“Gump”! See, I told you there were more I was forgetting.
If I read the OP correctly this is for songs that came out when the movie was still running.
If that is the case then the Star Wars song by Meco would count.
And a novelty song would be Mr. Jaws by Dickie Goodman.
Going way back, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, sung and made famous by Gene Pitney. It tells the story of the movie but does not appear in it. The movie had already been released around the time the song was recorded. Supposedly Director John Ford hated the song because it spoiled the ending of the movie. I think he was wrong, though. The song was great publicity for the movie, all free all summer on Top 40 stations around the country. I still like the song and the movie.
Going back even farther, Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be The Day (1957) was inspired by John Wayne’s catchphrase in The Searchers (although the song has nothing to do with the movie.)
Similarly, the Four Seasons “Big Girls Don’t Cry” comes from a line in a movie, probably Slightly Scarlet.
Two
Dylan’s Motorpsycho Nitemare inspired by Psycho and traveling salesman jokes.
And Tom Lehrer’s Oedipus Rex, which he says in the introduction is an attempt make the movie, sorry, flick, based on the classic play more commercial.
Yeah, Drive-By Truckers have a song titled Sands of Iwo Jima that mentions the film, but really doesn’t have much to do with it.
They also got a song titled Steve McQueen that mentions a bunch of his movies, too, but again…
Two beauts and a sly in-joke. Nice.
j
I once tried and failed to write a song in honour of “Once Upon a Time in the West”. Much later I discovered that Dire Straits had a song called “Once Upon a Time in the West” but the lyrics didn’t seem to have any obvious connection.
Science Fiction Double Feature from Rocky Horror
Does the movie have to have actually been made to count?
Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush (or at least “After the Gold Rush” and “Cripple Creek Ferry”) was inspired by a screenplay that never ended up being a released film.
Frank Zappa’s Cheepnis was inspired by cheap monster movies in general, although in an opening monologue he referred to It Conquered The World in particular.
Not quite a movie inspiration, but the song “Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring was inspired by the book The Bourne Identity. I just now learned that factoid while listening to the radio.
I humbly nominate this very catchy song, “Mister Malcontent,” by the amazing Lloyd Cole. He wrote it about Johnny, the punk played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the movie My Beautiful Laundrette (1985).
The 1963 film Black Sabbath inspired the name, first album name and song of the heavy metal group “Black Sabbath”.
Roky also had the song “I Walked With A Zombie” (the R.E.M. cover of which is pretty good).
“Can U Dig It?” by Pop Will Eat Itself starts with a sample of Lynne Thigpen’s DJ from that movie. “Let’s get down to it, boppers.” The track also namechecks some movies as well as comic books and music: “Spinderella and Bruce Lee/The Bad and the Ugly/V for Vendetta and Into the Groovy.”
The Roxy Music song “2HB” is about Humphrey Bogart and references Casablanca (“Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid.”)
There’s a collaboration song Jon Anderson and Vangelis wrote in the 80’s called The Friends of Mr. Cairo. This was sort of an homage to the black and white gangster movies the two of them grew up watching movies that were made in the 30’s and 40s. The lyrics make references to a few different notable movies like The Maltese Falcon.
“Citizen Kane” by the Byrds
Bon Jovi’s song Blaze of Glory was officially connected to Young Guns II, but the album Blaze of Glory contains other Billy the Kid-thened songs that were not used in the movie, such as Blood Money.
