Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour Most Overused Songs In Movies About this episode Some great songs are so overused in movies, they’ve become cliches. Everyone’s mileage is bound to vary, but we’re rounding up a few songs we love that need to be retired and suggesting a few worthy replacements.
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0:19 Aisha Harris? There are some songs that are so overused in movies, they've become cliches. So we're rounding up a few we're nominating for retirement and suggesting a few worthy replacements. I'm Aisha Harris, and joining me today on NPR'S Pop Culture Happy Hour is my co-host, Stephen Thompson. Hello, friend.
0:37 Stephen Thompson? Hello, Ayesha.
0:39 Aisha Harris? It is great to have you here. You are the perfect person to talk about this with. You know, obviously, there's no real science to determining when a song has become overplayed, although I would argue perhaps you could go and look at an artist's IMDb page and get a gander at how many times certain songs have been used. I've done that before, that's for sure, in the past. But yeah, it's more of a you-know-it-when-you-hear-it situation. Everyone's mileage is going to vary, and we should also note that we had to narrow down our possibilities quite a bit because there are a lot of songs that are overused. That's just how it goes. So we deliberately left out instrumental and classical music. So don't come to us, you know, about Beethoven's "Second" or something. I don't know. "For a lease," whatever. Just...
1:22 Aisha Harris? So Stephen, you're going to guide us through this, so give us the first song you think we should retire from the movies.
1:30 Stephen Thompson? Well, one caveat I want to open with before we even get started, before you get your emailing fingers ready to yell at me, these are all great songs. I specifically decided I'm going to pick three songs I love. It's not going to be me dumping on, "I hate Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69." No, these are great songs. So when I say that they should be retired, I'm talking about specifically retiring them from use as signifiers in movies. They have been used again and again. They have turned up again and again in recent years. My first pick, a great song by AC/DC from 1990s, "The Razor's Edge," called "Thunderstruck."
2:20 Aisha Harris? I remember this. I remember this song.
2:22 Stephen Thompson? You can imagine Deadpool punching a guy to this song. It was used in the Super Mario Brothers movie, the Chris Pratt one, not the Bob Hoskins one. It was used in The Fall Guy. It was in movies dating back as far as, like, Varsity Blues. This song, and particularly that
2:41 Stephen Thompson? like, there are other riffs.
2:44 Aisha Harris? So many.
2:44 Stephen Thompson? There are other bands. AC/DC has other songs. And of course, there are other AC/DC songs that are also overused in movies. But what I'm suggesting is simply explore the hard rock canon for other sounds, for other riffs, for other styles, for other variations on "Guys are about to fu-
3:10 Aisha Harris? I love it. I love it. So what would you replace it with? Because, you know, you've already mentioned that AC/DC has a lot of other songs. So I'm guessing we're going with a different artist here.
3:20 Stephen Thompson? Yeah, I'm not just going to suggest a different AC/DC song. Anyone interested in plumbing the depths of the AC/DC catalog has the means and the will to do so. I am going to suggest, to my mind, the album that I go to whenever I want to be pumped up. I thankfully don't get in a lot of fights. But if I did, to get pumped up for them, I would listen to the album and the song, "I Get Wet" by Andrew W.K.
3:51 Aisha Harris? It's like a song that I both feel like I've heard before but haven't, and I don't know. But I like it. It's cool. It gets you pumped. It gets you going.
4:09 Stephen Thompson? This is running through a brick wall of music. Every second of it is engineered for maximum rock and roll fury. There are three different songs on this album with the word "party" in the title. There's "Party Till You Puke", "It's Time to Party", and "Party Hard", and all- All three of them are incredible. All of them would work brilliantly to achieve the exact kind of effect that you're going for with a song like Thunderstruck, which is like, big guitars, big action's gonna happen, you're gonna have a good time. Which is what Thunderstruck has sort of become. It's just become a signifier of like, this is an action movie. This is a movie in which buildings are gonna get knocked down and punches are gonna get thrown.
4:53 Stephen Thompson? And this Andrew W. K. record, which came out in 2001, it's not that it's an obscurity. It definitely has its devotees. I'm far from the only one. But I think it has been underutilized in this particular realm. I'm sure somebody can point to, you know, the occasional movie or commercial here and there. He definitely has appeared on soundtracks and commercials and stuff before. Just nowhere near to the degree of an AC/DC.
