Some Kind of Wonderful

Whoever curated the music for Dirty Dancing managed to find every single song with the word "Baby" in it. At least it seems that way. With a main character named "Baby," it feels like every song is addressed to her. We're surprised she doesn't have a narcissist complex.

Dirty Dancing has a soundtrack, not a score, but without these carefully chosen songs the film would be a different experience. The film opens with Baby in the car with her family while the Ronettes sing "be my little Baby." It shows us that Baby is, well, the baby of the family, as if that wasn't obvious enough. It also foreshadows the romance to come.

Every song after that is just as spot-on for the scene it underscores. Baby stares at Johnny while Eric Carmen's "Hungry Eyes" shows us that she's drooling all over him like he's a Big Mac. The Contours "Do You Love Me" blasts over the scene where Baby observes the dirty dancers. And yes, she does love them now that she sees how they dance.

Finally, the Academy Award-winning song "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" was written just for this movie, and it shows. It's a duet between Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, which is appropriate because both Johnny and Baby have had the time of their lives at Kellerman's, and they owe it to one another and to proms and graduation parties everywhere.