It's the middle of award season, and Ryan Coogler's ode to the Black music canon Sinners has emerged as the Oscars frontrunner and the most nominated film in Academy Awards history. The love the movie has for the Delta blues is front and center, and begs the question: will the movie's legacy help bring the blues back into popular culture? There's already been a precedent for films reviving dead genres – think The Sting and its ragtime score, or O Brother Where Art Thou's relationship to bluegrass – and on this episode of Switched On Pop, Reanna and Nate talk with Vulture writer Fran Hoepfner about the times in which movie soundtracks have shifted the musical culture.

Read Fran's piece on movie scoring, The Death of the Classic Film Score, here.

Songs discussed:

Miles Caton – I Lied to You
Bee Gees – Stayin' Alive
Underworld – Born Slippy (Nuxx)
Marvin Hamlisch – The Entertainer
Wu-Tang Clan – Fast Shadow
Bee Gees – More Than A Woman
Whitney Houston – I Have Nothing
Harry McClintock – The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Alison Krauss – Down To The River To Pray
The Soggy Bottom Boys – I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow
*NSYNC – Bye Bye Bye
The Brian Setzer Orchestra – Jump Jive An' Wail
Cab Calloway – Minnie the Moocher
Royal Crown Revue – Hey Pachuco!
Caravan Palace – Lone Digger
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy – Go Daddy O
Squirrel Nut Zippers – Hell
Fergie, Q-Tip, GoonRock – A Little Party Never Killed Nobody
Lana Del Rey – Young And Beautiful
Max Richter – On the Nature of Daylight
Kavinsky – Nightcall
College, Electric Youth – A Real Hero
M83 – Midnight City
The Weeknd – Take My Breath

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Will Sinners do for blues what O Brother did for bluegrass?