Ahhh... the dollars trilogy! Yes! Great, iconic soundtracks for all of them!

Me, I'm sticking to one-off films, and my next choice is John Waters' 1988 classic, Hairspray!



Not the musical or the 2007 movie of the musical version, the original. It's full of great tracks from 1962, selected by Kenny Vance, who also did the soundtrack for Animal House - another film set in 1962 with a great soundtrack.

To be sure, two of the songs used in the film are from 1963, and Toussaint McCall's epic ballad "Nothing Takes the Place of You" came out in 1967, but it fits the period so very well, it just had to be there.

28 songs make up the soundtrack, and they're pretty much all bangers. List here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairspray_(1988_soundtrack)

So get on out there and do The Bird!

Electron microscope rock and roll science!

My John Williams pick is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which got him an Oscar nomination in 1978... along with his nomination for Star Wars!



My favorite part of the soundtrack is "The Dialogue" where Williams gives us a fugue for synthesizer and mothership. Playfully, he adds in a bit of his Jaws theme. 

Splinter

What are the soundtracks that just *make* the film for you? The ones you could play over and over, and even without the film rolling, you can experience the film along with the songs? That's this list!

We want overall scores on this list. If there's a great theme and a meh score, save it for the "best themes" list that will likely roll out once we're done here.

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I'm going to start off with one of my dear favorites, Elmer Bernstein's score for Robot Monster!



And once it starts, the greatness of the theme music commences! Elmer Bernstein had been blacklisted and was only able to get work on B-movie scores, and this is a B-movie sooooo bad it rivals Plan 9 From Outer Space as the worst of the worst. But that Bernstein score stands right out as perhaps the lone redeeming feature in a desert of terrible acting, terrible special effects, terrible script, and terrible everything else. And it's not a case of everything being so bad, it makes the score seem good: it really is that good. I remember watching this with my kids in a Golden Turkey festival and all of us remarking on the amazingly good music score. It was so good, we had to look up the composer and with a name like Elmer Bernstein, well, you don't forget that name!

It was only after that that we found out he hit the big time later on and did loads of blockbuster movie scores, including Ghostbusters... but this is where it started for him, and I LOVE the soundtrack! Great Halloween music, much of it!

Deepest Purple for sure is a strong compilation album.

Mark, Don, and Mel was a great introduction to Grand Funk Railroad, I'd recommend that one, as well.

Elvis' History 1 - a collection of his #1 hits - is also quite good, as is The Best of Little Richard from Rhino CDs.

Finally I can get my tai-chi forms done without hearing the Commodores screaming, "Celebrate," in my ears at 195 dB!

No more Kool & The Gang doing "Brick House" at top volume whilst doing goat yoga!

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/article-abstract/2845565

You can turn down the volume on that workout music and still get a good workout. No need to go deaf as you get ripped.