When talking pictures arrived in the late 1920s, songs from movies became big business. Al Jolson, who starred in The Jazz Singer, the first blockbuster talkie, sold millions of 78 RPM records.
Fifteen years later, Irving Berlin sat next to a swimming pool in Hollywood and wrote White Christmas for the film Holiday Inn. The Bing Crosby version, released on July 30, 1942, is still the biggest-selling single of all time with lifetime sales somewhere in excess of $50 million.
When Columbia Records unveiled the long-playing vinyl album at a big ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in June 1948, Hollywood was very interested. Since almost the beginning of recorded music, songs from Broadway musicals and films had been a major source of hits. Movie producers saw the LP as another way to promote their movies and the songs they contained.
It didn’t take long for soundtrack albums — along with original cast recordings from Broadway productions — to become wildly popular.
Rock ‘n’ roll got into the act. Rock Around the Clock, the classic Bill Haley & His Comets recording, played under the opening credits of the 1954 film, Blackboard Jungle, causing kids worldwide to jump into the aisles and dance. Fast-forward to the 60s and movie soundtracks got even bigger, thanks to The Beatles (A Hard Day’s Night and Help!) and, most importantly, The Sound of Music from 1965, which for years was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling record (not just soundtrack) of all time. The latest guess is that it has sold more than 20 million copies.
But it was Saturday Night Fever in 1977 that really broke things open. The Bee Gees-heavy record was the source of eight hit singles on the radio, four of which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, propelling the double album to sales of $40 million, give or take. It was followed a year later by Grease, which has sold 28 million copies.
There was big, big money to be made in soundtracks, and both the recorded music industry and Hollywood knew it. It also helped that studios and labels began to consolidate, making it easier to create synergies when it came to promotion, marketing, acquiring talent, and licensing songs. A movie had to be accompanied by a soundtrack album. And even if the movie tanked, the soundtrack could backstop things a little. Car Wash from 1976 and FM from 1977 are good examples.
It worked, and everyone was happy: Urban Cowboy (1980), The Big Chill (1983), Flashdance (1983), Purple Rain (1984), Footloose (1984), Top Gun (1986), Dirty Dancing (1987), Cocktail (1998), and every single John Hughes film. And that’s just a tiny sample of gold- and platinum-selling movie soundtracks from the decade.
The ’90s were even better. Boyz N the Hood (1991), The Bodyguard (1992, 50 million copies sold with Whitney Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You staying at number one for 14 weeks), Singles (1992, a grunge-era classic), Wayne’s World (1992, which gave Bohemian Rhapsody its current second life), Judgement Night (1993, the album that brought rock and rap together), Pulp Fiction (1994), Natural Born Killers (1994), the first two The Crow movies (1994 and 1996), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Trainspotting (1996), and Titanic (1996, 30 million copies sold) are at the top of my list.
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There were also lesser movies that yielded hits that are still played today. Til I Hear It From You by the Gin Blossoms first showed up on the Empire Records soundtrack. Think Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls, which was write been for the 1998 film, City of Angels, and has now been streamed over a billion times.
Gangsta’s Paradise from Dangerous Minds turned Coolio into a star. There’s The Flys’ awesome one-hit wonder, Got You Where I Want You from Disturbing Behaviour (1998), or the uber-soppy Aerosmith ballad, I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, written by Diane Warren.
Michael Bay, the director of Armageddon, was a driving force behind the success of movie soundtracks. He realized that kids went to see movies at the multiplex at the mall and that after the film, they’d inevitably wander into the two or three record stores to look for new CDs. Why not entice them with the soundtrack from the movie they just saw? Shrewd move. Very profitable.
By the end of the 20th century, all movies, regardless of genre, needed a soundtrack album. Ever watch the credits roll by on some obscure movie and see something like, “Official soundtrack available on MCA records and tapes,” or something similar? Hundreds of movies had accompanying soundtrack albums, whether they deserved them or not.
The peak years were the late ’70s and early ’80s. Films were a major source of music discovery both in the theatre and rentals from Blockbuster. And lo, it was good. Then it wasn’t.
The movie soundtrack frenzy died in the early 2000s, just after Eminem scored with the Eight Mile soundtrack. Today, entire movie soundtracks are pretty rare. There was a brief rise in the popularity of soundtracks in the 2010s thanks to heavily-streamed songs like See You Again by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth from Furious 7 (2015), the musical, The Greatest Showman (2017), the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga remake of A Star is Born (2018), and Bohemian Rhapsody (2018.) However, compared to the pre-internet era, things were pretty weak outside of Frozen, Moana and a few other animated films for reasons only pre-teens can appreciate.
Today, old-school movie soundtracks are almost nowhere to be seen. Where once we’d have half a dozen such albums on the charts at any given time, the only blockbuster in recent years has been KPop Demon Hunters. And with many sequels planned, those soundtracks will have a cultural footprint approaching Saturday Night Fever.
If anyone can remember the last time a movie song became a big rock radio hit, let me know because I’m drawing a blank. When I was on the air back in the ’90s, a new, interesting soundtrack came in every week.
Music and movies have always gone together and they always will. But it doesn’t look like we’re ever going to get close to the way things once were.
