubrick inserted a temporary track of classical melodies, most famously synchronizing a spaceship's docking sequence to the Johan Strauss waltz "The Blue Danube." Looking at the results, the director realized he had infused his state-of-the-art science fiction with an aura of regal majesty; rather than providing audiences with emotional cues, the compositions framed the journey as something timeless and iconic. So Kubrick ditched North's score in favor of an unusual selection of classical music, stocked with the likes of German composer Richard Strauss and the avant-gardist György Ligeti. That Strauss's tone poem "Also Sprach Zarathustra," whose booming minute-long fanfare is synonymous with 2001, is one of classical music's most instantly recognizable works can be credited almost entirely to Kubrick. Though Strauss became known late in life for his operas, his other music was largely overlooked until Kubrick's masterpiece catapulted him into the pop-culture spotlight some 20 years after the composer's death.
Easy Rider, 1969
It was the trip that changed everything, man. Easy Rider was one of the films that launched the New Hollywood revolution, in which young filmmakers rejected the studio system and sought to make movies that reflected the tumult of the times. A psychedelic road-trip hit that depicted the counterculture in full flower, Easy Rider also captured the sound of an era. With songs from the Band, Jimi Hendrix and the Byrds (as well as Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild," now forevermore linked to men on motorcycles), "this was one of the first times a movie was yoked to the driving power of '60s rock 'n' roll," writes film journalist Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, his history of the New Hollywood.
The sound track happened almost by accident. Director Dennis Hopper recalled that Crosby, Stills & Nash were initially going to score the film, an idea he quickly nixed. In an interview with MovieMaker magazine, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs said that editor Donn Cambern used many of the songs as a temporary background sound track for the film. "But the music became inseparable from the pictures," said Kovacs. "When the film was cut, there was a discussion about who was going to score it. They ended up licensing the music Donn was using. They spent $1 million licensing music, which was about three times the budget for shooting the rest of the film." [to be continue][time.com]
Here is TIME's guide to the 25 best sound tracks from six decades of movie music.
Singin' in the Rain, 1952
Singin' in the Rain is best known for Gene Kelly's splash-filled dance scene to the title song, which, according to legend, Kelly filmed in one take while fighting off a 103-degree fever. While the scene is one of the most memorable and joyful in cinema history, the film also includes a number of songs that are too often overlooked. "Make 'Em Laugh," a goofy ode to slapstick comedy, will get stuck in your head. The big-band number "All I Do Is Dream of You" is equally catchy, and "Good Morning" is a classic song involving incredibly quick tap dancing. But the title song of the film is so good, it's forgivable if you've forgotten about the rest.
West Side Story, 1961
This film came with an impeccable pedigree: the original Broadway production featured lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, music by Leonard Bernstein and choreography by Jerome Robbins, and was itself an adaptation of Shakespeare's classic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Young Puerto Rican immigrant Maria (Natalie Wood) and dreamy Tony (Richard Beymer) fall in love despite finding themselves on opposite sides of a gang war brewing in New York City between the Sharks (the Puerto Ricans) and the Jets (the whites). But it's not the story so much as the music that counts, from Maria's "I Feel Pretty" to Tony's "Maria" to ensemble classics like "When You're a Jet" and "America." The sound track spent 54 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts, still a record for any album of any kind. It won a Grammy for Best Sound Track Album — Original Cast, and went triple-platinum. The film, meanwhile, won 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
A Hard Day's Night, 1964
It's a little misleading to call the album A Hard Day's Night a sound track. Yes, the songs are featured in the film A Hard Day's Night, a comic road picture following the band's misadventures on its way to a gig in London. Yes, the title track was written after Ringo Starr coined the phrase to explain his exhaustion after working on a movie set all night. But it's also a studio album, the Beatles' third, released at the height of Beatlemania in 1964. By then, American teenagers had already succumbed to the mop-topped allure of John, Paul, George and Ringo. But A Hard Day's Night helped turn the group into more than just a passing fad. The album's 13 songs, all written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, were reportedly recorded in a single day. Listen to it today — especially the tracks "If I Fell," "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Should Have Known Better" — and it's pretty clear that these lads from Liverpool were going to go far.
