The Best Selling Movie Soundtracks vs. The “Best” Sounding Movie Soundtracks…

Monday is about movies, sometimes TV. Today, it’s movie soundtracks…for a change!

Sorry, from time to time you know I’m going to just bang on about movie soundtracks, film score, the music that accompanies moving pictures. I’m building quite the collection of film soundtracks, it spills over across several hundred CDs and several hundred vinyl LPs, with some double-ups (I just like having Twin Peaks and The Mission and Carrie and Batman and The Big Chill on both CD and vinyl…)

When you get into listing things — and lists of ‘best’ — there’s that awkward battle between best-selling and best-regarded/reviewed/received. I was curious to know the difference with film scores. For a start, most people don’t seem to know, fully, what a film ‘score’ is, preferring a ‘soundtrack’. I guess, when it comes to buying film soundtracks it’s usually about a key big song — and several of the best-sellers rely entirely on that.

Anyway, I own the Top 5 best-rated movie soundtracks of the last 50 years (according to The Ringer). And I also own the Top 5 best-selling movie soundtracks (according to well, Google). So let’s take a look and see (and hear) what the difference is…I like the fact that there’s not a single album that occurs on both lists.

Let’s look at the best-sellers first.

From five to one, it’s:

Grease (1978)

You see this soundtrack absolutely everywhere for next to no money. I’ve rescued several copies from dump-stores and the like, I’ve given away copies of it, thinking I no longer need it in my collection only for it to boomerang right back. I have it on vinyl and CD currently and don’t really ‘need’ it on either, but I appreciate it’s got some bangers. I need never hear Summer Nights either at home or out in the wold, but I’ll pimp Frankie Valli’s Bee Gees-assisted title track all day long! The film? I could care less about it, of course I’ve seen it, but it means nothing to me.

Titanic (1997)

I absolutely loathed this movie. It was build up beyond belief, I had a friend who worked the cinema and told me I had to see it. I told him he was wrong. He told me he’d comp me just so I could tell him what I thought. I told him what I thought. It slightly changed our friendship. And of course I could not escape Celine Dion’s hit single — because no one could escape it. I never thought to listen to the score until a couple of years ago when in the full madness of movie-score addiction I bought a copy for a few clams from TradeMe. It arrived, and…I kinda loved it. James Horner knew his way around plenty of great scores. He was never my favourite, though I won’t deny him Braveheart. And I really love his work on Glory. Celine’s song still gives me the all-day shits, but, weirdly, hearing it in the context of this album I.Did.Not.Turn.It.Off! And I can’t say I expected that!

Dirty Dancing (1987)

I’m much happier with the film Dirty Dancing. It’s fun. It’s not a must-see, nor any sort of classic really, but it’s fine. And the best thing about it, by miles, is the soundtrack. Some gems. It’s an 80s movie, but it’s set earlier, so it gets thought of as “80s music” but it’s mostly from the 50s, with one or two 80s songs — including its big single, (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life. But, yeah, sure, never mind that, stay for…Stay (by Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs) and the oddball-brilliance of Mickey and Sylvia’s Love Is Strange (the secret sauce to almost everything — but most importantly the guitar tone and feel and temperament of The Velvet Underground).

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

This was, for the longest while, the greatest selling movie soundtrack of all time; of all time. And the film stands up pretty decently, right? Well, it’s better and deeper than what it’s remembered for. The film’s music works pretty well as a sampler of disco’s big and obvious things in the mainstream; so, you know, not really Disco at all. But I like the Bee Gees’ Night Fever, More Than A Woman and How Deep Is Your Love more than I like Stayin’ Alive. And I love Walter Murphy’s A Fifth of Beethoven, and the 10-minute version of Disco Inferno (by the Trammps) is sometimes a reason for living.

The Bodyguard (1992)

I’ve never seen The Bodyguard. Ever. People don’t believe me. Though, why lie? I just never wanted to see it at the time, and now it feels like there’s no reason to give in. I wasn’t the biggest Kevin Costner fan — I’ve rectified that somewhat by watching a few key 1980s appearances. But still, not a huge fan at all. And Whitney? Well, I loved her first couple of records, but by the time of this era I wasn’t much interested. I like her music from this time more now. And though I’ll take Dolly’s original all day over the big banger ballad that Whitney made it, I can’t deny it’s an impressive bit of singing. And a new way in. Weirdly I quite liked hearing this, finally, when I bought it a couple of years ago, in the same TradeMe buying splurge that saw me pick up Titanic’s score.

