The man knows how to make a soundtrack, and the testaments are everywhere: his staggering 395,135 fans on Facebook praise his soundtracks in every language, and despite the fact that last.fm defines him as a “tag error” (since Tarantino himself is not the recording artist) he still holds nearly 17,000 listeners on the site. Major record companies continue to honor his commitment to the old school by making all of his soundtracks available in vinyl— and given his remarkable penchant for nailing double-edged commercial/critical success, it’s easy to see why. Case in point: Not only did Pulp Fiction win an Academy Award, the Palme d’Or (the highest award at Cannes), and various Critics Circle Awards, but its soundtrack also spent over 100 weeks on the Billboard Top 200, and by 1997 sales had surpassed 2 million copies. Similarly, after Kill Bill’s box office debut at #1, the soundtrack quickly made its way to #1 on the Billboard Soundtracks chart and sold over half a million copies over the next few weeks.
Tarantino’s approach to crafting such blockbuster compilations is still to this day refreshingly unornamented—it all begins with his own massive vinyl collection that has been soundtrack-heavy since he was a kid and now includes unmistakably Tarantino subgenres like “spaghetti western” and “blaxploitation”. The director openly rejects the idea of hiring composers to score his films and instead seeks out what he called in a recent Billboard interview “second-generation quality” song selections that resonate more powerfully with contemporary audiences.
In tracking down music for certain scenes of his newly infamous Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino turned to actual German films released under Nazi propoganda minister Joseph Goebbels— a figure he also utilized in the Basterds script as a pathetically subservient character who cries tears of joy upon seeing Hitler’s enthusiasm for the minister’s carefully constructed movie premiere. Tarantino also specifically chose a song by Zarah Leander, a real star in Nazi Germany who was rumored to have been spying on the Nazis much like Diane Kruger’s character in the film.
The process of blending history into scenes and song selections transforms both elements in such a way that they become perfect for each other— necessarily interdependent, even— and although Tarantino does not stand alone in his mastery of such cinematic synthesizing, I am certain no filmmaker before him ever considered how perfect David Bowie’s “Cat People” would be for the violent, incendiary climax of a World War film. That selection alone revolutionized the final scene, turning it into an iconic spectacle that we still can’t stop talking about. And thereinlies the signature genius of Tarantino.
So without further ado, 23 of his most memorable tracks:
1. “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” ::Nancy Sinatra [Kill Bill Vol. 1]
2. “You’re So Cool” ::Hans Zimmer [True Romance]
3. “Pumpkin and Honey Bunny (Dialogue)/Misirlou” ::Dick Dale, Amanda Plummer, Tim Roth [Pulp Fiction]
4. “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)” ::David Bowie [Inglourious Basterds]
5. “L’Arena” ::Ennio Morricone [Kill Bill Vol. 2]
6. “Strawberry Letter 23” ::The Brothers Johnson [Jackie Brown]
7. “Woo Hoo” ::5.6.7.8’s [Kill Bill Vol. 1]
8. “Sweet Jane” ::Cowboy Junkies [Natural Born Killers]
9. “Baby It’s You” ::Smith [Death Proof]
10. “Coconut” ::Harry Nilsson [Reservoir Dogs]
11. “Surf Rider” ::The Lively Ones [Pulp Fiction]
12. “Hold Tight!” ::Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich [Death Proof]
13. “Jeepster” ::T-Rex [Death Proof]
14. “The Verdict (Dopo La Condanna)” ::Ennio Morricone [Inglourious Basterds]
15. “Burn” ::Nine Inch Nails [Natural Born Killers]
16. “Ironside” ::Quincy Jones [Kill Bill Vol. 1]
17. “Natural High” ::Bloodstone [Jackie Brown]
18. “Son of a Preacher Man” ::Dusty Springfield [Pulp Fiction]
19. “Chick Habit” ::April March [Death Proof]
20. “The Chase (Album Version)” ::Alan Reeves, Phil Steele, and Philip Brigham [Kill Bill Vol. 2]
21. “Little Green Bag” ::George Baker Selection [Reservoir Dogs]
22. “After Dark” ::Tito & Tarantula [From Dusk Till Dawn]
23. “Urami Bushi” ::Meiko Kaji [Kill Bill Vol. 2]
