The various-artists soundtrack had already existed as a phenomenon for decades, but 1995 was the year that the OST became an event into itself. No longer was the point of a soundtrack just to advertise and complement its accompanying movie — with the rise of Music From and Inspired By-type soundtracks like Batman Forever, songs didn’t even have to come directly from the movies at all anymore — but rather to exist as a totally separate entity, with blockbuster potential of its own.
Twenty years on, you might not remember much about some of these movies at all, but you remember the hit songs they helped spawn. Try to picture a scene from Dangerous Minds. It’s probably the scene where Michelle Pfeiffer pulls up a backwards chair to a student meeting and asks “You wanna tell me what this is all about?,” right? Actually, that wasn’t from the movie at all, and the “student” she was meeting with was Coolio, in the video for “Gangsta’s Paradise.” How about Angus, remember the names of any of the teen actors in that movie? Maybe not, but thanks to Green Day’s presence on the soundtrack you probably probably remember the name Jason Andrew Relva. The list goes on.
Thanks to cultural over-saturation — plus the digital era eventually removing the need to buy an entire soundtrack to get the one or two songs from a movie you really want — now we’re lucky to get a handful of soundtracks a year that actually make an impact on the public consciousness. In 1995, there were at least 30 of ’em. Here are our favorites.
(Note: Certain worthy soundtracks to ’95 movies were technically released in ’96 and thus rendered ineligible. So, our apologies here to Hackers, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and both Dead Man and Dead Man Walking.)
