A staple of art-house cinemas and university film programs over the years have influenced the way that aspiring directors like Martin Scorsese would come to think about the juxtaposition of moving pictures and popular music. When Scorsese’s generation took over Hollywood at the end of the 1960s, they carried Anger in their hearts and minds.
For this list of the 40 best movie soundtracks of all time, I leaned almost exclusively on the Scorpio Rising model: films scored from a variety of musical sources, many of them preexisting. There are a few exceptions. It’s hard to skip over Shaft or Superfly, even though they were created by single artists, exclusively for those projects. I’m also allowing movies that feature diegetic musical performances (like Purple Rain and Once), though in order to avoid making this list too unwieldy, I’m excluding straight-up musicals. (Sorry, Disney; sorry, MGM; sorry, Grease.). I’m also skipping conventional original instrumental scores … even when they’re unconventional, like Miles Davis’s soundtrack to Elevator to the Gallows, or Anton Karas’s inescapable The Third Man zither, or the Brazilian bossa nova of Black Orpheus.
Instead, what you’ll mostly find below are song-driven soundtracks that had significant cultural impact, in various ways: by becoming best sellers; by introducing (or reintroducing) songs to heavy radio rotation; by summarizing entire musical subgenres; or by helping to create singular cinematic moments. To cover as much ground as possible, I limited filmmakers known for their great soundtracks (like Spike Lee and Sofia Coppola) to one entry each. But just about every modern musical genre is represented, from hip-hop to grunge to avant-garde classical.
Let’s drop the needle…
40. Straight Outta Compton (2015)
Just like the N.W.A biopic, its soundtrack tracks the history of the hip-hop group from its earliest recordings to its post-breakup solo work. But the Straight Outta Compton album also includes some of the funk and R&B legends (in particular George Clinton and Roy Ayers) who helped inspire Dr. Dre’s laid-back, bass-heavy West Coast sound. This isn’t just a collection of some of the most influential recordings of the ’80s and ’90s, it’s an origin story for how they came to be.
39. Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Some of the best single-artist soundtracks function as de facto compilations. AC/DC has never released a proper “greatest hits” collection, but their album Who Made Who — featuring new and old songs that the Aussie hard-rockers let Stephen King use in his lone directorial effort, Maximum Overdrive — comes closest. “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Hells Bells,” “For Those About to Rock” … these are staples of classic-rock radio and sports arenas, and a signal from King that his movie about killer trucks is meant to be good, dumb fun.
38. Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann loves the big emotions and unapologetic artifice of old Hollywood movies and Top 40 music; so throughout his career he’s been unafraid to score scenes with catchy tunes, even when they may seem on paper like a mismatch. His boffo Shakespeare adaptation is daring in the way it puts the Bard’s words into the mouths of warring crime families in a modern coastal city. But Luhrmann then intensifies the anachronism by having his star-crossed lovers (played by an impossibly young and sweet-looking Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes) smooch and swoon to posh songs like the Cardigans’ “Lovefool” and Des’ree’s “Kissing You.” The soundtrack went triple-platinum in the U.S., signaling pop culture’s move away from gruff grunge and toward danceable romanticism with a synthesizer sheen.
(Excerpt) Read More at: Vulture.com