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There are a ton of examples, but one that comes to mind is "Scotty Doesn't Know", the Lustra song used for the movie "Eurotrip". Lustra's song has an iconic guitar riff and is fairly well known worldwide, but not many people remember that movie, and I was wondering if there are any other examples of songs made for a movie that eclipsed the original in popularity.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is originally from Meet Me in St. Louis, originally sung by Judy Garland
And was a very sad and morose song. Not a happy Christmas staple (that it would be years later). The characters learned that they had to move away and will never see their friends again.
Sinatra forced a line change, for his Christmas album... realizing the song was about despair.
"Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow", was changed to "hang a shining star upon the highest bough" to make the song more joyful.
I love that version! Didn’t realize it was the original one.
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Same with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is a song written in 1943 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. - Wikipedia
Originally the song included the lyrics:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas // It may be your last // Next year we may all be living in the past.
There’s a great story about Judy Garland asking them to change the lyrics because she thought they were too dark for her to sing to a child.
TIL White Christmas was written for a movie.
You should see White Christmas - its a fantastic piece of mid-century Americana. Holiday Inn not so much.
Danny Kaye is a national treasure
The Court Jester remains one of my favorite comedy films of all time.
White Christmas is a Christmas staple for me after years of prodding by my mom for me to watch it.
I watch it every year while I wrap presents :)
Gangsta's Paradise from Dangerous Minds.
Ghetto Supastar was played consistently around that time too, but not many people have seen the movie Bulworth IIRC
TIL that song is even from a movie. Ironically, I first heard about it because of the Weird Al parody. The song I was going to suggest was "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" which I also only know from the Weird Al Parody.
The Batman Forever soundtrack was pretty good. The movie...
“Kiss from a rose” was my senior prom song… in 2008. Definitely a great soundtrack although the original Tim Burton Batman had Prince so I guess it’s a toss up
When I moved to Atlanta, friends took me to a nerd bar for trivia night. They would play songs between questions.
For one question, they played 'Kiss from a Rose' and the entire bar, including the staff, all sang along to the whole song. Two of the staff members fuckin' danced in the middle of the bar.
Closest I've ever been to being in a musical in real life. I liked the song before, but that memory makes that song awesome for me. Don't think I'll ever experience a spontaneous musical moment again.
Came here to say this one. That song was everywhere in the mid-90s, and Dangerous Minds was kind of a blip. I’d also suggest the Dangerous Minds soundtrack was more popular than the film itself. That soundtrack is fire.
I mean yeah I agree with your point of the soundtrack being more popular than the film, and the film isn't that well remembered now, but it wasn't a flop or anything
Actually made $180 million dollars in 1995, which is very good
Love the movie. I think it came late in the era of the "Kids in the hood have it rough growing up" flood.
“Stand And Deliver”, “187”, “Light It Up”.
Context: 39 year old white guy
My mom got mad I was listening to music that glorified "Gangsta" culture the year it came out. I got her to watch the movie, and she ended up liking the song in the long run.
It's also one of the few songs of the gangsta rap era that took an introspective and regretful look at the gangsta lifestyle, versus simply glorifying it.
I always remember the line "I'm 23 now but will I live to see 24?".
Coolio made it to 59 before dying of an overdose in 2022, which is still too young and tragic, but at least he didn't catch a bullet like many other rappers of the late '90s.
Plus he wasn't allowed to swear, otherwise Stevie Wonder wouldn't let him use the beat
I think it enhances the song, honestly.
More people know the chariots of fire song than have actually seen the movie
And that's not even the only composition by Vangelis that most people probably heard here or there, but haven't seen the movie it's from. Conquest of Paradise would be another one.
Fun fact about Vangelis. Despite being one of the most prolific composers of film music, he was completely self taught from childhood and never learned how to read music, instead notating his compositions with runes that he invented and his pieces were transcribed for orchestra from the audio recordings of his playing all of the parts at once on his custom keyboard setup.
Holy shit
As someone who’s seen Chariots of Fire, that’s like the only thing I remember apart from that there was running and there were religious people.
I remember Chariots of Fire because I was 14 in the movie theater falling asleep so I went to the bathroom and discovered that I had just started my first period 😂
At least you got an awesome soundtrack
"Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship from the movie Mannequin (1987)
This was a Jeopardy answer that no one knew yesterday. Broke my heart.
Dude all three of them sucked in pop culture last night. Didn’t get that one. Didn’t recognize a picture of Aaliyah, a picture of Hilary Swank. Didn’t know the frontman of The Doors.
My old man brain served up "Val Kilmer" just now before it said, "NO, fucking Jim Morrison, you doorknob."
To be fair I am convinced that Jim possessed Val for the movie.
The Doorman.
Not knowing the movie, this music video looks like a pervert's drug-induced fever dream, smashing storefront windows and stealing their mannequins to use as sex dolls. Definitely doesn't match the lyrics, lol.
"Que Sera, Sera" by Doris Day from Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956)
I didn't realize this song was written for this movie.