Mary Poppins, 1964
With its winning combination of commonsense medical advice ("A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!"), classic Disney whimsy and Dick Van Dyke's horrid Cockney accent, this movie about an unhappy English family and the magical nanny who blew in on an umbrella was a smash success. Nominated for a total of 13 Academy Awards, the film took home five, including two for its sound track. Brothers Richard B. and Robert M. Sherman composed the film's songs, which won both Best Score and Best Song (for "Chim Chim Cher-ee," sung by Van Dyke and Julie Andrews). While most of its tunes are fun, upbeat numbers such as "Let's Go Fly a Kite" and the spell-checker-busting "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," the sound track's sleeper hit is the lullaby "Feed the Birds" — rumored to have been Walt Disney's favorite song.
The Sound of Music, 1965
Six years after its successful Broadway debut, the film version of The Sound of Music became a screen hit. Scored by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, the sound track includes catchy classics like "My Favorite Things" and "Edelweiss." But what works on Broadway doesn't always work on the silver screen; critic Pauline Kael slammed the movie's music, writing, "We have been turned into emotional and aesthetic imbeciles when we hear ourselves humming the sickly, goody-goody songs." But it's precisely the feel-good, sing-along quality of The Sound of Music's tunes that have made them so endearing to audiences around the world. A 1999 article by London's Sunday Times reported that the BBC included the sound track on a programming list for an underground network of radio stations to keep Britons' spirits up in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, The Sound of Music sound track is, without a doubt, one of our favorite things.
The Graduate, 1967
The Graduate would be an unforgettable movie without Simon & Garfunkel. But their songs feel so intertwined with Mike Nichols' classic that it's hard to imagine seeing Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) driving along the California coast without "Cecilia," or watching his listless summer memories melt into a montage without "April Come She Will." And "Sound of Silence" doesn't seem right without seeing Braddock lazily drinking a beer while drifting around his parents' pool. Of course, the biggest hit from the movie — and the song most indelibly associated with it — is "Mrs. Robinson." Simon & Garfunkel's coy "dee dee dees" seem to represent Braddock's strange relationship with the sexy older woman (Anne Bancroft), loved by Jesus more than she will know.
2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
It might be the most famous snub in movie-music history. Stanley Kubrick intended to create an original score for 2001: A Space Odyssey and commissioned the highly regarded film composer Alex North (A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus) to compose the music for his interstellar epic. But during editing, Kubrick inserted a temporary track of classical melodies, most famously synchronizing a spaceship's docking sequence to the Johan Strauss waltz "The Blue Danube." Looking at the results, the director realized he had infused his state-of-the-art science fiction with an aura of regal majesty; rather than providing audiences with emotional cues, the compositions framed the journey as something timeless and iconic. So Kubrick ditched North's score in favor of an unusual selection of classical music, stocked with the likes of German composer Richard Strauss and the avant-gardist György Ligeti. That Strauss's tone poem "Also Sprach Zarathustra," whose booming minute-long fanfare is synonymous with 2001, is one of classical music's most instantly recognizable works can be credited almost entirely to Kubrick. Though Strauss became known late in life for his operas, his other music was largely overlooked until Kubrick's masterpiece catapulted him into the pop-culture spotlight some 20 years after the composer's death.
Easy Rider, 1969
It was the trip that changed everything, man. Easy Rider was one of the films that launched the New Hollywood revolution, in which young filmmakers rejected the studio system and sought to make movies that reflected the tumult of the times. A psychedelic road-trip hit that depicted the counterculture in full flower, Easy Rider also captured the sound of an era. With songs from the Band, Jimi Hendrix and the Byrds (as well as Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild," now forevermore linked to men on motorcycles), "this was one of the first times a movie was yoked to the driving power of '60s rock 'n' roll," writes film journalist Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, his history of the New Hollywood.
The sound track happened almost by accident. Director Dennis Hopper recalled that Crosby, Stills & Nash were initially going to score the film, an idea he quickly nixed. In an interview with MovieMaker magazine, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs said that editor Donn Cambern used many of the songs as a temporary background sound track for the film. "But the music became inseparable from the pictures," said Kovacs. "When the film was cut, there was a discussion about who was going to score it. They ended up licensing the music Donn was using. They spent $1 million licensing music, which was about three times the budget for shooting the rest of the film." [to be continue][time.com]
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