Pulp Fiction: Music From The Motion Picture
Dick Dale's surf-guitar provided the memorable title theme  ("Misirlou"), for Quentin Tarantino's 1994 smash, and although that  sound runs throughout the soundtrack (along with bits and pieces of dialog from  the movie), this is a pretty eclectic bunch of really terrific songs.  I don't  know how it all manages to hang together, but it does (you might say the same  for the interwoven stories in the movie).  Where else are you going to find  Chuck Berry, Maria McKee, Al Green, The Statler Brothers, Kool & the Gang, Urge  Overkill (singing a Neil Diamond ballad!), Ricky Nelson, Dusty Springfield, and  the Tornadoes (among others) one album? McKee's beautiful "If Love is a Red  Dress (Hang Me in Rags)" is a standout, partly because it's less familiar.  One of the few soundtracks of the '90s that went into the CD player and stayed  there for weeks and months thereafter.--Jim Emerson