Quentin Tarantino Soundtrack Essentials

Quentin Tarantino is one of filmmaking’s most celebrated auteurs of the last three decades. And it’s partly because his work as a director isn’t purely visual—he’s just as much a musical curator. Tarantino's soundtracks play like the perfect mixtape: They introduce us to lost gems from dusty crates and recontextualize familiar classics—usually to hilarious effect—all while firming up a narrative; never breaking a scene but enhancing it. Sometimes his pairings of moving images and music work so well that, culturally speaking, they become forever bound to one another: Can you even imagine Pulp Fiction without Dick Dale’s whip-cracking “Misirlou” as its opening salvo?