The Best Album Soundtracks of All-Time

20. Jackie Brown

Now that all is said and done and I’m probably not going to grow to like many more of the songs on this soundtrack from about 13 years ago (but you never know), this is almost the closest thing to “soul” music that a honky like me will ever listen to.

19. Goodfellas

Even though, I don’t know anyone who’s ever bought a soundtrack to a Martin Scorsese album, he’s going to have three on my list. It’s impossible to forget hearing Layla’s powerful piano outro as bodies keep piling up, just as is discovering Jimmy Conway’s ruthlessness while hearing Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love.

18. The Blues Brothers

I’ll be honest. I’ve never heard it, and have no immediate plans to listen to it, but just as I don’t know anyone who’s ever bought a Scorsese soundtrack, I remember loads of people owning this one.

17. Mean Streets

If soundtracks were released in 1973, this one would’ve sold like gang busters. Long before Scorsese was showing just how cool the Stones were in movies like Casino, he had Robert DeNiro walking into a bar with a lady in each hand to “Jumping Jack Flash.” Combine that with the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby, and you have a wonderful soundtrack. This was basically the blueprint for the Goodfellas Soundtrack.

16. Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

This is a funky soundtrack for a funky movie.

15. Casino

Here’s where I’ll close out Scorsese. Although this isn’t much better than his others, it’s bigger and has some classic tunes on here. Just as he left us with bodies piling up to Layla, here we were left with bodies piling up to House of the Rising Sun.

14. The Doors

Upside: A great soundtrack with some classic Doors and even the Velvet Underground found their way on it. Downside: Jim Morrison poetry rants.

13. Reservoir Dogs

This was the soundtrack we all went to the stores to buy after we heard how good the Pulp Fiction soundtrack was.

12. Judgment Night

UH OH! HAS ZACH GONE CRAZY!!! I DON’T THINK SO!
Okay, I’ll stop capitalizing. We all remember the whole grunge bands teaming up with hip hop acts for this terrible movie. In the early 90s, this was THEE soundtrack.

11. Superfly

Curtis Mayfield in the house!

10. Kill Bill Vol. 1

The downside of this, is it came out in an age where more and more of us began downloading songs off the internet rather than going to cool places with names like Vinyl Fever to buy albums. This will be the last great soundtrack … I think, that is, if it’s great to begin with.

9. Natural Born Killers

Even though I was never a Trent Reznor fan, I loved what he did with this album. I know this album is classic because it was stolen from my college dormitory by Shady Mike’s girlfriend. Probably had that one coming though for letting someone we called “Shady” Mike bring his girlfriend over while I wasn’t there.

8. Forrest Gump

Sure it’s kind of cheesy, but the selection of great American rock classics on this goes unparalleled.

7. The Graduate

Simon and Garfunkle created what we now known as the soundtrack with this one. Up until now, all movies really gave us were fantastic scores and silly musicals. This one really changed it all, but lacked a little variety.

6. The Big Lebowski

This one made Creedence fun again and the movie said what we’re all constantly thinking, “I just fucking hate the Eagles man!” Seeing Jesus dressed in a purple jumpsuit and licking his ball to a Spanish style Hotel California is bad ass. Dylan’s The Man in Me is badass and of course, Tumbling Tumbleweeds was a great pre-cursor to what the Coen Bros. would do a few years later.

5. Boogie Nights

In the latter 90s, this collection gave us all those fun songs from the late 70s that we were unable to collect on our own. This was before Napster after all.

4. Purple Rain

Obviously … duh!

3. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

I’m sure we all have an “old timey” section on our ipods by now.

2. Singles

To be honest, I’ve never owned this one, but this defined the early 90s. Flannels, ripped jeans, Eddie Vedder, Trees that screamed, Ethan Hawke (whether he was in the movie or not), this had it all. This defined many people back then.

1. Dirty Dancing

C'mon! It had like 18 #1 hits!!! Wait a minute, it sucks? Of course it does. Here we go ...

1. Pulp Fiction

Part of the reason the movie was so great, was we had never really heard a unique soundtrack that match up with a great movie so well before. Though many of these songs are real popular now, they weren’t nearly as big before 1994.