Weekly Top 5: All-Time Movie Soundtracks

Posted by Brian C. Gibson (brian@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 6, 2006

Time again for yet another very fun edition of Weekly Top 5. Sometimes when I listen to the radio and hear a song, it immediately takes me back to a memorable movie scene. Seriously, I can’t go to pottery classes anymore with at least once wanting to take my shirt off and playing “Unchained Melody”. That, my friends, brings me to my point. Movies and music coexist beautifully when the right choices are made, and some of us remember things a bit better through a good tune. With that, I bring you the Top 5 All Time Movie Soundtracks:

5. The Harder They Come (1972)

In a time when most Americans didn’t know whether Reggae was music or some type of insulting slang word, Jimmy Cliff changed everything. Reggae music and artists to follow such as Bob Marley can look at The Harder They Come as an influential turning point in music history.

4. The Graduate (1967)

While by 1967 music had already found its way into the cinema, it was normally in the form of bad surfing movies and Elvis projects. The Graduate marks the first time that, by opinion, the film either thrusted Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” into pop-culture or quite possibly the song itself gave this film enough steam to eventually be considered #7 on A.F.I.’s top 100 movies of all time.

3. Superfly (1972)

Well, yet again an artist single-handedly built an entire fan base for a film. Superfly was scored by Curtis Mayfield who was a man with a lot to say about the inner-city and used the film’s soundtrack as an outlet of expression. Mayfield’s trademark guitar riffs and haunting lyrics will forever echo through the minds of millions of fans of this cult classic.

2. Forrest Gump (1994)

While some may argue that this is more of a music collection, it still qualifies as a soundtrack. The film’s music sweeps us through portions of decades almost as gracefully as the film does. Perhaps taking some back to better times, worse times and also times in which music actually meant something in someone’s life.

1. Grease (1978)

No matter how much you would like to deny it, i bet you can sing along to a few of these songs without having seen the movie or heard the soundtrack in years. Catapulting the careers of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and inspiring one of the strongest cult followings in film, makes Grease the #1 All Time Movie Soundtrack.

Read more articles by Brian C. Gibson