Sorry for the delay folks. Anyway, I'm planning to make sure that the next time I do a Top Ten List, it'll be my long-delayed Ten Best Films from last year, but I'm not quite there yet. Plus, I've been busy with work outside of this blog lately, so I unfortunately haven't been able to devote my full attention to this blog lately.
That said, I wanted to give you guys something, so I put out another request for somebody to come up with an idea for a Top Ten List I can do that they haven't seen before. I'm not getting a lot of great responses for these by the way. I know it's a little difficult, but I am genuinely trying to find things that are different than others, but I usually only end up getting, sorta half-assed ideas for these. I think most people just want to see me smash or bash stuff, or basically do lists that everybody else has already done it seems. Well, I don't want to do that honestly, I really do want to do unique ideas for lists, things that are better than simply an arbitrary list of my own preferences. I'm always trying to come up with things that aren't done elsewhere or before, but I realize how difficult that can be. And to be honest, this list did kinda interest me. I have been talking lately about music a lot more lately and I've been listening to more music lately than I normally do. Even modern music. Not much, modern music, Derek and the Dominoes is in my CD player right now, but I'm not just listening to old stuff and my own personal Lilith Fair tastes although you'll see both of these on the list.
No, I'm okay making this list, although it is sort of a weird compromise. It's kind of a combination of both sides of my analytical personality. I only like to look at movies through their quality irrelevant of my own personal preferences and biases but I've mostly come to the conclusion that with music, I should not care so much about that and let me own biases determine what I listen to. I can admire and appreciate everything but, yeah, it's one thing for me to judge with my eyes wide open, but something as intimate that goes through your ears and seeps into my mind...- uh, even if I can consciously agree that it's good, it's not like I can force myself to listen. Somebody once said it best, I don't remember who, but I agree with this sentiment, he said "All art strives to be music." It's true, even simple maddening of songs, the moment you get reminded of it, it's in your head. You can hear five knock in the right rhythm, and then knock twice right after, not even realizing where "Shave and a haircut, two bits" even comes from, or even know what that is, but you don't see, a paint stroke and immediately think the Mona Lisa, or think gangsters and immediately think "The Godfather", or, whatever see words on a page and immediately think Shakespeare. Music gets into your head and stays there, finds a permanent place the way most art forms try to do, but rarely succeed, certainly they don't succeed as easily or as well as music.
And that's especially true of music and films. We don't think about it enough, but you'd be shocked at just how many songs come from movies. Often times we know the song and not the movie. Quick, what movie was "Cheek to Cheek" from? I'll give you credit if you knew it was from a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers movie, I even had to look up that it was from "Shall We Dance?" and I only saw that movie fairly recently. That actually was quite common, in doing this list, I was shocked at how many songs I didn't even know were from feature films. Sometimes the songs are heard and are more remembered than the movie they're from, and many times that is a good thing. I wish there were more songs like that on this list,
However, there aren't. Unfortunately sometimes a great song is remember partly because the horrible movie it came from is popular and I know I'm going to get shit for including some of these songs. That said, I wanted to be fair with this list, so the only movies that are eligible are films that I have actually seen and sat through; it would be easy for me to say I really hate something that most everybody agrees sucks just to include the song. Hell, if I ever was actually able to finish sitting through "City of Angels" that movie alone would've had two songs on this list. Sorry Goo Goo Dolls and God. (Yeah, I call Alanis Morissette God, and I was doing that before she was in "Dogma".) So that narrows it down, and that eliminates a lot of possible great songs, and I'm gonna narrow it down a little further too. These songs should be original to the movie as much as possible. It'd be easy to take a Broadway musical I hate that I single out the one decent song, like "I Remember It Well" from "Gigi" for instance, so no doing that. Also, this eliminates cover songs, which means I won't be bashing "The Bodyguard" just to put "I Will Always Love You" on the list. (Not that I would anyway, most overrated song of the '90s; Dolly Parton's version is so much better it's not even funny anymore) Actually I'm more pissed off that that eliminates Sheryl Crow's far-more-superior-that-GnR-version of "Sweet Child 'o Mine" from the "Big Daddy" soundtrack. (I stand by that statement) Also songs got eliminated because I like the movie even if others don't (I actually like the Kevin Costner Robin Hood, and that's why Bryan Adams isn't on here, not because I think the song sucks. Although, yeah, it wouldn't make it anyway.) and besides, if I'm going sort this out, I really should narrow this to only truly bad films. Maybe some are worst than others, some are much much worst, but still, I won't pick any film that I can claim that the movie as a whole is good.
So keep this in mind, this is a weird list for me. It's both a preference list partially, and a judgment of quality at the same. And since I haven't forced myself to sit through the worst of the worst movies just to hear the songs, there's a few movies on here that will probably piss people off. (In fact, I know they will) Others, maybe not, but, we'll see. Anyway, let's get to it. We're counting down!
THE TOP TEN BEST SONGS FROM BAD MOVIES! (Or at least, the best songs from the really shitty movies I'm had the displeasure of sitting through.)
Let's start with number ten, and-eh, this is one that I will need to explain. You see, I don't hate this filmmaker. I wouldn't say I'm a fan, but he has made some amazing movies. He's also by all accounts, some kind of major prick, who's talked about how good a Nazi he'd be and how has very disdainful views of America, and there's a few movies of his that specifically indicate this perspective. That's not a dealbreaker for me in terms of liking a movie, I'm be no means patriotic, but I have a truly real disdain for just how anti-American this movie is. It is physically painful to me, even now thinking about it, and a that's a startling feat coming from a musical. Oh, my friend Melissa's not gonna like this.
10. "I've Seen It All"-Bjork & Thom Yorke from "Dancer in the Dark". Music: Bjork; Lyrics, Lars Von Trier and Sjon Sigurdsson
I know the general consensus with Lars Von Tiers is that "Dogville" is the movie where he really flew off the rails with handles with his America bashing, but no, I can't disagree more than that, this is his true Anti-American film. Every major role by an American actor or an American character is so form of complete asshole. The main villain, played by David Morse is the American who steals money from a blind mother, who she then kills and is sent to death in the electric chair, martyred by the cold, cruel and uncaring American justice system. This isn't depressing, it's manipulative, and horrible, even by my lax standards, this movie offends me. Hell, the whole conceit of the movie is how horrible the outside world is to this one lone, cute little Icelandic factory worker in America, that she escapes from the world and sees everything as musical numbers and she should, 'cause this movie is made with absolute hate in the mind and the soul. So, why am I including this song, it must be because I'm just that big a Bjork fan, right? Well, eh, I like her, true. I wouldn't say I'm actually her biggest fan by any means though. In fact, I usually like people who were obviously inspired by Bjork than I do her, like Dido for instance, I'm relistening to her "No Angel" album in fact and it's awesome, or-eh, some of the Charlie XCX's more experimental work, eh-, oh wait (Internet search, "Boom Clap," originally recorded for her album, not for "The Fault in Our Stares", whew! That's a relief, I would've had to erase all this and restart) but I've never been an overly huge Bjork fan. That said, there are some good songs in this movie. I actually came close to picking "Cvalda" here instead of "I've Seen It All", but the more I thought about it, this really is the best song, especially within the context of the film, which she performs with Peter Stormare, although I posted this amazing version she did with Thom Yorke of Radiohead, which was the version that was on the album and yes, the song should be a duet, and that was a big problem with her infamous Oscar performance, for when she got nominated for this song. (Not to mention the bizarre swan outfit, but she's Bjork, she automatically gets away with shit like that.) It's definitely a song that works best in the movie, where the losing of one's sight and the coping of that is to dive into music is a crucial aspect of the song, but it still holds up incredibly well on it's own, when done properly.
