Movie And Soundtrack, Both

Casper Brightside called into the show to explain an idea he had already typed onto the idea board while the stream was running. Top five movie and soundtrack combinations, one decade at a time.

The catch is in the word combination, and he says it twice because it is the whole format. Both of them have got to be fine. A soundtrack that goes platinum attached to a film nobody finished does not count. A great film with a functional score does not count either. You are ranking the pair.

That rule does more work than it looks like it does, because most of the standard answers to the best soundtrack question quietly depend on ignoring the film.

Rather than thank him and move on, she pulls up the tracklists and they play it out on air, which is the reason this is worth watching rather than reading a list.

Above The Rim goes first, and she is honest that it is the go to answer, which is exactly why she did not want to open with it. SWV, Lady of Rage, H-Town. Then Boomerang arrives from the chat with a real case: Babyface, Boyz II Men doing End Of The Road, Toni Braxton doing Love Shoulda Brought You Home. Her reaction to seeing End Of The Road on the list is the sound of somebody conceding a point in real time.

Then Friday, which is where the format starts biting. The Friday soundtrack is stacked, but she stalls on Mary Jane by Rick James sitting on it, because the song predates the film by a long way.

I'm feeling a little stolen valor. It's giving stolen valor.

The counterargument comes straight back from the caller and it is the right one under this format: the song is not just on the soundtrack, it is in the movie. It is doing work in the film. Under a rule that judges the pair, that distinction is the rule. She concedes she will consider it.

The turn comes from the chat rather than from either of the people talking. Waiting To Exhale goes up, and she reads it out loud, and it is over almost immediately.

Exhale by Whitney Houston. Why Does It Hurt So Bad by Whitney Houston. Let It Flow by Toni Braxton. Sittin' Up In My Room by Brandy. Not Gon' Cry by Mary J Blige. Count On Me. Kissing You by Faith Evans. Aretha Franklin, about whom she issues a warning to anybody in the chat considering a word against Auntie Aretha.

Her own scoring, delivered live: Waiting To Exhale is in the far, far, far, far lead. Boomerang gets one far taken off it in appeal. Life is brought up as a challenger and does not make it, though she pauses to note that Life by K-Ci and JoJo is the correct karaoke song for anybody who cannot sing, because the grit in it makes not being able to sing sound like conviction.

The thing they end on is not the winner. It is that the decade by decade structure stopped making sense the moment the field got competitive. If Waiting To Exhale and Boomerang and Above The Rim and Friday are all fighting inside the nineties, splitting by decade is protecting weaker entries in thinner decades from a fight they would lose.

So they threw it out. One bracket, everything in it, battle royale.

Which is a small thing to decide on a Wednesday morning and a fairly good illustration of what the format was for: a rule that is strict enough to be interesting will usually tell you when the rest of your structure is in the way.

The rankings above are the room's opinion on the morning of 2026-08-12, not a settled verdict, and the show has since agreed to rerun the whole thing as one open bracket.