Various Artists - - Dirty Dancing 20th Anniversary Legacy Edition - - CD review

For listeners who got turned on to Sixties soul twenty years ago with the original release of this movie, the 20th anniversary edition of the soundtrack won't add much to your experience; but if you're more of a fan of the film itself, and only see the classics here as, well, a soundtrack, you'll love the upgrade.

For 1987 music listeners, the release of Dirty Dancing did more than make Patrick Swayze a star -- it catapulted Sixties soul back into the mainstream of American life. There's a reason that plenty of people too young to remember Mickey & Sylvia or Wilson Pickett will light up when "Love Is Strange" or "Mustang Sally" gets played at a party, and that reason is this film and its soundtrack. That being said, the mainstream mind is larger than it was two decades ago -- you can pick just what sort of Sixties soul station you like on satellite radio, if that's your thing -- so the event seems less revelatory now and more like an artifact from its own time.

The Sixties hits here, specifically picked for their sexiness AND their innocence, can apply to teenage girls of any era, even without Swayze's butt in the frame: The Shirelles' "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?," Solomon Burke's "Cry To Me," and even a Fifties anomaly like the Five Satins' "In The Still Of The Nite" are emotional and elemental enough to reach out across the ages. But you really can't say the same thing for Swayze's own "She's Like The Wind," the Blow Monkeys version of "You Don't Own Me" (remember them? No?) or Eric Carmen's "Hungry Eyes."

John Morris' original score is inserted among the actual songs, and it's competent, but unless you want to close your eyes and relive the dance instruction scenes, you may view them (and the Eighties numbers) as a serious invasion of your own sweet soul party. Get this by all means if you want to relive the movie while doing something that doesn't require you to watch the movie, but if this is where you learned your oldies, there are now several thousand CDs that can pinpoint your own obsessions better.