Purple Rain voted top soundtrack
Wednesday, 24 Oct 2007 12:00
Prince recently sold out 21 nights at London's O2 Arena
Prince's Purple Rain has been named the greatest soundtrack of all time, seeing off competition from the Beatles and Bee Gees.
The soundtrack headed a list of 50 in a one-off publication called Movies Rock, compiled by the editors of Vanity Fair.
The diminutive Michigan native's album was judged the best ever accompanying music and praised for its combination of "funk, r 'n' b, metal and even psychedelia into a sound that defined the 80s".
However, the magazine writers were less kind about the 1984 film itself, calling it "perhaps the most badly-acted ever".
The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night was named in second place, while Jimmy Cliff's acclaimed reggae soundtrack for The Harder They Come rounded off the top three.
Renowned for his off-kilter soundtrack choices, Quentin Tarantino's
Pulp Fiction album- responsible for reviving Dick Dale's Miserlou and Chuck Berry's You Never Can Tell - finished in fourth place, ahead of Simon and Garfunkel's music for The Graduate.
The iconic soundtrack to 1996's Trainspotting was named in seventh, while Saturday Night Fever, in eighth place, was labelled "required listening for anyone looking to heat up the dancefloor".
American Graffiti and The Big Chill finished the top ten, with the latter famed for its climactic use of the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want.