Opinions vary widely as to the virtues of the blaxploitation era—the movies provided black artists and actors with jobs, creative outlets, and box office cache, but also played into stereotypes dictated by (mostly) white directors and studio heads. It’s hard to fault the music, though, with the slightly disreputable genre providing some all-time great soundtracks. If it’s not the best of the bunch (with only three non-instrumental tracks), Isaac Hayes’ Shaft double album includes one of the most memorable theme songs in cinema history.

Super Fly was the highest grossing film of the blaxploitation era, pulling in something in the neighborhood of $200 million in 2022 money. But the soundtrack was released in advance of the film, and much of the movie’s success had to do with the popularity of the Curtis Mayfield album, which did even better than the movie. It a crossover hit for largely segregated radio stations, somehow appealing to broad audiences despite complex lyrics about poverty and drug addiction. With songs like “Little Child Runnin’ Wild,” “Freddie’s Dead,” and, especially “Pusherman,” it’s Mayfield’s magnum opus.

The movie is a perfectly fine (pretty good, even) crime drama, but this is an instance in which the soundtrack is wildly more significant. Star Jimmy Cliff is, first and foremost, a legendary reggae performer, and provided the movie’s title track while curating other singles from himself and other major Jamaican reggae artists. If you’re wondering what the big deal is about a collection of reggae hits, consider that the genre was almost entirely a Jamaican phenomenon before 1972; with this album, it went global.

Claudine arrived squarely in the middle of the blaxploitation era, a romantic comedy-drama with serious performances (from Diahann Carroll, who earned an Oscar nomination, and James Earl Jones) and more thoughtful themes. The soundtrack is a straight Gladys Knight & the Pips album, with the group contributing pretty much all of the music, which was written by Curtis Mayfield. Singles “On and On” and “The Makings of You,” as well as “Mr. Welfare Man” are highlights, but there’s not a dud in the bunch.

The moment when disco hit its pop-culture zenith was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the beginning of the end for a genre that began as a signifier of a late-night subculture apart from suburban white kids, but which became so broadly popular that now resides in the cultural consciousness as a punchline. The transition moment came when both this Bee Gees-heavy album and the accompanying John Travolta movie became immediate smash hits, one fueling the other. The album is among the top ten highest-selling of all time, and only behind The Bodyguard among movie soundtracks.

The Ramones are the headliners here, but there’s also a great assortment of bangers from post-punk artists on the cusp of the New Wave: Nick Lowe, Brian Eno, Devo, and Todd Rundgren, among others.

The Dondi-inspired Wild Style logo might be a bit better remembered than the film itself, but the movie is a moment in hip-hop history, really the first time that rap and, especially, the formative South Bronx rap culture of the era, made it to the big screen. With Fab 5 Freddy serving as musical director, the album captures the flavor of those days and is all the better for including a run of essential early talents who remain somewhat lesser-known (Grandmaster Caz, Cold Crush Brothers, the multitalented Rammellzee, to name a few).

I’m breaking my own rule here by including a musical, but how can a list of the greatest soundtracks not include Purple Rain? Prince didn’t care about rules, so why should I? “When Doves Cry, ” “Let’s Go Crazy,” “The Beautiful Ones,” ...there’s not a single song on the album that doesn’t represent some of the artist and the era’s best music.

The utterly unclassifiable Repo Man (science fiction dark comedy? Harry Dean Stanton/Emilio Estevez buddy satire?) came packaged with a soundtrack that was never going to do well in Reagan-era America—something the movie didn’t particularly give a shit about, either. A glorious time capsule of the souther California punk scene in the early ‘80s, it includes curated tracks from Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies, The Circle Jerks, and Fear, with a new title song from Iggy Pop, who was so impressed with an early cut of the film that he volunteered to write it.

If you’re a student of the ‘80s power ballad, you could do a helluva lot worse than to strap in with Kenny Loggins, Berlin, Cheap Trick, and Loverboy for this collection of hits that, like the movie itself, takes a trip into the danger zone between the ultra-butch and the extremely gay (perhaps best exemplified by the album’s fifth single: “Playing with the Boys.”) Loggins’ hummable, campy “Danger Zone” is probably the stand-out, but Berlin’s Take My Breath Away won the Oscar that year.

Try to think of Dirty Dancing without hearing Oscar-winning single “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” and you’ll understand how indelibly a song and movie can align in our imaginations. Then there’s Eric Carmen’s “Hungry Eyes,” and even Patrick Swayze’s own “She’s Like the Wind,” both ‘80s contemporary jams, plus a solid assortment of vintage hits from the movie’s early-’60s setting. Taken together, the soundtrack becomes both a Kennedy-era period piece and a very ‘80s experience.

It could be argued that Pretty in Pink provides the best soundtrack of the John Hughes oeuvre, but I’m going to argue Some Kind of Wonderful tops it. While the former plays a bit like a greatest hits album (albeit one for discerning ‘80s music fans), Some Kind of Wonderful feels more of a piece with the subdued vibe of the film, with deeper cuts from Pete Shelley, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Furniture, and Flesh for Lulu.

Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” is inextricably linked in our minds with Spike Lee’s masterpiece: it’s playing from Radio Raheem’s boombox throughout the film. That’s not the only vibe, though, with a blend of summer jams (like “My Pleasure,” a bit of new jack swing that was the album’s biggest hit single by far), and more sultry, languid tracks like Brit-reggae group Steel Pulse’s “Can’t Stand It.”

After a brief, meteoric rise with the first couple of Superman films, superhero movies were in a period of decline when Tim Burton took on Batman as a project; Prince, likewise, was looking for a revival after his best album, “Sign o’the Times,” wasn’t the hit he’d been hoping for. So, with both on the Warner Bros. label, Batman and the artist soon to be formerly known as Prince teamed up for something funky and sensual. The soundtrack perfectly complements the fundamental weirdness of Burton’s style while in no way panders to notions of what a superhero movie should sound like. It’s one of the last times that the genre was even remotely sexy, and that’s largely down to Prince.

It might not be entirely fair, but Singles lives in pop culture consciousness as the defining film of white Generation X coming of age in the early 1990s. Given the vibe and the era, the soundtrack in no way disappoints, including Seattle grunge superstars (and soon-to-be mainstream legends) like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Chris Cornell, and Pearl Jam. You can practically feel the flannel.

You can be forgiven for not really remembering The Bodyguard, the movie—on its own it’s fine, but hardly a classic. Even if you’ve never even seen it, though, it’s all but guaranteed your brain conjures that musical swell and impossible high note of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” In addition to that Dolly Parton cover, the album produced six singles, all of them hits, with highlights including “I’m Every Woman,” “I Have Nothing,” and “Run to You.” It’s the third highest-selling album of all time, and the most successful of all time by a woman artist; two of the tracks even competed against one another for Oscars.

Like the movie itself, the soundtrack for Menace II Society both celebrates early ‘90s-era gangsta rap, but also paints a far more nuanced portrait of life in Watts and Crenshaw than suburban whites at the time were willing to entertain. Artists represented include Boogie Down Productions, Brand Nubian, Da Lench Mob, DJ Quik, Hi-Five, and Juanita Stokes. Some of the talents represented peaked here, making the album even more interesting and essential (the movie also features a lot more music than was included on the soundtrack, so you need both to get the full experience).

This film and soundtrack involved an impressive bit of pop culture curation on Quentin Tarantino’s part (say what you will about the director, he has a firm grip on 20th century American mass media), dusting off ephemera from the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s and tossing songs together in a way that shouldn’t work nearly as well as it does. No matter how venerable their histories, it’s hard to hear some of the songs here without thinking of Pulp Fiction, and it’s impossible to imagine the (otherwise score-less) movie without them.

If you have any familiarity with the film, you’ll be able to make a pretty good guess at the vibe of the soundtrack; that’s what makes it so great. An assortment of alt rock, emo, and industrial music of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the eyeliner-heavy album includes tracks from groups like The Cure, Stone Temple Pilots, Violent Femmes, and The Jesus and Mary Chain. The covers here are frequently the highlights: Pantera does a solid version of Poison Idea’s “The Badge,” while Nine Inch Nails covers Joy Division’s “Dead Souls”—truly a goth team-up for the ages.

Above the Rim represented both the height of Tupac’s film career and was the last major movie he starred in to be released before his death. Suge Knight produced the accompanying album (with an assist from Dr. Dre), and while Shakur only shows up on one track (or three, if you’re listening to the extended version), Death Row Records artists of the era are copiously represented. Underrated MC Lady of Rage had her biggest hit here with “Afro Puffs.”

