Film soundtracks have had a huge influence on mainstream listening tastes. Here are 10 albums that forever altered the musical landscape.

The Harder They Come (1972)

With this album, Desmond Dekker, Toots & the Maytals and, of course, Jimmy Cliff endeared themselves and the genre of ska and roots reggae to a new audience worldwide – particularly in the UK, where Dekker would later become a Mod sensation and Toots Hibbert would be covered by the Clash and other punks. Nothing’s better than the originals, though, which sound as good today as they did on their release date.

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

It’s impossible to separate the influence of the Beatles’ first film from that of the soundtrack itself. Richard Lester’s mockumentary spotlighting the perils of the Fab Four’s mega-fame was a precursor of the music video and paved the way for the Monkees’ TV series. But the LP, the Beatles’ first with all-original material, had its own impact, especially George Harrison’s work on his Rickenbacker 12-string, which moved many bands, including the Byrds, to go for a harder, more rock ’n’ roll sound.

Shaft (1971)

To introduce the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks, Isaac Hayes lays down a sonic wall of funk perfectly matched to Richard Roundtree’s bad-mother swagger. But the Oscar-winning Theme From Shaft was just the first track in a sinewy soul score that still makes Gordon Parks’s 1971 actioner stand out from the blaxploitation pack.

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

The iconic dance film that made John Travolta a star launched the disco craze across the world. Unfortunately, the plot was based on a completely fabricated article by a writer who later confessed to having no knowledge or understanding of the culture, and the extremely successful soundtrack has since been criticized for contributing to the whitewashing of the black and gay roots of disco in favour of the Bee Gees’ mainstream pop version.

Wild Style (1982)

Hip-hop was pretty much unknown outside of a few American inner cities when Wild Style was released, making its soundtrack the first time most of the world heard the genre. A number of similar films soon followed, but this was the first to expose the culture, and featured early innovators like Grandmaster Caz, Fab 5 Freddy, Grand Wizard Theodore and the Cold Crush Brothers.

Purple Rain (1984)

In the film, Prince takes his muse, Apollonia, on a motorcycle ride out to a quiet spot by the lake where skinny dipping was an inevitability. Within minutes, Apollonia’s jaw-dropping physique is on full display. But this, one of the film’s more satisfying scenes, has nothing on Prince’s flawless soundtrack. Purple Rain was for him what Thriller was for MJ – a career-defining hit.

Singles (1992)

The grunge soundtrack for this rom-com eclipsed the actual film, becoming a bestseller months before it even hit theatres. Nirvana, one of the only Seattle bands not included on the soundtrack, had already blown up the year before, but this compilation, including Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, brought the music into the mainstream, leading to a shortage of cheap flannel shirts and an abundance of generic alt-rock radio stations.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

You could argue that Quentin Tarantino had already made his soundtrack mark with Reservoir Dogs, but this was the one that really made it into the popular consciousness. The mixture of surf, early rock’ n’ roll and soul brought guitar hero Dick Dale back from obscurity and introduced a new generation to classic R&B sounds, reminding the world that Al Green’s version of Let’s Stay Together is the only one that really matters. (Sorry, Tina Turner.)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

By the time this soundtrack hit shelves, the Coen brothers were known for memorable soundtracks. (Kenny Rogers’s Just Dropped In is rarely played without a Big Lebowski reference.) But this T-Bone Burnett-curated mix of vintage bluegrass, both originals and well-done covers, grabbed more attention than the movie.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Thora Birch may have danced to Jaan Pehechan Ho over the Ghost World credits, but Slumdog Millionaire put Bollywood on the Billboard charts. The Slumdog mix juggles propulsive pop (M.I.A.’s Paper Planes), A.R. Rahman’s Bollywood-flavoured underscore and the theme from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to guide viewers through the movie’s time-scrambled structure – all the while building to Oscar-winning number Jai Ho. That beats a flatful of Scottish junkies from that other Danny Boyle pic, Trainspotting.