After all, it’s not like there aren’t a lot of great soundtracks to choose from. If you think about it, the decade practically belonged to John Hughes on the musical front. Everyone remembers the iconic shot of Judd Nelson walking across that football field in The Breakfast Club soundtracked by Simple Minds, but it takes a true musical superpower to be able to make a song as avant-garde as Yello’s ‘O Yeah’ work in the context of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

But even with as much power as Hughes wielded, directors were still trying to find the perfect balance around that time. The music video format of moviemaking may have been a fun idea at the time, but as everyone would learn from a movie like Flashdance, a movie that has music-video-worthy moments doesn’t always equate to the best film from back to front.

And let’s not forget about the artists that had their own movies out. Purple Rain was proof that Prince could make great strides no matter what creative medium he was in, and even if U2 came off more than a little bit pretentious throughout most of Rattle and Hum, there’s a reason why the accompanying soundtrack has been good enough to stand alongside records like The Joshua Tree. 

Right in the middle of the teen angst movies of the time stood Dirty Dancing. But even by the standards of 1987, a film that was all about dancing was nothing new. Footloose had broken down that door already, but even without being a full-on musical, this was the kind of melodramatic masterpiece that had the same impact on moviegoers that Grease did at the tail end of the 1970s.

And it helps that the soundtrack is actually fairly solid. The whole movie is already timeless outside of the teased hair here and there, so it makes sense that it pulls from all pieces of music history. There might be the token appearance from Patrick Swayze on ‘She’s Like The Wind’, but using old-school legends like The Ronettes alongside ‘Hungry Eyes’ by Eric Carmen makes it the perfect comfort movie soundtrack as well.

Because as much as those Hughes movies had fantastic music, there were bound to be a few tunes that weren’t going to resonate with everybody. ‘O Yeah’ was going to be a tough sell to grandma whenever it came on, but listening through this soundtrack, the fact that kids could appreciate it as much as the adults sent it into chart history, becoming the highest-selling soundtrack of the decade at 32 million copies.

The movie itself isn’t actually doing anything that special compared to the other teen movies from around this time, but it’s main superpower is how simple it is. Every teenager has dreamed of having this kind of dream romance, and as soon as Jennifer Grey is lifted up in the air, a bunch of 1980s kids are transported back to when they were a kid all over again.

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