I’m not sure “Burning Bridges” fit well into the movie either but it was by The Mike Curb Congregation and I do like the song.
Dangerous Moonlight. The Warsaw Concerto from it was not a popular hit, but is still a mainstay of classical music.
This song was so forgettable it got passed up for 2 other movies before becoming Danny LaRusso’s theme.
So not A Knight’s Tale? The characters dance to a modern song.
If we’re talking about the appalling Barry Manilow version of the Scott English song Brandy - apparently not. This pegs it as an urban myth.
j
The idea of a hit song to go with the movie is older than you might think. In the intro to the song Oedipus Rex, the great Tom Lehrer discusses the phenomenon. (From An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, recorded 1959).
j
I would argue that isn’t the best example though - as they quite intentionally did this.
Raindrops, now… ugh.
And Ben: I’m sad to say I saw the movie. The song, for anyone who has not had that “treat”… is about a rat. Not “bad person” rat, but quite literally a rodent.
I can’t believe I’m the first to bring up Wham Bam Shang-a-lang by Silver being all useless and stupid on the Guardians of the Galaxy 2 soundtrack.
If that’s fair game, then I’d go with this highly forgettable entry into the late-80’s/early-90’s buddy copy genre, which featured a song which I suspect far more of you will be familiar with today. A catchy tune when it appeared in the soundtrack, but it didn’t really fit with the scene in my mind.
I love that song.
I would have never referred to Rush as a “buddy cop” movie. Possibly forgettable since it wasn’t a box office smash (though it received good reviews and was highly recommended by video clerks), but certainly not forgettable to me due to a couple intense scenes.
I think i first heard it covered by The Osmonds so…yeah it fits the OP for me.
Isn’t Ben sorta the villain in “Willard”??
Talk about a redempton arc
The Byrds sang “Turn, Turn, Turn” on an episode of “F Troop.”
I was going to mention UNCHAINED but was beaten to the punch. For awful films with hit songs, see Elvis movies. And as for RAINDROPS… We stayed in a mountain city in Chiapas (southernmost Mexico) with unsanitary plumbing. For fresh drinking water, residents flagged down a delivery truck. At dawn, just after skyrockets were launched from local churches, water trucks started prowling the cobbled streets with RAINDROPS blasting non-stop from tinny speakers. Nobody slept in late.
There’s a rather good thriller with Kevin Costner called, I believe, “No Way Out” which features a histrionic, cringeworthy Paul Anka song over a love scene. Why does Anka always sound like he’s being treated badly while he’s singing?
Also, nobody mentioned, “Ladyhawke”? Great movie, but jeez, that score was jarring.
I really enjoyed No Way Out…one of the better ones of that genre. And one whose lead role that was within the limits of Costner’s acting skills.
Here’s an example that actually meets the requirements of the OP: Prince’s entire contribution to the 1989 Batman, which was imposed on the film against Tim Burton’s objections, and had nothing to do, tonally speaking, with the rest of the film. It also wasn’t very good, for Prince.
This may not fit since the song was a hit but the 1971 thriller Play Misty For Me features an excruciatingly long love sequence featuring Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Lovely song but it brings the movie to a screeching halt for nearly 6 minutes.
I think a better title for this thread, then, might have been “Movies That Would Have Been Better Without ‘Hit Songs’ Shoehorned In”. Calling “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” “forgettable” isn’t particularly apt—the song itself is quite catchy, and I’ll bet more people today are familiar with it than with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And the fact that the song’s use in the movie grates on you so much, after all these years, also speaks to its memorability.
We dodged a bullet, as at one point the rights holders to the 1983 Scarface movie we’re planning on “remastering” the film in it’s intial DVD release by removing the 80s pop songs and adding 90s and 2000s era rap music presumably to make the movie less “dated”. Luckily cooler heads prevailed and instead the DVD remastering messed with the sound effects instead which is still annoying but tolerable.