Okay, Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine. Well, a lot of our greatest musicians work on film, sometimes more than we realize. Take Sir Elton John, now if I ask you to name a movie with Elton's music in it, you'd probably immediately think "The Lion King". and rightly so, there's some amazing songs that he did for that movie, but I might argue that the best movie song he ever did was for "The Road to El Dorado" a song called "Someday Out of the Blue". Unfortunately, I haven't seen that movie, but I did see this one.
9. "Hello, Hello"-Sir Elton John with Lady Gaga from "Gnomeo & Juliet" Music: Elton John; Lyric: Bernie Taupin
Now, Lady Gaga got added to this song later in the film, but I love Lady Gaga as well so I don't mind that too much and actually, I've heard the original album version with just Elton alone, and it's okay, but I think this needs to be a duet. Hell, the movie is "Gnomeo & Juliet" and in the movie, it's about the moment they meet, and the song is about two people meeting with each other and having that instant love connection, so, yeah, this should be a duet. Actually, with Gaga's vocal on the track, it actually sorta reminds me of a Fleetwood Mac duet, like one of those Buckingham/Nicks duet they did. I never realized how much Stevie Nicks is in Lady Gaga's voice, but she's already otherworldly and insane, so, yeah, it doesn't surprise me that she's also part witch. Now, "Gnomeo & Juliet" is not the worst movie either, hell it's not even the worst filmed version of "Romeo & Juliet" I've ever seen. That said, this is an instantly forgettable movie. This isn't a great Elton John song but I gotta be honest, but his music just hits me the right way; I'll take an average song from him over a lot of other artists best songs. I don't know how it is now, but growing up, Elton John was always on the radio. He was on the classic rock stations, he was on the Top 40 stations, there was always new and great from him and it's always a delight to hear a wonderful Elton John and Bernie Taupin song. The guy had a Top 40 hits at least once a year for 30 years straight! Nobody has that kind of record and nobody else has that kind of consistently great output, yeah there's a few stinkers in there, but there's just a lot of great ones and it's not like he stopped making great music, he just stopped getting played on the radio; it's nice to be reminded of how good he is, so for that reason, I gotta include "Hello, Hello".
Number eight: (James Bond Theme plays) I am lacking a lot of James Bond movies in my film watching history. Like, a real lot, I'm not even half-way through, and I've certainly not tried to force myself through the supposed bad ones, or the ones I wish were bad at least. I've tried watching "Live and Let Die", I hope that's as bad as it was when I stopped watching it, 'cause man, that would've been a good song to put on here. That's probably one of my favorite Paul McCartney songs. And hell, Carly Simon's "Nobody Does it Better" that's an awesome song, does "The Spy Who Loved Me" suck? Sheryl Crow's "Tomorrow Never Dies", that's a good song. Garbage's "The World is Not Enough-, oh, wait I did see that film. It's a good one. I know I need to see more James Bond movies but there had to be at least one that I saw that sucked that has a great song to put on here?
8. "Another Way to Die"-Alicia Keys & Jack White from "Quantom of Solace" Music/Lyric: Jack White
(Me air drumming) Okay this song's just fucking awesome! I-eh, I don't really have much else to add here. This is one of the most recent songs on this list. It's a great song, um, I remember Alicia Keys from around when I stopped listening to music, she was good. I like "Fallin'". I've heard some of her other stuff, she's definitely good. Maybe a bit overrated to me, but I generally like her work. Jack White, I know he's of The White Stripes, I know he's a good guitarist and apparently he plays multiple instruments here on this song. Um, I just don't know enough about either artist to be that articulate about this. "Quantum of Solace", um, it was, eh, o-kay-, eh, no, not really. It was definitely a disappointment after "Casino Royale", which I think next to "Goldfinger" you can argue as possibly the best James Bond film. It was based off a strange obscure short story from Ian Fleming that he wrote originally after "Casino Royale" which was the first James Bond novel, it's not really one of his best stories and you can tell, this direct sequel is pretty underwhelming, especially in hindsight. I barely think of it honestly, to me, Daniel Craig did "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall" and I forget this one even exists; it really probably shouldn't, but they were trying to stay true reboot-wise to Fleming's writing at the time. It's got some moments but it drags. I doubt it's the worst James Bond but, I certainly can't imagine anybody listing it as a favorite. It's barely enough of a story for a film at all, certainly not a James Bond movie. But, holy hell, this song is just, wonderfully awesome. I can't believe I didn't hear this more often. I recognized it, and it's not Adele's song or anything, but this is just a great James Bond theme. Should be recognized for that more often.
Lucky number seven! Uh, I debated whether to include this song or not. This is one of those tricky songs for me with this list. For one thing, the movie it's from, it's a bit of questionable one in terms of it's badness. Hell, it even got a television series spun-off from it, a lot of people did like it and there's a lot to like in it. A lot of it actually is music, Bob Dylan music in fact. (And before anyone asks, "Knocking on Heaven's Door" from "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid", no, not on here, didn't see the movie yet) there's more than that though. See, I'm bending my originality clause a bit here, but I think I have too. When you really, truly look back on the history of this genre of music, so many of the best songs came from movies, that I felt I really needed to have one song here, and after careful thought, no, the movie doesn't really work, so I'm including this one.
7. "Gangsta's Paradise"-Coolio featuring L.V. from "Dangerous Minds" Music: Stevie Wonder, Doug Rasheed; Lyric: Artis Ivey Jr. aka Coolio and Larry Sanders aka L.V.
Yeah, if you ever want to know that I'm a nineties kid, the fact this easily ranks as one of my favorite rap songs is a big, big clue. This is the one I'm stretching the originality clause with because the song, like most rap songs samples other work, in this case Stevie Wonder's song "Pastime Paradise". I love Stevie Wonder, but I rarely think of that as one of his better songs, Coolio definitely found a really cool, new direction for this work. The movie "Dangerous Minds", it's-, eh. There's a whole genre of these movies, I guess I could argue any one of them as faulty compared to others, (I've always "Dead Poets Society" for instance is heavily overrated) but yeah, this movie only kinda half-way goes where it needs to. It's kinda like"Stand & Deliver" without the results at the end. Michelle Pfieffer's good in it and she carries it, but yeah, it's more a movie about how the teacher deals with these students instead of it being the students finding inspiration from this teacher, or it's not enough about that at least. Kinda ends arbitrarily too, there's some things wrong with it; it's got some good ideas but I don't think it works overall, but yeah, the song is amazing. For one it's just dark and brooding, haunting. Beginning with a biblical quote and then twisting upon it, there's definitely a lot of things frightening about it, in a really good way. Plus, 1995, you gotta remember, not a great era for rap music. I know some will disagree with me on this, but I'm not talking about the music itself, this was the middle of the East Coast West Coast wars, this horribly made-up battle that led to two people getting killed over as the line between whether or not rap was portraying the gangsta persona or whether it actually was gangsters who were rapping was just so blurred that people like me, who already were struggling with the genre became so disgusted that even today, I have a very difficult time even accepting the genre sometimes. You can't imagine how refreshing it was to hear a gangsta rap song that actually was about the horrible life of being a gangsta. How death isn't a possibility but a probability, how there was no escape from this world and how this was the only reasonable option to live in the world of this person, knowing it will lead to their demise and how it's a side effect of the failure of our institutions, like the School System itself, that partially lead to this so-called "Gangsta's Paradise" they live. This was really refreshing back then, and it still feels like a haunting call from the past of the genre. It's Coolio's biggest hit, one of the biggest hit songs of the 1990s and it deserved to be. It still holds up unbelievably well now.
