25 Essential ’80s Soundtracks

We give shout-outs to the decade’s biggest, coolest and most important movie- and TV-music collections. Duckie would totally approve.

Purple Rain, Top Gun, The Breakfast Club. These movies helped define the 1980s, and their soundtracks paced the decade of preps, nerds, ace pilots and the color purple.

Featuring songs by artists such as Prince (“When Doves Cry”), Berlin (“Take My Breath Away”), Simple Minds (“Don’t You [Forget About Me]”, Los Lobos (“La Bamba”), Public Enemy (“Fight the Power”) and MVP Kenny Loggins, who represented on the Top Gun and Footloose albums, these soundtracks became our soundtracks.

If you missed the 1980s the first time around, here’s a primer:

[playbuzz-item item=”e2d4fb5a-af04-4d35-9337-7db47158ba0b” format=”story”]