Goodfellas (Music from the Motion Picture)
To listen to the Goodfellas soundtrack is to glide through Lower Manhattan, where sounds from various storefronts collide and recede like tidal rhythms. More than a capsule of the movie, this musical mixture is a personalized reflection of Martin Scorsese’s ’60s youth, in which cool cocktail crooners, like Tony Bennett and Bobby Darin, butt up against Cream’s adrenalized psychedelia. Between the swelling emotion of The Moonglows’ “Sincerely” and the frenzied exhilaration of The Cadillacs’ “Speedo,” doo-wop is the music that best captures the movie’s abrupt emotional turnarounds.