Number Six. Okay, when I first got the request to do this list, there were obviously a few songs and movies that jumped into my head. Certain movies that have great soundtracks but generally are pretty lousy films. This is one of those movies and songs that immediately comes to my head. This movie is everything wrong about the nineties all shoved into some of the most selfish and self-involved and just plain idiotic young adult characters ever created, and supposedly they were the heroes of this awful, awful film. It's amazing anything great came out of this movie, but ooh, this song, ooh, now we're in my sweet spot. Turn the radio on, turn the radio up, this woman is singing my song....
6. Stay (I Missed You)"-Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories from "Reality Bites" Music/Lyric: Lisa Loeb
This song came really close to making my Top Ten Lilith Fair Era Songs last month, and Lisa Loeb's somebody who I find myself liking more and more nowadays and that has nothing to do with the fact that she follows me on Twitter. (Awkward pause) No, I swear, it really doesn't, I've always liked her and this song, but I've taken a relisten to her other albums and they're more fun and rocking than I remembered back then. This song is actually a mini-miracle. Loeb happened to have an apartment across from Ethan Hawke's in New York and it was him that pitched the song for the movie, and he directed this music video btw. The song suddenly went to number one on the charts and put this cute little singer/songwriter with weird glasses into the record books, becoming the first artist to have a number one single, before she was signed to a record deal. (Only other act to do that is Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, doing that with "Thrift Shop" a couple years ago) This is just a really beautiful and strange song. It's a breakup song, reminiscing about a breakup, and yet it's from the perspective of somebody who admits how self-involved she is. Oddly, this fits perfectly with the self-involved main character in "Reality Bites", a narcissistic untalented filmmaker who's obsessed with filming everything around her and her friends as though she's documenting the next generation of future world leaders of art and industry, when she's basically the worst of the group of pretentious slacker post-grads. Oh, god this movie is such crap. Everything an outsider thought the Gen X generation was is in that movie, and so little of it is really true. And it was directed by Ben Stiller of all people, oh this movie just so fails at what it's trying to do. But, it does have a great soundtrack and this song in particular, is really awesome. It's folky yet pop, it's self-aware yet quirky and yet still coming from believable complex emotions.
Number five! Oh, I'm gonna get in trouble for this one. Um, (Deep breath) no, I don't think this is a good movie. There's great parts to this movie, but as a film overall, it's too disjointed and it barely makes any sense. I'm sorry, the parts do not make a whole. Especially when that hole's being blown up by dynamite and they still can't kill the gopher.
5. "I'm Alright"-Kenny Loggins from "Caddyshack" Music/Lyric: Kenny Loggins
Actually, I'm a little surprised that I don't have more '80s songs on this list; I would've thought this list would've been overloaded with some great '80s songs from some really bad iconic '80s films. There's definitely a few I could've put on here including a few other Kenny Loggins ones, but "I'm Alright" is easily my favorite of his songs, this is a great pop/rock song that you want to dance to the second it goes on. Actually, not the second it goes on, because on the album tracks of this songs there's a really horrible instrumental opening to it that lasts like a minute and makes no real sense; I know some songs do that on albums, and sometimes it can improve a song from a radio edit, but I-eh, I don't get it, that's why I posted the single version. Anyway, "Caddyshack", um, yes, there's a lot of funny in "Caddyshack", but it, ugh. If you ever actually sit through the movie, to me, there's a lot of waiting around for the comedians you like the best to come back and having to sit through, a meandering sorta mess of, multiple plots that really are barely connected, and maybe they shouldn't have been. Give me Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield, I want to see more of their shtick. Hell, the main character's supposed to be Noonan, the caddy, in "Caddyshack" and you barely remember him, the movie forgets about him. It's almost feels like a "Kentucky Fried Movie"-type film, just a bunch of random things shoved together that kinda relate to golf, sorta. Some of it's funny as hell, but I-eh, yeah, I think this movie suffers from being more memorable in the mind afterwards than as a film while you're watching it. The song's great though. How often do you hear a song about somebody trying to not get into a fight? Not too often.
Number four! Okay, I know this is an easy pick. This isn't about the movie though, although it is horrible. It's badly conceived as a film, full of plotholes, edited to death, it's just a godawful piece of shit, everybody knows it's a godawful piece of shit. It's still the only movie I've seen from this director 'cause I don't want to see anything else from him, this movie was so painfully bad. It's also not about the band, although they rock, they're amazing, they kick ass and this is an amazing song of there's and everybody knows they rock and that this song is awesome. It's unfortunate it's their biggest hit, but oh well, it's still awesome. No, this is about the songwriter, and even then, it's sorta backhanded. Let's talk about Diane Warren.
4. "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"-Aerosmith from "Armageddon" Music/Lyric: Diane Warren
Diane Warren is one of the most interesting songwriters out there to me. I'm actually fascinated by her, not because she's the greatest songwriter out there, but because she's the most..., well, she's the, um-, hmm. I don't quite know how to describe her, but if there's a song that you can think of that made the pop charts that's just sorta average. Like with particularly vague lyrics and very unspecific and sorta unmemorable compositions, she probably wrote it. I'm not kidding too, you've heard a song from her. She once had seven different singles in the Top Ten at the same time, all sung by seven different artists. Practically everybody has worked with her at some point. Some of them are forgettable to bad, occasionally there's a good one, my favorite is probably Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time". She always writes about love, usually, but it's always in these really unspecific terms. Reportedly, she hasn't has a relationship in twenty years and is often compared to Emily Dickinson in the music world for her eternally spinster approach to her life and songwriting. She works alone mostly and composes these songs that other people make into worldwide hits. She's in the songwriting hall of fame, she has a Grammy along with twelve other nominations, and she's even been nominated for seven Oscars. She actually shows up twice on this list, I'll get to the second song of hers she wrote later. Basically the better the artist is for her songs, the better the song usually is, although sometimes she just writes great songs. She's an enigma to me. Her songs are so generic they're enigmatic, she's an enigmatic person, it's bizarrely fascinating to me. She is the quintessential pop songwriter, and all the good and bad that entails. She's the kind of ideal of what everybody would instinctively hates about pop music and yet, she's not the artist so unless you look her up as the songwriter you can't really block her from your radar and besides that she has a more-than-fair number of great songs that even if you tried to resist you would unknowingly realize that you've liked her anyway and have liked her songs for years. Anyway, my fascination with her aside, this is obviously one of her best songs, and everybody loves it and everybody knows the movie sucks. Next!
Number three! (Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" plays) Ooh, damn, I haven't seen any Elvis movies all the way through. Yeah, that would've been nice addition, assuming that one of his movies with a good song attached to it sucked. I mentioned Astaire & Rogers earlier, but there's a long list of the best musicians of our day, literally since the beginning of sound who've devoted much of their art to the cinema, and for the most part I haven't seen most of their films. I've caught up on a lot of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, and they're mostly good films. I haven't seen Elvis's films, Diana Ross's films, only "Purple Rain" when it comes to Prince's films. (Music changes to "Beautiful Stranger" by Madonna) oh, ow that hurts, I haven't sat through most of Madonna's films. Ooh. Aw, this song as well; I never watched the Austin Powers movies, dammit! I might argue this as her best song of all-time! We like to erase Madonna's film career, 'cause of her questionable acting, I think the movies mostly would've sucked in general, although sometimes I get it. I don't think she's that bad an actress, but I haven't seen most of her films either, certainly not the ones with the good songs. "Into the Groove" from "Desperately Seeking Susan", "Who's That Girl" from "Who's That Girl", hell, I didn't even finish "VisionQuest" or I could've put "Crazy for You" on here, or "At Close Range" which she did "Live to Tell" for believe it or not, man she did some of her best songs for movies. Well, that's unfortunate that I can't put a Madonna song on here. Believe me though, if she did a great song for a movie that I had seen, me a Madonna fanboy, I would remember.
