Some trivia about the songs made famous in movies and on TV.

The first movie soundtrack album commercially available was the one from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was such a new concept in music that the album had to carry the very explanatory title, Songs from Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (with the Same Characters and Sound Effects as in the Film of That Title).

Elvis Presley made three dozen movies in the 1950s and 1960s. Few were commercial (or critical hits), but they were designed to sell soundtrack albums, which they did. Four Elvis movie soundtracks topped the charts: You, G.I. Blues, Blue Hawaii, and Roustabout. The one that sold the most: Blue Hawaii, with three million copies. Surprisingly, Blue Hawaii is the bestselling studio album of Elvis’s career.

The two bestselling soundtracks of all time: the Bee Gees heavy Saturday Night Fever (1977) and the Whitney Houston dominated The Bodyguard (1992). They’ve sold 15 million and 14 million copies in the U.S., respectively.

Soundtracks dominated pop music in 1985. While albums of music from Purple Rain, Beverly Hills Cop, and Miami Vice went to #1, seven soundtrack songs topped the pop chart. The songs: “Don’t You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds (The Breakfast Club), “A View to a Kill” from the movie of the same name by Duran Duran, “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis (Back to the Future), the theme from Miami Vice by Jan Hammer, “Separate Lives” by Phil Collins (White Nights), and “Say You, Say Me” by Lionel Richie (White Nights).

In 1994, rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg made an extended music video (18 minutes) about his own death, deal with the devil, and resurrection. Snoop then released a soundtrack of the movie, which is somehow 68 minutes long. The album went to #1 on the album chart, the only soundtrack to a short film to ever do so.