Originally a traditional song with origins that aren’t quite clear, “You Are My Sunshine” has come a long way since Jimmie Davis popularized it in his gubernatorial campaigns.
I’ve never seen the movie The Final Countdown, and I probably never will. But man, it’s got a rocking theme.
Similar can be said for Chariots of Fire.
The song “Singin’ in the Rain” was originally written for a Broadway musical review in 1929, not for the movie Singin’ in the Rain, so it’s now in the public domain.
Allan Sherman, too. I can’t hear “Dance of the Hours” without thinking of summer camp…
Holy crap, I’m decrepit!
I can tell you’ve never seen the film. If you mean the rocker by Europe, that song is not in it. Especially as it didn’t come out until 5 years after the film.
I do. I also remember that it was a young Sandy Duncan who did commercials for United California Bank.
In 1966, Stephen Stills was a member of what had just become the house band for the Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Boulevard. So when he found himself in the middle of the counterculture Sunset Strip curfew riots there in the late fall in West Hollywood California, he penned a little tune about it that his band recorded a month later in December of that year.
Today the Sunset Strip curfew riots are little remembered, however Buffalo Springfield’s “For What it’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound)” is much more well known. Especially since it was voted by the Rolling Stone as 63rd of the 500 greatest songs of all time.
Over the decades it’s morphed into a Vietnam war protest song (e.g. in the Forrest Gump soundtrack during some Vietnam scenes), and yes you can certainly connect the dots between anti-hippie sentiment → curfew laws → curfew protests → Vietnam war protests, but the inspiration for the song really came about because of evening traffic jams on Sunset Blvd were affecting business owners.
…Huh. TIL.
You’ve probably never heard of the movie Unchained, but I’m sure you know the song from that movie, Unchained Melody.
I enjoyed Peter Gunn. It is worth watching to see and hear Lola Albright. Gunn’s girl friend Edie Hart who sings jazz at Mother’s night club.
I’ll submit Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.
Nobody has ever heard of the "Entrance of the Gladiators,” but everyone is familiar with the famous circus music.
But. Wow. I thought that was a Roy Orbison song or something written for him or Elvis. I had no idea. I learned something today and thanks for teaching me.
This is one where I associated the video with the song so much, I’ll never forget what it was for. I also think it was the first time I’d heard of Seal.
It’s hard for me to forget the guys running along the beach to this theme, which takes my mind to the movie pretty quickly.
I’ve seen the movie a few times and while good, nothing quite lives up to the theme Vangelis wrote for it.
Well, sort of? To me, it brings to mind Grover the Muppet running along the beach.
Even if you’ve never heard of François-Joseph Gossec or his opera Rosine, ou L’épouse abandonnée, you’ve almost certainly heard its gavotte, which was used as the standard “fussy tidying-up” music in countless Warner Brothers cartoons:
“Mah Nà Mah Nà” was written by an Italian composer, Piero Umiliani, in 1968 for the soundtrack of an Italian exploitation documentary film about sexuality in Sweden, titled Svezia, inferno e paradiso (“Sweden: Heaven and Hell”).
That movie is pretty much long forgotten, except for the song, which is now almost entirely associated with The Muppets:
Another Christmas one is “White Christmas” which was originally written for a now largely forgotten film called “Holiday Inn” released in 1942.
My wife had a little girl in her office while this song played over the sound system. My wife told her it was called “Unchained Melody”. The little girl retorted:
“That’s not Unchained Melody. That’s the music from Ghost!”
She followed this with
“It was sad when Sam died. It was sad when he died again.”
If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll understand.