3. "I'll Remember"-Madonna from "With Honors" Music/Lyric: Madonna, Patrick Leonard and Richard Page
Wait, what?! This song is-, wait, I love this song. This is an amazing song too; this was from a movie? What the hell movie was this from? "With Honors"?. (Scratches head) Wait a minute, that stupid movie with Joe Pesci and Brendan Fraser, and Pesci's dying and he's an inspirational fuck-up or something, that forgettable cliche-riddened snoozefest? This song is from that movie?! I legitimately did not know that until I looked this up. I've always loved this song, but who the fuck remembered this was from "With Honors" of all goddamn movies? I was expecting to list a song or two that people completely forgot were even from movies, but this one, I really didn't remember. This, this is just a great Madonna song. It's emotional, it's reflective, it's her cutting through all the bullshit of her other work, especially at the time, 'cause this was during her "Sex" book phase...- I guess I just presumed this was on "Bedtime Stories" or something, this feels like it could go right next to "Inside of Me", or one of those other wonderful mid-nineties Madonna songs that she was doing before the whole world freaked out when she got pregnant. Well, this is a great song from a horribly bad movie. Thanks Madonna, I knew you'd come through. And yes, I'll sit through all your other films soon. Sooner or Later. (That's actually a great song from a good Madonna movie. "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)" In case, you didn't catch that) (Clears throat)
Number Two! Oh boy. My friend Lillian's not gonna like this one. Sorry Lillian, but you know what I think of this film.
2. "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now"-Starship from "Mannequin" Music/Lyric: Albert Hammond and Diane Warren
I told you there'd be a second Diane Warren song on here. Okay, I know they're kind of a band that you're supposed to derive especially considering how they started out as Jefferson Airplane and how amazing they were and how quintessentially sixties that band was, but I like all forms of the band, including Starship, including "We Built This City", I kinda like that song. Grace Slick can do very little wrong in my mind, but this is definitely the best "Starship" song. And it's definitely lasted and most people have forgotten that it came from this bizarre unfunny comedy about a mannequin that came to life. Seriously, what the hell was with this film, ugh. And they made a sequel too, oh God. Thankfully, most people have forgotten that wretched film, most people (Don't ask-, I have a bunch of weird friends who are fascinated by inanimate objects coming to life, they think it's the frightening thing in the world and they like anything with that kind of story in them. I disagree on all counts, especially regarding this film.) and thankfully now, most people will probably know this song from being in a much better movie called "The Skeleton Twins" where the song is lipsynched by Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. That is an awesome movie, and an awesome use of Starship. This is just great soft rock at it's best, done by great artists who know how to do it, and this is one of Diane Warren's very best songs. It actually does match the movie well, but yeah, this is one of those great '80s song that nobody remembers was from a movie.
Okay, before I go into number one, I thought that since this was music, and not film, and this is a bit of subjective list, I thought perhaps I'd give a few thoughts on some other songs that I didn't end up picking, in no particular order.
"I Disappear"-Metallica from "Mission: Impossible 2".
This is the song that really first got me into understanding the appeal of Metallica and a lot of other heavy metal at the time. "Mission: Impossible 2" is by far the worst of the "Mission: Impossible" movies.
"Hungry Eyes"-Eric Carmen from "Dirty Dancing"
Actually all three major songs from "Dirty Dancing" could've made this list. Hell, I even like Patrick Swayze's "She Like the Wind". I do, there's something poetic about it. "Hungry Eyes" was probably the closest to making the list.
"Cool Rider"-Michelle Pfieffer from "Grease 2"
I thought about this for a minute, 'cause I don't have a song from a bad musical represented, oh except for "Dancer in the Dark", but I don't even want to think about that film as a musical, but honestly, despite it's flaws, I can't completely say "Grease 2" is "bad". Pointless, definitely, but bad; it's too fun to be bad.
"You Will Be My Ain True Love"-Allison Krauss and Sting from "Cold Mountain"
Sting had a weird streak of some great songs from movies during the early 2000s, but he kept losing the Oscar. This was the weakest of the bunch, compared to "Until..." from "Kate & Leopold" and "My Funny Friend and Me" from "The Emperor's New Groove", but he lost those in good years to even better songs (And those were good movies). He lost this year to Annie Lennox's "Into the West" from the third "Lord of the Rings" film. Now, I don't think any of The LOTR films are good, but I didn't realize the music from it was so bad. That song is terrible, that is just as inexplicable a win for that film as Best Picture and Best Screenplay that year, and then there's the Enya song that was nominated for the first film, ugh. I didn't think "Cold Mountain" was any good, but god, it was much better than that and the Sting song at least was definitely better, even in a weak year.
"I See Fire"-Ed Sheeran from "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
Okay, I do like this one from "The Hobbit" movies, so they got better with the music.
"You Haven't Seen the Last of Me"-Cher from "Burlesque"
I almost had three Diane Warren songs on there. "Burlesque" is terrible, but this song isn't bad.
"If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out"-Cat Stevens from "Harold and Maude"
I have absolutely no idea why people like this movie, it's one of the worst pieces of shit I've ever seen. I gave it ZERO STARS! This song and Ruth Gordon's performance are the only good things in the movie. I was gonna lay into it until I realize that this song wasn't Top Ten good, so I guess I'll hold these bullets until another time, but seriously, what the fuck?
"Maniac"-Michael Sembello from "Flashdance"
I guess I could've thought about "Flashdance (What a Feeling)" as well, but this is the more interesting song to me.
"Man of the Hour"-Pearl Jam from "Big Fish"
I can't believe how often I find people who like this movie. I'm not a Tim Burton fan, but this is by far his absolute worst film. Why did his stories have to be real? No seriously, why? It didn't change a damn thing finding that out. He had grown to appreciate his father on his deathbed and accepting of him as the asshole and the blowhard he was, he died, the son accepted, at that point nothing mattered, including whether or not the stories we're real!? Why would then...-, ugh! And some people like this manipulative tripe of a movie? I'm standing by this, it's his absolute worst film!
Okay that's enough of that. Here we go:
THE #1 BEST SONG FROM A BAD MOVIE IS...
(Drumroll)
(Sigh) Yeah, this is one of those that's gonna piss some people off, isn't it? A lot of shit, shit, shit, coming my way on this one. (Pause) Eh, look, I don't... (Frustrated scoff) okay, I've given this film, four or five tries, I know it's beloved but, it doesn't work. I don't quite know what it is that doesn't actually work, I think it has to do with how the adaptation failed from book to screen. The movie always felt like it wanted it both ways, for the main two characters to be together and in love happily and then of course for them not, but without going into the actual reasons why, and Mickey Rooney's what the fuck racist role, but, yeah, It always felt like a schizophrenic movie where everybody in the movie was in a different movie. That said, (Pause), um, well, this song, well, this song is a classic.
