Editor’s Note: The Albumism staff has selected what we believe to be the 100 Greatest Soundtracks of All Time, representing a varied cross-section of films and musical genres. Click “Next Soundtrack” below to explore each soundtrack in the list or for easier navigation, view the full introduction & soundtrack index here.
Pretty Woman
EMI (1990)
Selected by Steven Ovadia
Everyone I know who has seen Pretty Woman (and even those few who haven't) succinctly describe the plot in the same seven syllables: “hooker with a heart of gold.” But any time anyone digs just a tiny bit deeper into the concept, they're creeped out and horrified. It's a dark set-up for a romantic comedy, even one rated R.
The soundtrack is similarly weird. Part of it is because the album is a vestige of an era when soundtracks were the songs used in a film, and weren't ways to synergistically cross-promote artists using songs that had nothing to do with the movie, or were "inspired" by the film, but don't actually appear within it. So here, we have Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman," for obvious reasons, a remix of David Bowie and John Lennon's "Fame" and plenty of ‘90s pop, including Roxette and Go West.
The songs root the film in a very specific time, and most haven't aged particularly well, but they're still somehow perfect, like the orange and green Formica of childhood. In a film about a guy falling in love with a prostitute.
LISTEN & WATCH: