10 Artists Who Made Entire Movie Soundtracks

When you're making a soundtrack to a movie, it's not really meant to be the most important thing in the world. The main action is going to be taking place on the screen, and all you're being asked to do half the time is just write a bunch of songs that tell the story along with the movie. You have to let the movie do the talking most of the time, but what Curtis Mayfield did on Superfly says a lot more than the actual movie ever could.

While Superfly works well as a decent blaxploitation movie of the '70s, the shots of the seedy underbelly going on in the city is flipped on its head when you hear Curtis's soulful voice on top of everything. You can definitely hear the connections by mentioning different characters in the mix like Pusherman and Freddie's Dead, but this might be the one case where Curtis definitely has a story to tell with his lyrics that's beyond the big screen.

Whereas Superfly tries to revel in the excesses of the darker side of life some of the time, Curtis is basically calling out for some sort of peace half of the time, practically weeping for all of the sin that he sees around him and hoping for things to get better. He was already miles ahead of people like Marvin Gaye getting in on the more political soul music, but we haven't come very far if the messages behind these songs are still relevant today.