Now, how about the best “regarded”, the critically acclaimed, the highest rated…

Again, from five to one, it’s

Superfly (1972)

I went all in on Curtis Mayfield via the brilliant People Get Ready box set. I sometimes think that’s one of the most important musical moments of my life; as good as falling head over heels for Dylan and The Beatles and Todd Rundgren and Bob James and Prince and Joni Mitchell and any of the other obsessions from various times. So, straight after, it was back to the store to buy this. It really is an amazing soundtrack, to something of a turkey of a film. It got me hooked on the Blaxploitation soundtracks that Marvin Gaye and James Brown and others served up. Curtis was the king of the great soundtrack though, making records from movies for Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight to sing on as well as his own magical soundtracks.

Goodfellas (1990)

Last year I went all in on the music Martin Scorsese makes for movies, writing about it here:

I probably first fell for his film music when he was applying actual scores (Taxi Driver) and using classical music (Raging Bull) but there’s a classic Marty movie score trick where he takes pop music from the 50s and 60s (and 70s) and basically makes his own score out of existing music. Goodfellas is a mighty fine example of that.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

You might say that Tarantino learned a lot about movies from Scorsese, and part of that was soundtrack flow and feel, and curation. Pulp Fiction’s soundtrack played for days in my hostel after I finished up watching the movie six times at the cinema!

For a while there — and I mean years! — I couldn’t bear to hear this, nor Reservoir Dogs’ soundtrack, both so overplayed. By me. By everyone. But a couple of years ago I got them both on vinyl and started listening to them now and then, once again. Bloody good times. And some amazing selections, particularly on Pulp. Now I own almost all of the Tarantino soundtracks on vinyl (just Death Proof escapes me, and I’ll noose it one day!)

The Lion King (1994)

I can’t claim to love the soundtrack to The Lion King but I absolutely adore the film. And the music is right for it, and clever, and sometimes, in a weak moment, I find myself tunelessly warbling along or bumbling into something approaching a hum. I had a second shot at this film, as a parent. And that’s where I really noticed the brilliance of the music. I’m just (mostly) not a musical/musical-theatre kind of person, so I can’t claim to love it. But there’s some stuff here that really works. And I love Hans Zimmer’s contributions of actual score over and above the song-moments.

Purple Rain (1984)

We are told that Purple Rain is the number one respected, ranked, rated, reviewed film soundtrack of all time. I don’t quite believe that, but obviously I’m a fan. Purple Rain was the first Prince album I heard all the way through, and it was one of the very first compact discs to arrive into our home, late bloomers that we were to the CD game. So the whole family listened to this. A lot. And I was leading the charge — this was my pick, a whole half-decade after it was released. The film is fun — it has dated horribly! The music is glorious. And it’s 40 years since the film and its album made Prince a true superstar. So I can’t be mad about this being the number one pick. But where are the actual scores?

Where’s Vangelis’ music for Bladerunner, and Morricone’s music for, well, everything but certainly The Mission and Cinema Paradiso and Once Upon A Time in America and The Untouchables and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly? Well, sure, many of them are on the list…further down. And hopefully not too far down we might find more actual scores: The Clint Mansells and Cliff Maritinez’ and some moonlighters like Peter Gabriel’s score for Birdy and the recent efforts from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Lisa Gerrard and Hans Zimmer’s Gladiator must surely be a top 10 or Top 20 score, even if the film is just a bit of boring old bunk, right?

Well, you can look up these lists yourself, and of course you are better off largely ignoring them and just delving into the worlds of movie music yourself. I’ve found so many gems across the last few years in particular, simply by being curious.

I’ll give you a list of my person favourites another day. Including some lesser, far less obvious picks (The Necks’ score for The Boys for instance, Paul Kelly’s score for Lantana, Mike Patton’s score for 1922, and the fabulous work of Trevor Jones). Well you can read about those, and many others in my occasional series on the Substack site, under the title “What A Good Score!” There’s nearly 40 of them so far. I’ll leave you with the latest:

So, see any favourites in this list? Heard any amazing film scores lately? Own any of these classic soundtracks? Or just not really that into movie-score music?