1. "Moon River"-Audrey Hepburn from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Music: Henry Mancini; Lyric: Johnny Mercer"
Yeah, yeah, yeah, look I don't think it's a horrible movie, but I don't buy it for a second, any of it. It's not a good film. A few scenes here and there, but yeah, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" as much as I love Audrey Hepburn, and this is one of her iconic roles, but, ugh, I wish this was a better movie. Maybe if they did adapt it more towards the book, maybe if it wasn't Blake Edwards directing it.... (Shrugs) Well, too late for reworking the movie, but who doesn't love "Moon River"? Henry Mancini's music, Johnny Mercer's lyric, I mean this song just feels like it's been around since the beginning of time. I'm actually amazed it's just barely over fifty years old, it feels older, and that's a good thing. I think we've all found ourselves in those moods just humming this tune, not even realizing it half the time. It's really a classic song. I tried to figure out a way to put something else on top, but it just didn't feel right. Of all the songs from bad movies, this is the one song that I think everybody can agree is great. Now, whether anybody else agrees with the bad movie part.... Well, too bad, I'm sticking with it. "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" number one. I do prefer Frank Sinatra's version over Audrey's but, oh well, Audrey's is pretty good too.
No, I'm okay making this list, although it is sort of a weird compromise. It's kind of a combination of both sides of my analytical personality. I only like to look at movies through their quality irrelevant of my own personal preferences and biases but I've mostly come to the conclusion that with music, I should not care so much about that and let me own biases determine what I listen to. I can admire and appreciate everything but, yeah, it's one thing for me to judge with my eyes wide open, but something as intimate that goes through your ears and seeps into my mind...- uh, even if I can consciously agree that it's good, it's not like I can force myself to listen. Somebody once said it best, I don't remember who, but I agree with this sentiment, he said "All art strives to be music." It's true, even simple maddening of songs, the moment you get reminded of it, it's in your head. You can hear five knock in the right rhythm, and then knock twice right after, not even realizing where "Shave and a haircut, two bits" even comes from, or even know what that is, but you don't see, a paint stroke and immediately think the Mona Lisa, or think gangsters and immediately think "The Godfather", or, whatever see words on a page and immediately think Shakespeare. Music gets into your head and stays there, finds a permanent place the way most art forms try to do, but rarely succeed, certainly they don't succeed as easily or as well as music.
And that's especially true of music and films. We don't think about it enough, but you'd be shocked at just how many songs come from movies. Often times we know the song and not the movie. Quick, what movie was "Cheek to Cheek" from? I'll give you credit if you knew it was from a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers movie, I even had to look up that it was from "Shall We Dance?" and I only saw that movie fairly recently. That actually was quite common, in doing this list, I was shocked at how many songs I didn't even know were from feature films. Sometimes the songs are heard and are more remembered than the movie they're from, and many times that is a good thing. I wish there were more songs like that on this list,
However, there aren't. Unfortunately sometimes a great song is remember partly because the horrible movie it came from is popular and I know I'm going to get shit for including some of these songs. That said, I wanted to be fair with this list, so the only movies that are eligible are films that I have actually seen and sat through; it would be easy for me to say I really hate something that most everybody agrees sucks just to include the song. Hell, if I ever was actually able to finish sitting through "City of Angels" that movie alone would've had two songs on this list. Sorry Goo Goo Dolls and God. (Yeah, I call Alanis Morissette God, and I was doing that before she was in "Dogma".) So that narrows it down, and that eliminates a lot of possible great songs, and I'm gonna narrow it down a little further too. These songs should be original to the movie as much as possible. It'd be easy to take a Broadway musical I hate that I single out the one decent song, like "I Remember It Well" from "Gigi" for instance, so no doing that. Also, this eliminates cover songs, which means I won't be bashing "The Bodyguard" just to put "I Will Always Love You" on the list. (Not that I would anyway, most overrated song of the '90s; Dolly Parton's version is so much better it's not even funny anymore) Actually I'm more pissed off that that eliminates Sheryl Crow's far-more-superior-that-GnR-version of "Sweet Child 'o Mine" from the "Big Daddy" soundtrack. (I stand by that statement) Also songs got eliminated because I like the movie even if others don't (I actually like the Kevin Costner Robin Hood, and that's why Bryan Adams isn't on here, not because I think the song sucks. Although, yeah, it wouldn't make it anyway.) and besides, if I'm going sort this out, I really should narrow this to only truly bad films. Maybe some are worst than others, some are much much worst, but still, I won't pick any film that I can claim that the movie as a whole is good.
So keep this in mind, this is a weird list for me. It's both a preference list partially, and a judgment of quality at the same. And since I haven't forced myself to sit through the worst of the worst movies just to hear the songs, there's a few movies on here that will probably piss people off. (In fact, I know they will) Others, maybe not, but, we'll see. Anyway, let's get to it. We're counting down!
THE TOP TEN BEST SONGS FROM BAD MOVIES! (Or at least, the best songs from the really shitty movies I'm had the displeasure of sitting through.)
Let's start with number ten, and-eh, this is one that I will need to explain. You see, I don't hate this filmmaker. I wouldn't say I'm a fan, but he has made some amazing movies. He's also by all accounts, some kind of major prick, who's talked about how good a Nazi he'd be and how has very disdainful views of America, and there's a few movies of his that specifically indicate this perspective. That's not a dealbreaker for me in terms of liking a movie, I'm be no means patriotic, but I have a truly real disdain for just how anti-American this movie is. It is physically painful to me, even now thinking about it, and a that's a startling feat coming from a musical. Oh, my friend Melissa's not gonna like this.
10. "I've Seen It All"-Bjork & Thom Yorke from "Dancer in the Dark". Music: Bjork; Lyrics, Lars Von Trier and Sjon Sigurdsson
I know the general consensus with Lars Von Tiers is that "Dogville" is the movie where he really flew off the rails with handles with his America bashing, but no, I can't disagree more than that, this is his true Anti-American film. Every major role by an American actor or an American character is so form of complete asshole. The main villain, played by David Morse is the American who steals money from a blind mother, who she then kills and is sent to death in the electric chair, martyred by the cold, cruel and uncaring American justice system. This isn't depressing, it's manipulative, and horrible, even by my lax standards, this movie offends me. Hell, the whole conceit of the movie is how horrible the outside world is to this one lone, cute little Icelandic factory worker in America, that she escapes from the world and sees everything as musical numbers and she should, 'cause this movie is made with absolute hate in the mind and the soul. So, why am I including this song, it must be because I'm just that big a Bjork fan, right? Well, eh, I like her, true. I wouldn't say I'm actually her biggest fan by any means though. In fact, I usually like people who were obviously inspired by Bjork than I do her, like Dido for instance, I'm relistening to her "No Angel" album in fact and it's awesome, or-eh, some of the Charlie XCX's more experimental work, eh-, oh wait (Internet search, "Boom Clap," originally recorded for her album, not for "The Fault in Our Stares", whew! That's a relief, I would've had to erase all this and restart) but I've never been an overly huge Bjork fan. That said, there are some good songs in this movie. I actually came close to picking "Cvalda" here instead of "I've Seen It All", but the more I thought about it, this really is the best song, especially within the context of the film, which she performs with Peter Stormare, although I posted this amazing version she did with Thom Yorke of Radiohead, which was the version that was on the album and yes, the song should be a duet, and that was a big problem with her infamous Oscar performance, for when she got nominated for this song. (Not to mention the bizarre swan outfit, but she's Bjork, she automatically gets away with shit like that.) It's definitely a song that works best in the movie, where the losing of one's sight and the coping of that is to dive into music is a crucial aspect of the song, but it still holds up incredibly well on it's own, when done properly.
Okay, Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine. Well, a lot of our greatest musicians work on film, sometimes more than we realize. Take Sir Elton John, now if I ask you to name a movie with Elton's music in it, you'd probably immediately think "The Lion King". and rightly so, there's some amazing songs that he did for that movie, but I might argue that the best movie song he ever did was for "The Road to El Dorado" a song called "Someday Out of the Blue". Unfortunately, I haven't seen that movie, but I did see this one.