5:18 Aisha Harris? I can just envision chairs being thrown and people getting hit over the head. Maybe even a food fight at a cafeteria. I don't know. There's a lot of uses. So thank you for that, Stephen. That's I Get What by Andrew W. K. And replace this instead of Thunderstruck by AC/DC. We just want some variety here, right?
5:38 Stephen Thompson? That's right.
5:38 Aisha Harris? Yes, yes, yes.
5:39 Stephen Thompson? That's my one plea.
5:41 Aisha Harris? Okay, so the next song on your list is actually the first song that I thought of when we were talking about doing this. And I have many thoughts about, but tell me, what is the second song you think is way too overused in movies?
5:55 Stephen Thompson? I absolutely love Nina Simone. My daughter's middle name is Simone because of Nina Simone. I love her dearly. And in 1965, released a version of Feeling Good, a classic standard. It has become, over time, possibly her signature song, which, Ayesha, I have read an essay that you have written.
6:18 Stephen Thompson? That makes a very good and very 100% right case that that represents kind of an extreme flattening out of who Nina Simone was and what she stood for, what she sang about, what she represented. If you were to sum up Nina Simone's view of the world, it would not be represented by the song "Feeling Good."
6:40 Aisha Harris? No, not at all. Yeah, I did write an essay about this in the art journal Scene. And the thing about this song is that they always use the same part. It's the opening. That's the signature part.
6:52 Speaker 03 It's a new dawn, it's a new day. It's a new life for me. Yeah, it's a new dawn, it's a new day. It's a new life for me.
7:04 Aisha Harris? You just get her voice, no accompaniment whatsoever, and she's just gliding over the melody.
7:10 Speaker 03 And I'm feeling good.
7:13 Aisha Harris? And then the big, the band, it sounds like a marching band, is coming in and strutting in. And I get why it's used so many times, but my goodness, it's been used now, especially in the last several years. It's like clockwork at this point.
7:29 Stephen Thompson? Yeah, it's in Cruella in 2021. It's a very pivotal scene in Perfect Days, the Vin Venders film from 2023. It's in a very, very pivotal scene in A Quiet Place, Day One. It just gets rolled out constantly, not only just turning up on these soundtracks, but turning up at key moments in films.
7:49 Aisha Harris? It's meant to be a song where usually a character is suddenly reaching an epiphany or the apex of their self-actualization. It's a moment where they, for lack of a better word, they're feeling good. But I think it's notable that there's so many other songs that she has written that have a lot more, not to say that the song is not political, but that have so much more political bite and heft, whether we're talking about her cover of Strange Fruit. Even "I Love You Porgy."
8:16 Stephen Thompson? Oh, that one I truly could listen to every day for the rest of my life.
8:20 Aisha Harris? Yeah, but something about this song has now just become such a, I expect it. And it feels like it's kind of dulled down her impact and her cultural impact. I'm curious as to what you would replace this song with.
8:35 Stephen Thompson? The way that I approached this wasn't necessarily to try to find a song that thematically maps over feeling good, so much as I come to this with two suggestions. One, unlike AC/DC, Nina Simone has a few other songs that turn up a lot in movie soundtracks, but she really has a deep and rich catalog, since "I Love You Porgy" jumped immediately to my mind. You could easily just swap in a different Nina Simone song.
8:59 Aisha Harris? I know.
9:00 Stephen Thompson? But I also want to recommend "Another Voice," another voice that I would love to hear more on movie soundtracks. One theme that I really want to get back to in this conversation, as much as possible when we're talking about this issue, is this phenomenon that has happened where the more songs there are in the world, the fewer of them we hear.
9:22 Aisha Harris? Yes.
9:23 Stephen Thompson? This is happening all over the pop charts. This is happening on movie soundtracks. This is happening on radio stations. You listen to a classic rock radio station and it's formatted the way a pop station is formatted, where you get like 10 songs in high rotation. Like, there's so much music. You have all the music in the world to choose from. Don't give me these signifiers of a mood that are cliched shortcuts. So the voice that I'm recommending here is that of the late, great Jimmy Scott.
