Released in 1994, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was a bloody, nonlinear, 2.5-hr.-long pop-culture stew — and an instant hit. The film racked up an impressive $108 million at the box office that year and was nominated for seven Academy Awards. (TIME praised it, calling the film “Die Hard with a brain.”) But the sound track, an eclectic collection of vintage hits from the likes of Ricky Nelson and Dusty Springfield — released, one must point out, during the height of grunge — was more of a surprise success. Pulp Fiction‘s sound track reached No. 21 on the Billboard charts. The album combines well-known pop classics (Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”) with obscure tracks (the Tornados’ 1962 surf-rock instrumental “Bustin’ Surfboards”) and snippets of movie dialogue to create the aural equivalent of watching Tarantino’s film.
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