9. "Hello, Hello"-Sir Elton John with Lady Gaga from "Gnomeo & Juliet" Music: Elton John; Lyric: Bernie Taupin
Now, Lady Gaga got added to this song later in the film, but I love Lady Gaga as well so I don't mind that too much and actually, I've heard the original album version with just Elton alone, and it's okay, but I think this needs to be a duet. Hell, the movie is "Gnomeo & Juliet" and in the movie, it's about the moment they meet, and the song is about two people meeting with each other and having that instant love connection, so, yeah, this should be a duet. Actually, with Gaga's vocal on the track, it actually sorta reminds me of a Fleetwood Mac duet, like one of those Buckingham/Nicks duet they did. I never realized how much Stevie Nicks is in Lady Gaga's voice, but she's already otherworldly and insane, so, yeah, it doesn't surprise me that she's also part witch. Now, "Gnomeo & Juliet" is not the worst movie either, hell it's not even the worst filmed version of "Romeo & Juliet" I've ever seen. That said, this is an instantly forgettable movie. This isn't a great Elton John song but I gotta be honest, but his music just hits me the right way; I'll take an average song from him over a lot of other artists best songs. I don't know how it is now, but growing up, Elton John was always on the radio. He was on the classic rock stations, he was on the Top 40 stations, there was always new and great from him and it's always a delight to hear a wonderful Elton John and Bernie Taupin song. The guy had a Top 40 hits at least once a year for 30 years straight! Nobody has that kind of record and nobody else has that kind of consistently great output, yeah there's a few stinkers in there, but there's just a lot of great ones and it's not like he stopped making great music, he just stopped getting played on the radio; it's nice to be reminded of how good he is, so for that reason, I gotta include "Hello, Hello".
Number eight: (James Bond Theme plays) I am lacking a lot of James Bond movies in my film watching history. Like, a real lot, I'm not even half-way through, and I've certainly not tried to force myself through the supposed bad ones, or the ones I wish were bad at least. I've tried watching "Live and Let Die", I hope that's as bad as it was when I stopped watching it, 'cause man, that would've been a good song to put on here. That's probably one of my favorite Paul McCartney songs. And hell, Carly Simon's "Nobody Does it Better" that's an awesome song, does "The Spy Who Loved Me" suck? Sheryl Crow's "Tomorrow Never Dies", that's a good song. Garbage's "The World is Not Enough-, oh, wait I did see that film. It's a good one. I know I need to see more James Bond movies but there had to be at least one that I saw that sucked that has a great song to put on here?
8. "Another Way to Die"-Alicia Keys & Jack White from "Quantom of Solace" Music/Lyric: Jack White
(Me air drumming) Okay this song's just fucking awesome! I-eh, I don't really have much else to add here. This is one of the most recent songs on this list. It's a great song, um, I remember Alicia Keys from around when I stopped listening to music, she was good. I like "Fallin'". I've heard some of her other stuff, she's definitely good. Maybe a bit overrated to me, but I generally like her work. Jack White, I know he's of The White Stripes, I know he's a good guitarist and apparently he plays multiple instruments here on this song. Um, I just don't know enough about either artist to be that articulate about this. "Quantum of Solace", um, it was, eh, o-kay-, eh, no, not really. It was definitely a disappointment after "Casino Royale", which I think next to "Goldfinger" you can argue as possibly the best James Bond film. It was based off a strange obscure short story from Ian Fleming that he wrote originally after "Casino Royale" which was the first James Bond novel, it's not really one of his best stories and you can tell, this direct sequel is pretty underwhelming, especially in hindsight. I barely think of it honestly, to me, Daniel Craig did "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall" and I forget this one even exists; it really probably shouldn't, but they were trying to stay true reboot-wise to Fleming's writing at the time. It's got some moments but it drags. I doubt it's the worst James Bond but, I certainly can't imagine anybody listing it as a favorite. It's barely enough of a story for a film at all, certainly not a James Bond movie. But, holy hell, this song is just, wonderfully awesome. I can't believe I didn't hear this more often. I recognized it, and it's not Adele's song or anything, but this is just a great James Bond theme. Should be recognized for that more often.
Lucky number seven! Uh, I debated whether to include this song or not. This is one of those tricky songs for me with this list. For one thing, the movie it's from, it's a bit of questionable one in terms of it's badness. Hell, it even got a television series spun-off from it, a lot of people did like it and there's a lot to like in it. A lot of it actually is music, Bob Dylan music in fact. (And before anyone asks, "Knocking on Heaven's Door" from "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid", no, not on here, didn't see the movie yet) there's more than that though. See, I'm bending my originality clause a bit here, but I think I have too. When you really, truly look back on the history of this genre of music, so many of the best songs came from movies, that I felt I really needed to have one song here, and after careful thought, no, the movie doesn't really work, so I'm including this one.
7. "Gangsta's Paradise"-Coolio featuring L.V. from "Dangerous Minds" Music: Stevie Wonder, Doug Rasheed; Lyric: Artis Ivey Jr. aka Coolio and Larry Sanders aka L.V.
Yeah, if you ever want to know that I'm a nineties kid, the fact this easily ranks as one of my favorite rap songs is a big, big clue. This is the one I'm stretching the originality clause with because the song, like most rap songs samples other work, in this case Stevie Wonder's song "Pastime Paradise". I love Stevie Wonder, but I rarely think of that as one of his better songs, Coolio definitely found a really cool, new direction for this work. The movie "Dangerous Minds", it's-, eh. There's a whole genre of these movies, I guess I could argue any one of them as faulty compared to others, (I've always "Dead Poets Society" for instance is heavily overrated) but yeah, this movie only kinda half-way goes where it needs to. It's kinda like"Stand & Deliver" without the results at the end. Michelle Pfieffer's good in it and she carries it, but yeah, it's more a movie about how the teacher deals with these students instead of it being the students finding inspiration from this teacher, or it's not enough about that at least. Kinda ends arbitrarily too, there's some things wrong with it; it's got some good ideas but I don't think it works overall, but yeah, the song is amazing. For one it's just dark and brooding, haunting. Beginning with a biblical quote and then twisting upon it, there's definitely a lot of things frightening about it, in a really good way. Plus, 1995, you gotta remember, not a great era for rap music. I know some will disagree with me on this, but I'm not talking about the music itself, this was the middle of the East Coast West Coast wars, this horribly made-up battle that led to two people getting killed over as the line between whether or not rap was portraying the gangsta persona or whether it actually was gangsters who were rapping was just so blurred that people like me, who already were struggling with the genre became so disgusted that even today, I have a very difficult time even accepting the genre sometimes. You can't imagine how refreshing it was to hear a gangsta rap song that actually was about the horrible life of being a gangsta. How death isn't a possibility but a probability, how there was no escape from this world and how this was the only reasonable option to live in the world of this person, knowing it will lead to their demise and how it's a side effect of the failure of our institutions, like the School System itself, that partially lead to this so-called "Gangsta's Paradise" they live. This was really refreshing back then, and it still feels like a haunting call from the past of the genre. It's Coolio's biggest hit, one of the biggest hit songs of the 1990s and it deserved to be. It still holds up unbelievably well now.
Number Six. Okay, when I first got the request to do this list, there were obviously a few songs and movies that jumped into my head. Certain movies that have great soundtracks but generally are pretty lousy films. This is one of those movies and songs that immediately comes to my head. This movie is everything wrong about the nineties all shoved into some of the most selfish and self-involved and just plain idiotic young adult characters ever created, and supposedly they were the heroes of this awful, awful film. It's amazing anything great came out of this movie, but ooh, this song, ooh, now we're in my sweet spot. Turn the radio on, turn the radio up, this woman is singing my song....
