20 Best Movie Soundtrack Songs of All Time
Collider has published a ranked countdown of the 20 best movie soundtrack songs of all time, compiled by writer Michael Block, celebrating tracks that transcended their films to become cultural touchstones in their own right. The list spans different eras and genres, highlighting songs praised for being either thematically perfect within their scenes or so powerful that they were woven into a film's structure and marketing.
Among the entries revealed are "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin, ranked 20th for its role as the romantic anchor of Top Gun (1986) — a synth-driven ballad by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock that won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song and helped the film's soundtrack sell over nine million copies. Also featured is Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" from Working Girl (1988), reflecting the article's broader argument that the 1980s produced many of cinema's most enduring soundtrack hits; the full ranking continues through further classic and modern selections.
- Collider ranks the 20 greatest movie soundtrack songs ever.
- Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun placed at number 20.
- Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" from Working Girl also features.
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Collider is a website that covers film and television, publishing reviews, features and ranked lists for readers interested in cinema. This piece is one of its regular "best of" countdown articles, a common format across entertainment journalism where a writer ranks items, in this case songs, according to editorial judgement rather than sales figures or awards alone.
The focus is on songs that appeared in films but became well known on their own, separate from the movies that featured them. The list includes tracks from several decades, such as Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun and Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" from Working Girl, both from the 1980s, a period the article suggests was especially rich for memorable film songs.