The 40 greatest movie soundtracks of all time, ranked

Effectively a digital rendering of the cherished mixtape Peter Quill keeps to remind him of his home on Earth, Guardians Of The Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 is filled with songs you know by heart: they’re the kind of songs that formed the core of oldies radio or Jack FM, their familiarity extended through use in movies. Indeed, a few of the cuts here are strongly identified with other films—Blue Swede’s gonzo reading of BJ Thomas’ “Hooked On A Feeling” played an indelible part in Reservoir Dogs—but when jumbled together on Star-Lord’s ancient cassette these super hits of the 1970s manage to keep connected to its gaudy B-movie roots.

A bona fide pop culture relic of the time before MTV, the 1981 theatrical adaptation of the sci-fi comic magazine boasts a soundtrack that’s only marginally less redolent of its era than the film itself. This is the sound of album-oriented rock at the dawn of the 1980s, a subculture filled with jean jackets, bongs, sexy aliens, and vans bedecked with murals. Some of the connections within the soundtrack can seem lost to time—why is Donald Fagen here with his first post-Steely Dan cut? Why is there so much music from former Eagle Don Felder?—but the fun of the album is to hear Sammy Hagar’s full-throated title track butt up against Journey’s power ballad “Open Arms” and a bunch of vaguely anonymous AOR from the aging Nazareth and a guy called Riggs.

A massive hit upon its release in 1983—it wound up spending a whopping 161 weeks on the Billboard charts—the soundtrack to Lawrence Kasdan’s reunion dramedy is the moment where the sound of young America turned into nostalgia. Relying heavily on Motown hits—in its original incarnation, six of the 10 songs hailed from Detroit—the soundtrack helped turn this once-groundbreaking music into comforting sounds of yesteryear. Decades later, The Big Chill can still sound like a good-time soundtrack to a perennial party.

The soundtrack to Alex Cox’s cult classic acts as a time capsule, bringing back the grimy days of the early 1980s. Cox designed the soundtrack as a salute to the punk underground of Los Angeles, loading it up with cuts by the Circle Jerks and the Plugz, then getting the scene’s spiritual godfather Iggy Pop to write a theme song. With such classics as Black Flag’s “TV Party” and “Institutionalized” by Suicidal Tendencies anchoring the record, Repo Man can serve as a good introduction to this particular genre, but it also excels in capturing the nervous energy and sick humor of the film.

Like the film it accompanies, : The Soundtrack effectively serves as a Cliffs Notes of the Baby Boom generation. Opening with Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” and ending with Bob Seger’s romantic “Against The Wind,” the soundtrack doesn’t hit upon every trend or phenomenon—there is no disco, for instance, plus not a lot of early R&B—but as it races from the folk revival through psychedelia and Southern rock to land at Fleetwood Mac, it seems as the album offers a cultural history in miniature.

Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power,” the most galvanizing protest song of its generation, rightly looms over , giving a misleading impression that the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s masterpiece delivers nothing but catharsis. That’s not the case. Like the film itself, the soundtrack touches upon the bright cacophony of city life, matching reggae breezes with heavy go-go, romantic ballads with funk workouts, finding space for quiet storm—and New Jack Swing.

There is no record more 1993 than , the soundtrack to a crime thriller starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Denis Leary. The concept for the soundtrack is simple and brilliant: pair alt-rockers with rappers, thereby cornering the market on two of the most popular sounds of the time. Rap-rock had been kicking around for a while—at least since Run-DMC invited Aerosmith to “Walk This Way”—but it had yet to be codified as lowest common denominator mook-rock, which means a revisit to Judgment Night can deliver some surprises. There’s some aggression here—witness the opening “Just Another Victim” from Helmet and House of Pain—but there’s a lot of thrilling weirdness coming from such pairings as Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul, Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill, Dinosaur Jr. and Del the Funky Homosapien, not to mention the gonzo bad taste of Sir Mix-A-Lot and Mudhoney’s “Freak Momma.”

is all about teenage rebellion so it’s a little amusing that the soundtrack masterminded by screenwriter Dean Pitchford skews so heavily toward adult-oriented pop. Apart from Moving Pictures, whose closing “Never” feels like a coda, every act featured on Footloose is a 1970s survivor, giving the album a curiously retro flavor that’s readily apparent in retrospect; Karla Bonoff’s “Somebody’s Eyes” is yacht rock by any other name. All these studio pros did manage to convey a sense of adolescence, though, an emotion that ties together the exuberance of Kenny Loggins’ theme song and Deniece Williams’s “Let’s Hear It For The Boy” as well as Mike Reno and Ann Wilson’s power ballad “Almost Paradise … Love Theme from Footloose.” Then, there’s the record’s masterpiece, “Holding Out For A Hero,” a Jim Steinman co-write that is more cinematic than the film itself.

In some ways, the soundtrack to the 1994 basketball drama serves as a testament to the power of Death Row in the mid-1990s. Supervised by Dr. Dre, Above The Rim expands the hazy sound of G-funk to smoother territory, relying heavily on R&B vocal groups while also finding space for the film’s star Tupac Shakur. “Regulate,” the Warren G and Nate Dogg track that turned into the record’s signature anthem, hits the sweet spot of smooth soul and gritty hip-hop.

Tim Burton used a couple of old Prince songs on the temporary soundtrack for his eagerly anticipated adaptation of , thereby opening the gates for the Purple One to write an entire collection of songs inspired by this big-budget version of the Caped Crusader. Burton already had a score from Danny Elfman in place, so Prince had the freedom to roam, which is exactly what he did: he swiped dialogue from the film, wrote “Partyman” as a tribute to Jack Nicholson, then assembled the album so certain songs were sung from the perspective of Batman or the Joker. The apotheosis of his mischief is “Batdance,” a collage of rhythms, jokes, and samples that only sounds stranger as the years pass, but the collection of fizzy funk and vibrant pop remains compelling.

Denied permission to use David Bowie songs in his glam rock fantasia, Todd Haynes opted to spruce up some glittery oldies with new covers by glam’s heirs, as well as a couple of made-to-order originals. Blending the past and present, authentic relics with canny replicas, turns out to be a masterstroke, emphasizing the sexy fluidity and kinetic kick of the glam era. It helps that the originals by Grant Lee Buffalo, Shudder to Think, and Pulp hold their own against vintage Brian Eno, Roxy Music, and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel: it assists Haynes in his mission of blurring boundaries between reality and dreams.

Curtis Mayfield found poetry within Gordon Parks Jr.’s , riffing upon the film’s ghetto crime saga to address societal ills. Mayfield doesn’t sound enamored by the hustlers and drug dealers he chronicles: “Pusherman” and “Superfly” bristle with anger, while “Freddie’s Dead” carries a real undercurrent of sorrow. Mayfield tempers his disdain with sumptuous arrangements, bold funk and silky vocals, a combination that has all the lush allure of early 1970s soul while also suiting the grittiness of the film’s story.

Thanks to T Bone Burnett’s masterful curation and production, —the Coen Brothers’ Southern fried interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey—became something more than a hit. With its wiley, heartfelt resurrections of Depression-era folk, country, and blues, O Brother, Where Art Thou became a touchstone for a generation of Americana artists, helping bring old-timey string bands and harmony groups back in fashion.