We never think twice when a song is released in conjunction with a movie, although today it's happening less and less, but it's a trend that only really kicked off in the eighties.
1982 brought the movie An Officer and a Gentleman and Will Jennings has written Up Where We Belong, which was sung by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. But it was a song that Don Simpson, the then president of production at Paramount hated.
Simpson threatened to have his named removed from the credits if the song went in the film and Neil Diamond was also hired to pen a better tune. But director Taylor Hackford stuck to his guns and the song featured in the movie.
Up Where We Belong went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart and win an Oscar giving birth to the big movie soundtrack.
Yes movies and music have always gone hand in hand with the likes of The Wizard of Oz and Over the Rainbow for example, and of course Grease and Saturday Night Fever which but they were movies driven by music, but it was a marketing tool that hadn't really come into play in the big commercial movies.
But not for much longer...
The eighties brought a big boom in this part of the film industry with Rocky and Flashdance capitalising on this new discovery.
And it was something that really worked as very few big movies came without a pop record throughout the eighties.
Eye of the Tiger by Survivor as well as Belin's Take My Breath Away are just as famous as the movies that they come from, Rocky and Top Gun if you were left scratching your head.
But it was 1987 that brought one of the most popular and biggest selling movie soundtracks of all in the form of Dirty Dancing.
For over twenty years fans have been refusing to put Baby in the corner as the songs, in particular (I've Had) The Time of My Life, is just as popular now as it was then.
(I've Had) The Time of My Life was performed by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes topping the Billboard Chart as well as reaching number one in the UK. It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Into the nineties and the movie soundtrack was big business and there were four records that stood apart from the others.
1991 brought to the big screen Robin Hood Prince of Thieves starring Kevin Costner and (Everything I Do) I Do It For You to radios everywhere.
Bryan Adams' song was a huge hit and spent sixteen weeks at number one here in the UK and seven in the U.S.
Just a year later and it was Whitney Houston's vocals that were blasting out I Will Always Love You from The Bodyguard, in which she played herself.
But it wasn't overseas artists that were having all the success in the charts as Wet Wet Wet got their biggest hit ever with the release of Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994. It spent fifteen weeks at number one.
But since the turn of the century the film industry seems to have turned it's back on the song to accompany the movie with Celine Dion's My Hear Will Go On in 1998 the last one of note.
It seems that the film industry is happy with the bog standard score to accompany their movies and the end of twentieth century it seems has brought an end to a much loved tradition.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Dirty Dancing