Pump Up the Volume
Here's another variation on a theme I've explored off and on: the confluence of song and movie titles. It's no secret that Hollywood studios will steal the title of a beloved pop hit to make a movie more palatable – the famous example is Disney/Touchstone taking a dark drama called 3000 and turning it into a romantic comedy called Pretty… read more!
XTC, back when they were a live band
These days it's much more lucrative for a performing artist – any performing artist, young or old, famous or unknown – to tour than to sell albums. Many established acts (Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac) still play relentlessly, even though they haven't recorded any new material in years. So we have to go back a ways to find successful performers who… read more!
Eddy Grant’s song, cut from the film
I had hoped to preface this list with a trivia nugget about the first song ever written for a film. Alas, my research has proven inconclusive, though it might have been "Sonny Boy", from the 1928 Al Jolson musical The Singing Fool. (It was almost certainly the first hit song written for a film.) Anyway, lots of well-known songs came from… read more!
Ferry Cross the Mersey
When you think of the British Invasion – the musical one, in the mid 1960s – you think of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and maybe the Kinks. The Beatles, of course, also became movie stars that decade, beginning with A Hard Day's Night. The other three bands, alas, never got their own teenybopper films. (Gimme Shelter, Tommy, and Return to… read more!
Daft Punk and Tron: Legacy
Yes, this is another of my "only one movie" lists. I suppose it's an obsession. Anyway, years ago I wrote a list about rock stars who turned their talents towards film composing. Those musicians all forged solid film careers. These nine, in comparison, were strictly one-and-done. Note that I'm only including those who composed proper instrumental scores, and didn't just… read more!
Captain and Tennille
Ever since Goodfellas set the tone in 1990, countless films and TV shows have been set in the 1970s, all with soundtracks of cool '70s songs that are possibly more popular now than they were back then. These soundtracks might lead you to assume that everyone in the '70s listened to David Bowie and Steve Wonder, Led Zeppelin and Blondie.… read more!
The 1940s, naturally
A list like this is a fool's errand. How can anyone choose one song to represent an entire year, much less an entire decade, with all its trends and transformations? It was hard enough to do it with movies. But I'm making an attempt anyway, because it's been fun to think about. Here goes. The 1930s: "BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE… read more!
Willie Nelson, around the time he wrote “Crazy”
Years ago I posted a rundown of all the pop songs written by Bruce Springsteen or Prince that were made famous by other artists. This list is an expansion of the same idea. Maybe you knew about some of these. Maybe you didn't. In any event, I know the Internet is filled with similar lists, but this one's mine. MAC DAVIS:… read more!
Layne Staley of Alice in Chains
No one associated with the word "grunge" has ever liked it, except maybe Green River/Mudhoney founder Mark Arm, who popularized the term and remains one of the few grunge frontmen still alive. This punk/metal hybrid, defined by plodding rhythms, bleak lyrics, fuzzy guitars, and growling vocals, emerged from Seattle in the late 1980s. Many of the genre's best-known musicians suffered from drug abuse and depression – often to fatal… read more!
I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing
In granddad's (read: my) day, radio and TV commercials relied on catchy jingles to sell product. Yet despite its success, this trend started becoming passé in the 1980s, as ad agencies and their clients went from commissioning original compositions to licensing existing music. Somewhere in the middle, however, there's an odd little collection of pop hits that first saw life as commercial jingles. "I'd… read more!
Hootie & the Blowfish
Surely by now you know that there's nobody named Pink Floyd; Syd Barrett named his band after American bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. (Jethro Tull and Rilo Kiley were similarly named for obscure historical figures.) But perhaps you were once fooled, like me, into believing that these nine bands' fictional frontmen were real. Echo & the Bunnymen. Vocalist Ian McCulloch never went by the nickname… read more!
Van Halen
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were both born and raised in Queens. That makes Simon & Garfunkel a more "pureblood" New York outfit than, say, Blondie or the Velvet Underground. This made me think about the countless Los Angeles bands that, like the city itself, consist of transplants: most of the members of the Eagles, Guns N' Roses, and Maroon 5, for example,… read more!
Written for The Man Who Knew Too Much
Many of today's longest-lasting jazz/pop standards were originally written for movies in the 1930s and 1940s. So many, in fact, that it's futile to list them. (A few standouts: "Cheek to Cheek", "Jeepers Creepers", "Lullaby of Broadway", "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B", "Chattanooga Choo Choo"... and those were just the ones nominated for Oscars!) But here are nine… read more!
Yazoo/Yaz
Our ever-litigious society has contributed to innumerable stories of ridiculous legal demands. Like when a band from the UK is forced to change its name in the US due to a lawsuit from an (almost invariably obscure) American band who just happened to snag the name first. Rather than fight these Yank musicians and their lawyers, most Brits cave in… read more!
Purple People Eater
These days, movies are adapted from everything: books, stage plays, video games, comics, even trading cards (Mars Attacks!). And then there's this peculiar subgenre, an example of which will pop every few years: films that are based on songs. I'm not talking about movies that borrow the titles of hit records (e.g., Pretty Woman, Stand By Me, American Pie) or… read more!
“Rock Me Amadeus”, Falco
For decades, the Top 40 chart has seen the occasional novelty hit sung in something other than English. Think of Santana's "Oye Como Va", Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose", or the Sandpipers' "Guantanamera" – and those weren't even big enough to make this list! Based on their peak positions on the Billboard Hot 100, here are the nine most… read more!
“Walk This Way”, Run-DMC and Aerosmith
There are bad songs, and then there are bad songs that have a significant and irreversible effect on pop culture. Here are nine tunes which, if I had a big cosmic "undo" button, I would have made sure never came into existence. In some cases, the songs themselves aren't the problem so much as the terrible trends they unleashed. "WITCH… read more!
Yello, purveyors of “Oh Yeah”
These days, there are countless dance club hits that feature just a couple of words - typically, sampled dialogue from an unknown source - repeated endlessly. Fatboy Slim ("The Rockafeller Skank") and Duck Sauce ("Barbra Streisand") are just two examples that leap quickly to mind. But those tracks are a dime a dozen, and so this list isn't about them.… read more!
Dancer in the Dark, a Lars von Trier musical
A funny thing happens whenever I tell someone I'm a filmmaker. Just about everybody asks me, "What kind of films do you make?" I think it's an odd question, as most directors tackle all kinds of genres. That said, there are filmmakers who strictly focus on one genre - especially in documentaries, horror movies, and porn. And once upon a… read more!
The Beatles-like Beau Brummels
Have you ever heard a song on the radio that you were sure was by a particular performer - only to find out, often years later, that you were wrong? Of course you have. And so have I. Here are nine examples of well-known hits that sure sound as though different, usually more famous artists recorded them. Call it the… read more!