6. Stay (I Missed You)"-Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories from "Reality Bites" Music/Lyric: Lisa Loeb
This song came really close to making my Top Ten Lilith Fair Era Songs last month, and Lisa Loeb's somebody who I find myself liking more and more nowadays and that has nothing to do with the fact that she follows me on Twitter. (Awkward pause) No, I swear, it really doesn't, I've always liked her and this song, but I've taken a relisten to her other albums and they're more fun and rocking than I remembered back then. This song is actually a mini-miracle. Loeb happened to have an apartment across from Ethan Hawke's in New York and it was him that pitched the song for the movie, and he directed this music video btw. The song suddenly went to number one on the charts and put this cute little singer/songwriter with weird glasses into the record books, becoming the first artist to have a number one single, before she was signed to a record deal. (Only other act to do that is Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, doing that with "Thrift Shop" a couple years ago) This is just a really beautiful and strange song. It's a breakup song, reminiscing about a breakup, and yet it's from the perspective of somebody who admits how self-involved she is. Oddly, this fits perfectly with the self-involved main character in "Reality Bites", a narcissistic untalented filmmaker who's obsessed with filming everything around her and her friends as though she's documenting the next generation of future world leaders of art and industry, when she's basically the worst of the group of pretentious slacker post-grads. Oh, god this movie is such crap. Everything an outsider thought the Gen X generation was is in that movie, and so little of it is really true. And it was directed by Ben Stiller of all people, oh this movie just so fails at what it's trying to do. But, it does have a great soundtrack and this song in particular, is really awesome. It's folky yet pop, it's self-aware yet quirky and yet still coming from believable complex emotions.
Number five! Oh, I'm gonna get in trouble for this one. Um, (Deep breath) no, I don't think this is a good movie. There's great parts to this movie, but as a film overall, it's too disjointed and it barely makes any sense. I'm sorry, the parts do not make a whole. Especially when that hole's being blown up by dynamite and they still can't kill the gopher.
5. "I'm Alright"-Kenny Loggins from "Caddyshack" Music/Lyric: Kenny Loggins
Actually, I'm a little surprised that I don't have more '80s songs on this list; I would've thought this list would've been overloaded with some great '80s songs from some really bad iconic '80s films. There's definitely a few I could've put on here including a few other Kenny Loggins ones, but "I'm Alright" is easily my favorite of his songs, this is a great pop/rock song that you want to dance to the second it goes on. Actually, not the second it goes on, because on the album tracks of this songs there's a really horrible instrumental opening to it that lasts like a minute and makes no real sense; I know some songs do that on albums, and sometimes it can improve a song from a radio edit, but I-eh, I don't get it, that's why I posted the single version. Anyway, "Caddyshack", um, yes, there's a lot of funny in "Caddyshack", but it, ugh. If you ever actually sit through the movie, to me, there's a lot of waiting around for the comedians you like the best to come back and having to sit through, a meandering sorta mess of, multiple plots that really are barely connected, and maybe they shouldn't have been. Give me Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield, I want to see more of their shtick. Hell, the main character's supposed to be Noonan, the caddy, in "Caddyshack" and you barely remember him, the movie forgets about him. It's almost feels like a "Kentucky Fried Movie"-type film, just a bunch of random things shoved together that kinda relate to golf, sorta. Some of it's funny as hell, but I-eh, yeah, I think this movie suffers from being more memorable in the mind afterwards than as a film while you're watching it. The song's great though. How often do you hear a song about somebody trying to not get into a fight? Not too often.
Number four! Okay, I know this is an easy pick. This isn't about the movie though, although it is horrible. It's badly conceived as a film, full of plotholes, edited to death, it's just a godawful piece of shit, everybody knows it's a godawful piece of shit. It's still the only movie I've seen from this director 'cause I don't want to see anything else from him, this movie was so painfully bad. It's also not about the band, although they rock, they're amazing, they kick ass and this is an amazing song of there's and everybody knows they rock and that this song is awesome. It's unfortunate it's their biggest hit, but oh well, it's still awesome. No, this is about the songwriter, and even then, it's sorta backhanded. Let's talk about Diane Warren.
4. "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"-Aerosmith from "Armageddon" Music/Lyric: Diane Warren
Diane Warren is one of the most interesting songwriters out there to me. I'm actually fascinated by her, not because she's the greatest songwriter out there, but because she's the most..., well, she's the, um-, hmm. I don't quite know how to describe her, but if there's a song that you can think of that made the pop charts that's just sorta average. Like with particularly vague lyrics and very unspecific and sorta unmemorable compositions, she probably wrote it. I'm not kidding too, you've heard a song from her. She once had seven different singles in the Top Ten at the same time, all sung by seven different artists. Practically everybody has worked with her at some point. Some of them are forgettable to bad, occasionally there's a good one, my favorite is probably Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time". She always writes about love, usually, but it's always in these really unspecific terms. Reportedly, she hasn't has a relationship in twenty years and is often compared to Emily Dickinson in the music world for her eternally spinster approach to her life and songwriting. She works alone mostly and composes these songs that other people make into worldwide hits. She's in the songwriting hall of fame, she has a Grammy along with twelve other nominations, and she's even been nominated for seven Oscars. She actually shows up twice on this list, I'll get to the second song of hers she wrote later. Basically the better the artist is for her songs, the better the song usually is, although sometimes she just writes great songs. She's an enigma to me. Her songs are so generic they're enigmatic, she's an enigmatic person, it's bizarrely fascinating to me. She is the quintessential pop songwriter, and all the good and bad that entails. She's the kind of ideal of what everybody would instinctively hates about pop music and yet, she's not the artist so unless you look her up as the songwriter you can't really block her from your radar and besides that she has a more-than-fair number of great songs that even if you tried to resist you would unknowingly realize that you've liked her anyway and have liked her songs for years. Anyway, my fascination with her aside, this is obviously one of her best songs, and everybody loves it and everybody knows the movie sucks. Next!
Number three! (Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" plays) Ooh, damn, I haven't seen any Elvis movies all the way through. Yeah, that would've been nice addition, assuming that one of his movies with a good song attached to it sucked. I mentioned Astaire & Rogers earlier, but there's a long list of the best musicians of our day, literally since the beginning of sound who've devoted much of their art to the cinema, and for the most part I haven't seen most of their films. I've caught up on a lot of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, and they're mostly good films. I haven't seen Elvis's films, Diana Ross's films, only "Purple Rain" when it comes to Prince's films. (Music changes to "Beautiful Stranger" by Madonna) oh, ow that hurts, I haven't sat through most of Madonna's films. Ooh. Aw, this song as well; I never watched the Austin Powers movies, dammit! I might argue this as her best song of all-time! We like to erase Madonna's film career, 'cause of her questionable acting, I think the movies mostly would've sucked in general, although sometimes I get it. I don't think she's that bad an actress, but I haven't seen most of her films either, certainly not the ones with the good songs. "Into the Groove" from "Desperately Seeking Susan", "Who's That Girl" from "Who's That Girl", hell, I didn't even finish "VisionQuest" or I could've put "Crazy for You" on here, or "At Close Range" which she did "Live to Tell" for believe it or not, man she did some of her best songs for movies. Well, that's unfortunate that I can't put a Madonna song on here. Believe me though, if she did a great song for a movie that I had seen, me a Madonna fanboy, I would remember.
