Editor’s note: Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.

Today’s installment of Arachnophonia is by student worker Gabriela (class of 2020) and features the original soundtrack album for the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. Thanks, Gabi!

Dirty Dancing

With the 92nd Academy Awards freshly behind us, I’ve been thinking about my favorite film soundtracks. For me, a driving factor of what makes a movie memorable or great is its music –either score, soundtrack, or both. I love when I hear a song that I recognize during a scene, which I can dance or sing along to in my seat. On the other hand, I also love when movies introduce me to music. The only reason I loved the songs “Hungry Eyes” and “Be My Baby” so much as a kid was because of the movie Dirty Dancing.

My parents showed me Dirty Dancing at a young age, probably because I was a dancer whose first childhood dream was to be a Broadway star, and it instantly became one of my favorite movies. The soundtrack, which features songs spanning multiple decades, made an already wholesome and fun movie even more enjoyable. Even as a child, I could feel the nostalgia that it portrayed, as it features 50’s and 60’s pop hits like “Love is Strange” and “Stay” that instantly transport the viewer to a summer in 1963. Naturally, a distinctly 80s sound is also incorporated in songs like “She’s Like the Wind” sung by lead actor Patrick Swayze himself, a man of apparently many talents. And of course, many of these songs are used in dance scenes, following Baby and Johnny’s journey from frustrating rehearsals to final performance.

There are many iconic movie scenes that will be forever associated with their respective songs, or vice versa. Think: “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” with Judd Nelson’s fist in the air at the end of The Breakfast Club, or “Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon” in Uma Thurman’s apartment in Pulp Fiction. But undoubtedly one of the most commonly known and referenced music/movie scene pairings is “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” from the final dance scene in Dirty Dancing –with extra emphasis on the achievement of Baby’s lift that happens right as the song climaxes. This is the kind of flawless, emotional moment that makes the right fusion of a scene and a song selection one of my favorite aspects of film. It’s also one of the many moments that made the Dirty Dancing soundtrack go multi-platinum.