Even with mostly original songs, the Empire Records soundtrack is one-stop shopping for mid-‘90s alt-rock. Gin Blossoms, The Cranberries, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Better Than Ezra, Cracker: The movie tanked (some of the singles from the soundtrack are much better known) at the box office, but has become a cult fave in the intervening years, and the music played no small part in that legacy.

Just as the movie represents a team-up of some to the most iconic Black women in American entertainment, the Babyface-produced soundtrack does much the same, making it a perfect complement to the film. Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, TLC, Brandy, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Faith Evans, Patti LaBelle, SWV, Mary J. Blige, and others came together to produce a multiple-Grammy-winning album that offered up seven hit singles. What’s more, the entire album runs with the movie’s themes of mutual support and self-love; it’s not just a collection of unrelated songs.

Movie and soundtrack are in perfect accord here, by necessity: none of the songs really go together: though most all are vaguely classifiable as alt rock, blending Radiohead with Garbage with Butthole Surfers makes for an eclectic grouping that works in the movie, and so works as an album. Highlights include “Talk Show Host” from Radiohead, but the most memorable track is undoubtedly Kym Mazelle’s cover of “Young Hearts Run Free.”

The Trainspotting soundtrack is a small miracle. It’s a time capsule in that it includes tracks from some of the best Britpop bands of the era (Blur, Sleeper, Elastica, etc.) but also tracks that feel timeless, like Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” The music complements the movie perfectly, replicating its alternately frenetic and stoned vibes, and also feeling exactly like the kind of music that Rent Boy and friends would would be listen to. Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life,” already nearly two decades old when the movie came out, has become inseparable linked with it.

As in all things, Wes Anderson was very deliberate in his choice of music for Rushmore, taking inspiration from the Kinks to represent a wide swath of 1960s British pop artists (some well known, like The Who, and others more obscure, like Unit 4+2), underscoring scenes with a retro, slightly twee feel that makes the music inseparable from the film as a whole. (And yes, arguably any Wes Anderson soundtrack could feature here; The Royal Tenenbaums was a close second, and I also appreciate the esoteric flair of The Life Aquatic.)

Capturing the Coen Brothers’ heightened version of rural Mississippi in the late 1930s, the soundtrack album recreates music of the era with modern artists, mostly. The Soggy Bottom Boys (a team-up of bluegrass artists who came together just for the film) made an unlikely mainstream hit of 1913 folk song “Man of Constant Sorrow”; the success of the album as a whole saw a brief but delightful revival of interest in bluegrass and folk music of days gone by.

A movie about music would be a fail without a killer soundtrack (it’s happened), but 24 Hour Party People set itself up with an extra-complicated task. Concerned with the Manchester music scene between the late ‘70s into the early ‘90s, film and soundtrack need to represent a swath of music, taking us from from the heyday of Sex Pistols-esque punk, through New Wave-style synth pop, and into the era of techno and acid house (represented by 808 State and Marshall Jefferson). As such, the soundtrack isn’t merely a time capsule, it’s a chronicle of over a decade’s worth of change in music culture, and makes clear how earlier styles influenced what was to come.

The sense of dreamy alienation that director Sofia Coppola conjured for Lost in Translation is very much present in the soundtrack album, with several songs from My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields alongside some truly great electronic, alt-rock, and shoegaze tracks from bands like Death in Vegas, Air, and Jesus and Mary Chain (music that was all my ethereal, slightly depressing jam back in the day).

Movies about made-up bands have the real challenge of offering up convincing music that doesn’t sound like...well, made-up music. Scott Pilgrim squared that circle by bringing in real artists to run things (like Beck Hansen), and by using actors with at least some musical talent. The result is a convincing and entirely listenable garage-band vibe, backed up by tracks that include artists like Frank Black, T. Rex, Metric, and Broken Social Scene.

A blend of soundtrack and concept album (not all of the songs make their way into the movie), the Kendrick Lamar performed Black Panther represents an impressive commitment on Marvel’s part to hyping the movie—the least the studio could do given that the prior 16 movies in the series had seen exclusively white male leads. It might not be Lamar’s best album (a high bar), but it’s still great, with artists like The Weeknd, SZA, and Future joining the rapper for a series of tracks that both complement the movie, and that together celebrate African futurism.