3. "I'll Remember"-Madonna from "With Honors" Music/Lyric: Madonna, Patrick Leonard and Richard Page
Wait, what?! This song is-, wait, I love this song. This is an amazing song too; this was from a movie? What the hell movie was this from? "With Honors"?. (Scratches head) Wait a minute, that stupid movie with Joe Pesci and Brendan Fraser, and Pesci's dying and he's an inspirational fuck-up or something, that forgettable cliche-riddened snoozefest? This song is from that movie?! I legitimately did not know that until I looked this up. I've always loved this song, but who the fuck remembered this was from "With Honors" of all goddamn movies? I was expecting to list a song or two that people completely forgot were even from movies, but this one, I really didn't remember. This, this is just a great Madonna song. It's emotional, it's reflective, it's her cutting through all the bullshit of her other work, especially at the time, 'cause this was during her "Sex" book phase...- I guess I just presumed this was on "Bedtime Stories" or something, this feels like it could go right next to "Inside of Me", or one of those other wonderful mid-nineties Madonna songs that she was doing before the whole world freaked out when she got pregnant. Well, this is a great song from a horribly bad movie. Thanks Madonna, I knew you'd come through. And yes, I'll sit through all your other films soon. Sooner or Later. (That's actually a great song from a good Madonna movie. "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)" In case, you didn't catch that) (Clears throat)
Number Two! Oh boy. My friend Lillian's not gonna like this one. Sorry Lillian, but you know what I think of this film.
2. "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now"-Starship from "Mannequin" Music/Lyric: Albert Hammond and Diane Warren
I told you there'd be a second Diane Warren song on here. Okay, I know they're kind of a band that you're supposed to derive especially considering how they started out as Jefferson Airplane and how amazing they were and how quintessentially sixties that band was, but I like all forms of the band, including Starship, including "We Built This City", I kinda like that song. Grace Slick can do very little wrong in my mind, but this is definitely the best "Starship" song. And it's definitely lasted and most people have forgotten that it came from this bizarre unfunny comedy about a mannequin that came to life. Seriously, what the hell was with this film, ugh. And they made a sequel too, oh God. Thankfully, most people have forgotten that wretched film, most people (Don't ask-, I have a bunch of weird friends who are fascinated by inanimate objects coming to life, they think it's the frightening thing in the world and they like anything with that kind of story in them. I disagree on all counts, especially regarding this film.) and thankfully now, most people will probably know this song from being in a much better movie called "The Skeleton Twins" where the song is lipsynched by Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. That is an awesome movie, and an awesome use of Starship. This is just great soft rock at it's best, done by great artists who know how to do it, and this is one of Diane Warren's very best songs. It actually does match the movie well, but yeah, this is one of those great '80s song that nobody remembers was from a movie.
Okay, before I go into number one, I thought that since this was music, and not film, and this is a bit of subjective list, I thought perhaps I'd give a few thoughts on some other songs that I didn't end up picking, in no particular order.
"I Disappear"-Metallica from "Mission: Impossible 2".
This is the song that really first got me into understanding the appeal of Metallica and a lot of other heavy metal at the time. "Mission: Impossible 2" is by far the worst of the "Mission: Impossible" movies.
"Hungry Eyes"-Eric Carmen from "Dirty Dancing"
Actually all three major songs from "Dirty Dancing" could've made this list. Hell, I even like Patrick Swayze's "She Like the Wind". I do, there's something poetic about it. "Hungry Eyes" was probably the closest to making the list.
"Cool Rider"-Michelle Pfieffer from "Grease 2"
I thought about this for a minute, 'cause I don't have a song from a bad musical represented, oh except for "Dancer in the Dark", but I don't even want to think about that film as a musical, but honestly, despite it's flaws, I can't completely say "Grease 2" is "bad". Pointless, definitely, but bad; it's too fun to be bad.
"You Will Be My Ain True Love"-Allison Krauss and Sting from "Cold Mountain"
Sting had a weird streak of some great songs from movies during the early 2000s, but he kept losing the Oscar. This was the weakest of the bunch, compared to "Until..." from "Kate & Leopold" and "My Funny Friend and Me" from "The Emperor's New Groove", but he lost those in good years to even better songs (And those were good movies). He lost this year to Annie Lennox's "Into the West" from the third "Lord of the Rings" film. Now, I don't think any of The LOTR films are good, but I didn't realize the music from it was so bad. That song is terrible, that is just as inexplicable a win for that film as Best Picture and Best Screenplay that year, and then there's the Enya song that was nominated for the first film, ugh. I didn't think "Cold Mountain" was any good, but god, it was much better than that and the Sting song at least was definitely better, even in a weak year.
"I See Fire"-Ed Sheeran from "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
Okay, I do like this one from "The Hobbit" movies, so they got better with the music.
"You Haven't Seen the Last of Me"-Cher from "Burlesque"
I almost had three Diane Warren songs on there. "Burlesque" is terrible, but this song isn't bad.
"If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out"-Cat Stevens from "Harold and Maude"
I have absolutely no idea why people like this movie, it's one of the worst pieces of shit I've ever seen. I gave it ZERO STARS! This song and Ruth Gordon's performance are the only good things in the movie. I was gonna lay into it until I realize that this song wasn't Top Ten good, so I guess I'll hold these bullets until another time, but seriously, what the fuck?
"Maniac"-Michael Sembello from "Flashdance"
I guess I could've thought about "Flashdance (What a Feeling)" as well, but this is the more interesting song to me.
"Man of the Hour"-Pearl Jam from "Big Fish"
I can't believe how often I find people who like this movie. I'm not a Tim Burton fan, but this is by far his absolute worst film. Why did his stories have to be real? No seriously, why? It didn't change a damn thing finding that out. He had grown to appreciate his father on his deathbed and accepting of him as the asshole and the blowhard he was, he died, the son accepted, at that point nothing mattered, including whether or not the stories we're real!? Why would then...-, ugh! And some people like this manipulative tripe of a movie? I'm standing by this, it's his absolute worst film!
Okay that's enough of that. Here we go:
THE #1 BEST SONG FROM A BAD MOVIE IS...
(Drumroll)
(Sigh) Yeah, this is one of those that's gonna piss some people off, isn't it? A lot of shit, shit, shit, coming my way on this one. (Pause) Eh, look, I don't... (Frustrated scoff) okay, I've given this film, four or five tries, I know it's beloved but, it doesn't work. I don't quite know what it is that doesn't actually work, I think it has to do with how the adaptation failed from book to screen. The movie always felt like it wanted it both ways, for the main two characters to be together and in love happily and then of course for them not, but without going into the actual reasons why, and Mickey Rooney's what the fuck racist role, but, yeah, It always felt like a schizophrenic movie where everybody in the movie was in a different movie. That said, (Pause), um, well, this song, well, this song is a classic.
1. "Moon River"-Audrey Hepburn from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Music: Henry Mancini; Lyric: Johnny Mercer"
Yeah, yeah, yeah, look I don't think it's a horrible movie, but I don't buy it for a second, any of it. It's not a good film. A few scenes here and there, but yeah, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" as much as I love Audrey Hepburn, and this is one of her iconic roles, but, ugh, I wish this was a better movie. Maybe if they did adapt it more towards the book, maybe if it wasn't Blake Edwards directing it.... (Shrugs) Well, too late for reworking the movie, but who doesn't love "Moon River"? Henry Mancini's music, Johnny Mercer's lyric, I mean this song just feels like it's been around since the beginning of time. I'm actually amazed it's just barely over fifty years old, it feels older, and that's a good thing. I think we've all found ourselves in those moods just humming this tune, not even realizing it half the time. It's really a classic song. I tried to figure out a way to put something else on top, but it just didn't feel right. Of all the songs from bad movies, this is the one song that I think everybody can agree is great. Now, whether anybody else agrees with the bad movie part.... Well, too bad, I'm sticking with it. "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" number one. I do prefer Frank Sinatra's version over Audrey's but, oh well, Audrey's is pretty good too.
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