That's such a crazy one too, because 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' isn't a musical or anything. It's a mystery thriller. 'Que Sera Sera' is only performed as a kind of signal for the characters to secretly communicate. Such a famous song, and that was how it originally released!
"That's What Friends Are For". Originally written for the movie Night Shift.
And that original version was sung by Rod Stewart
Definitely not as good as Dionne and Friends version of course. Even Rod would probably agree.
That's a great movie.
Unchained Melody is more known than the movie Unchained (1955) and more associated with Ghost (1990)
I honestly didn't know it was associated with a movie before Ghost. I guess that explains the title.
Yeah I used to think of it like “Bohemian Rhapsody” or something. An artistic title, probably representing his unrestrained feelings of love, especially given how dramatic the song and vocal performance is.
But nope, it’s the melody from Unchained, a film about a convict deciding whether to escape from prison. And the song was relatively delicate in the film.
I assumed that the love was “unchained” and that “unchained” was some sort of musical term I wasn’t familiar with but would assume was freestyle or not attached to … something — okay, so I really didn’t give it much thought, and just accepted it. My oldest brother (15 years my senior) was a Righteous Brothers fan, but he never mentioned anything about it to me.
Not to mention every TV episode that features 50s ghosts finally resolving their business and heading towards the light. Seriously, I don't think about the movie Ghost, I just think of ghosts in general whenever the song comes on.
I get that with I Only Have Eyes for You, I think Buffy made the most impact.
I genuinely had no idea it was made for a movie, but always thought Unchained Melody was a weirdly hard title
Here’s one! A lot of people don’t realize “Silver Bells” was written for a Bob Hope movie called “The Lemon Drop Kid”
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas was written for Meet Me In St. Louis and the original version is brutal, not an upbeat happy holiday tune.
The original lyrics were darker, for sure, but I don't really consider the current version an 'upbeat happy tune'. Bittersweet rings closer, at least for me.
White Christmas was written for "Holiday Inn" and NOT for the later movie "White Christmas."
“The Prayer” by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli, which was originally written for the Warner Bros. answer to the Disney renaissance musicals: Quest for Camelot.
The film bombed, but the song ended up being a staple of adult contemporary music, and a huge hit for both Dion and Bocelli. It even became a hit for other adult contemporary artists too, like Josh Groban and Charlotte Church.
The only reason this isn't the top answer is because nobody knows that song is from that movie.
Scrolled all the way down looking for this. This should have more upvotes.
I Can Dream About You by Dan Hartman was first released on the Streets of Fire soundtrack in 1984. I never even knew the movie existed until a few years ago, but that song has been a staple on soft rock radio since it came out.
Side note, cool movie and the soundtrack is awesome.
Soundtrack is amazing. I can smell a Jim Steinman song a mile away, and this movie has two absolute bangers.
I found my people ! You guys wanna start a band or make a movie or something?
The entire soundtrack for Super Fly by Curtis Mayfield.
Edit: Several folks brought this up so I thought it would be easier to address it here rather than reply individually.
To clarify, the OP prompt was not that the movie was not good or was not successful but simply that the song/album surpassed it. I don't believe that the success of one diminishes the success of the other in any way and the movie deserves the acclaim it gets.
Credit where it is due, the movie Super Fly (while not my personal favorite of the genre) is a certified classic. It was very successful in 72 when it came out (someone mentioned it charted 11th for the year in movies) and was influential in the genre as it continued to grow. Nowadays the movie is still a cult classic (as another pointed out).
Superfly the Album hit gold status (1.5 million records sold) In 3 months and had two different singles (Freddie's Dead and Superfly) each surpass a million in sales and break the top ten of both the R&B and Pop charts. It has been said that Super Fly is one of the few soundtracks to have made more in profit than the movie and the only person to make the kind of money off of Super Fly that producer Sig Shore did was Curtis Mayfield. Given that the movie was one of the most successful movies that year and is still one of the highest grossing movies in it's genre, says a lot for both of them.
But the success of the album at the time is only a small portion of it's success. Since then Super Fly has been transformative and continues to be influential in music. You can hear Mayfield's influence on artists like Bobby Womack and even James Brown in the years immediately following the release of Super Fly.
Even today, Hip-Hop and R&B artists continue to sample this album. Just looking at the three big tracks, Super Fly has been sampled more than 20 times, Pusherman about 30 times, and Freddie's Dead over 60 times.
There is a lot to be said for societal memory of a piece of art. There are full on voting aged adults who have no idea that Darling Nikki was a Prince song before it was a Foo Fighters song and there are people in this post who didn't know that Super Fly was even a movie before it was a soundtrack.
Again not trying to downplay the movie or its accomplishments. I'm just saying that I believe the success and influence of the soundtrack has been greater.
Pusherman has been referenced or interpolated so many times, it's insane.
"I'm yo mama, I'm yo daddy, I'm that n**** in the alley..."
"I'm yo doctor, when in need..."
Pusher Man is one of the first tracks I thought of when this album came to mind.
Shout out to Freddie's Dead and the title track Super Fly as well. Curtis Mayfield absolutely crushed that album.
“Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan was originally part of the score for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, not a forgotten film but certainly not as popular as the song.