What was the first movie soundtrack released as a record?
It might sound insane to a modern audience raised on access to every song ever recorded at the touch of a button, but in the olden days (the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s) movie soundtrack albums were often almost as big a moneymaker as the film itself.
These days, pop/rock tie-in songs for blockbusters are still a thing, but they’re nowhere near as common as they were in the past.
In the ‘90s, for instance, a big movie would usually come with one or two tie-in singles from different artists, plus an extended soundtrack of 12 or 13 tracks “from or inspired by” the film. If these singles were good and caught the zeitgeist, millions of people would put down cold, hard cash to buy the CD, likely having never heard any of the other songs before. What if they hated them, you may ask? Well, that was just the risk you took.
Some of the most lucrative soundtracks of this era were Top Gun, which sold nine million units off the back of Berlin’s ‘Take My Breath Away’ and Kenny Loggins’ ‘Danger Zone’, and The Lion King’s soundtrack, which boasted an entire track list written and performed by Elton John. That album shifted ten million units, buoyed by the success of the singles ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’ and ‘Circle of Life’.
The Titanic soundtrack also sold a mind-boggling 27 million copies thanks to James Horner’s incredible score and one truly all-conquering single, Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’. It was so ubiquitous in the late ‘90s, in fact, that you’d have been hard-pressed to enter a household that didn’t have that Titanic CD knocking around somewhere.
When did Hollywood first realise that people would pay for records featuring the music they heard in a movie, though? Well, even though the practice arguably reached its commercial peak in the ‘90s, the first soundtrack released officially as a record came along six decades earlier.
So, who was first?
Back in 1937, Walt Disney Productions rolled out Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature, and it turned into an absolute money-making juggernaut. It wasn’t just the year’s top-grosser, it was so massive it took another 55 years before an animated film managed to beat it at the box office.
Disney, ever the savvy operator, was already miles ahead when it came to spotting extra cash on the table. Snow White was a monster money pit. The merch machine kicked off with toys, a branded radio, Christmas lights, even jewellery, and one of the biggest sellers ended up being the official soundtrack.
There’s an interesting quirk to the story of Snow White’s soundtrack being the first to be spun in the homes of families all over the world. The film included several truly timeless songs written by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey, from the jaunty work anthems ‘Heigh-Ho’ and ‘Whistle While You Work’ to the beautiful ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’, sung by Adriana Caselotti.
These tunes delighted children and were hummed by parents everywhere, and over the years, Disney became so synonymous with great music that the company won 16 of its 40 Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Original Song.’ Astonishingly, though, none of the tunes in Snow White were nominated at that year’s Oscars, meaning ol’ Walt was forced to console himself with, you know, the six million dollars he made in merchandising sales from the film.
