I have pretty strict ideas about what constitutes a good movie soundtrack. A record full of songs, no matter how great the songs are, does not make a good soundtrack if those songs are just thrown together and have nothing whatsoever to do with the movie they are associated with. A movie soundtrack, in my opinion, should be so closely aligned with a movie that listening to it will always transport you back to the key moments of the film.
My five favorite movie soundtracks are:
Eddie and the Cruisers
Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives
Dirty Dancing
Saturday Night Fever
Grease
Every song on these soundtracks brings me back to the movie experience. Hell, I can't listen to John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band without thinking I'm listening to the fictional Eddie and the Cruisers. Dirty Dancing was when I realized Patrick Swayze could write and sing. John Travolta starred in two of the movies and on the soundtracks, and then Olivia Newton-John . . .what a voice. These are some of my favorite movies and the soundtracks are just as spectacular.
