My 19 month-old daughter loves music. She especially loves watching concert DVDs where she can see the dancing and playing along with the music. She recognizes my music DVDs by sight now, and several times a day she’ll go to the cabinet and pick out a favorite she wants to watch. Her current favorite is “Lets Go Crazy”, which is the opening song from the movie Purple Rain. 
I’ve watched that part of the movie so many times now I can tell you how much was on the meter in the cab that Apollonia bails out of. For the record, that’s a few too many times.
Every once in a while for a change I can play “The Bird” or “Jungle Love” by The Time and she’ll dig that too. While dancing to one of those with my daughter the other day I started thinking about what a fantastic soundtrack that movie has (despite the fact that those tunes from The Time don’t appear on the soundtrack album). As a matter of fact, I couldn’t think of a better one. I’m talking strictly about music that was made for a movie — no Big Chill compilations of existing recordings. Purple Rain tops the list for me.
As far as orchestral scores though, no one from my generation tops John Williams. At this point anyone who knows me is thinking “Now he’s going to go on and on about the Star Wars soundtrack.” Well, I absolutely love that soundtrack, and smarter folks than I have written about how much it contributed to the success of the movie and how it impacted film soundtracks from that point on. But that’s not my favorite JW score.
That distinction goes to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 
JW’s score for that film is purely and simply magical. It’s one of my favorite films of all time, and the music never fails to give me goosebumps throughout, from the five-note centered main theme to the strains of “When You Wish Upon a Star” at the end. JW nailed it from start to finish.
It’s a shame that this soundtrack is no longer in print, especially since it went out of print before I was smart enough to buy it on CD. I still have my trusty LP copy, but it has seen better days.
My wife will vouch for the Purple Rain soundtrack. She still thinks Prince and that flick are da bomb. Me? Not so much…
Nice post!
My kids are really into the Beatles right now. I thought the little one (she’s 2) would really be into things like Octopus’s Garden or Drive my Car. Nope, she loves Come Together. She really digs the cymbal and toms I guess. My oldest is learning guitar, so he’s really into Revolution. They both love Hey Jude and walked in the house today “nah nah”ing so well their dad knew exactly what we’d been listening to.
I have my John Williams moments. But between my husband’s love for him (and constant playing of it when we were dating) and half of the band music I played in high school being written by him….I tend to get burned out with his stuff.
I love me some Craig Armstrong, easily one of the more ignored and neglected film scorers working today. Even the music at the main menu of the “Orphans” dvd has me on the verge of tears.
[...] See? I told you so. [...]