The '90s Was The Last Great Decade For Film Soundtracks

Who can forget hearing Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love” as Julia Roberts looked wistfully out a car window after bidding her lover adieu in “Pretty Woman”? Studios also benefited from our love affair with nostalgia with hits like Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” on “Dazed and Confused” and The Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” on the “Forrest Gump” soundtrack. By the end of the ’90s, largely original and consistent soundtracks like those of “Love Jones” and “Cruel Intentions” deteriorated as we went into the aughts. For instance, Singleton immersed his audience in a story that seamlessly intertwines the music genre with the lives of young Black men in the resonant drama “Boyz n the Hood.” Its soundtrack featured songs like Ice Cube’s “How to Survive in South Central.” And with its success came a spree of Black films and hip-hop soundtracks for and by Black people that grappled with things like ambition, systemic racism, masculinity, and familial and romantic relationships more directly than ever before. What does the future hold for them?” When soundtracks began to truthfully tackle those questions, like The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” off the “Cruel Intentions” soundtrack and the Muffs track in “Clueless,” they really soared.