9:53 Aisha Harris? Yes, yes, yes.
10:13 Stephen Thompson? You don't hear a ton of Jimmy Scott's voice in movies and on TV shows. You know, one filmmaker who got Jimmy Scott, loved Jimmy Scott, and occasionally used his music, David Lynch.
10:23 Aisha Harris? Oh, yes, you're right.
10:24 Stephen Thompson? Which should tell you, David Lynch had some of the best taste in music imaginable. And he knew Jimmy Scott would evoke a certain mood. Jimmy Scott, as a kid, he was diagnosed with Calment syndrome, which prevented him from experiencing kind of traditional puberty. His voice never changed. So his voice has kind of this amorphous quality to it, and it soared so beautifully. So "When Did You Leave Heaven", it has this kind of mysterious quality, but it's also just a very, very beautiful, straight ahead love song.
10:58 Aisha Harris? I love that kind of out of left field pick, because you're right. He is not someone who is remembered in the same way that other contemporaries of his era have been. That's a great, great choice. I love it, Seaton. I will offer my choice. I try to, when I was thinking about it, I was like, I kind of feel as though I want something that's a little bit more thematically in sync with "Feeling Good", if we're trying to replace it. Since it is so often used in a literal context, it's usually meant to symbolize a character's transformation in some way. And so I would love to see a little bit more Dinah Washington, specifically, "What a Difference a Day Made".
11:49 Aisha Harris? There's just something beautiful about that song. It kind of has a similar theme where it's like, things have gotten better, or things are different, or like, she's describing the beauty of the world in the same way that like "Feeling Good" kind of does the same thing. And her voice is, again, another
12:06 Stephen Thompson? Oh, my god.
12:07 Aisha Harris? iconic, transcendent voice. And I think that's what people are really mining here, right? It's their voices when we're talking about Nina and Jimmy Scott and someone like Dinah Washington.
12:18 Stephen Thompson? Or a little more recently, somebody like Roberta Flack.
12:21 Aisha Harris? Yes, yes. Oh, first time ever I saw your face? Like, something like that?
12:24 Stephen Thompson? Oh, my god.
12:25 Aisha Harris? Yeah, yeah. We love "Feeling Good". I would just love to hear it when I want to hear it and not when some filmmaker has decided to just drop it in at any moment. Well, coming up, we've got a few more overused songs we're going to talk about, so stick around.
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14:15 Aisha Harris? All right, welcome back. Stephen, what is your next pick for most overused song?
14:20 Stephen Thompson? Well, I've said it before, I'll say it again. The more songs there are, the fewer we hear. And having lived through the 90s, I can promise you that there is a deep and rich mine of incredible music that does not get played in movies or on TV shows nearly as often as the song "Dreams" by The Cranberries.
14:55 Aisha Harris? I guess. This is in the trailer for a Babysitters Club movie. I remember. That's where I first heard this.
15:02 Aisha Harris? So many, so many memories.
15:04 Stephen Thompson? What is remarkable about the list of movies that this song has appeared in, Dreams by The Cranberries has been surging for more than 30 years. It is in The Next Karate Kid. It is in Boys on the Side. It is in You've Got Mail. That is just a handful of the movies it appeared in in the 1990s. For some reason, filmmakers just didn't burn out on this song. The way they've gotten burned out on some of what you think of as these classic movie montage songs, like Taking Care of Business, or Bad to the Bone, or whatever, where it's like, these days, if you heard Taking Care of Business, or Bad to the Bone, in a movie, you would assume that it was parody.
15:42 Aisha Harris? Oh, my god, yes.
15:44 Stephen Thompson? Yet Dreams, that popped up in Madame Web.
15:48 Aisha Harris? Of course.
15:51 Stephen Thompson? No less a classic than Madame Web. It also pops up in trailers a lot. Liza Ann, a terrific singer-songwriter, has a cover of Dreams that's in the trailer for After Sun. So like, you'll also just pick up these reverberations in the form of covers, you know, slowed-down versions, you know, all these different ways that songs get endlessly redeployed. Look, I love The Cranberries. I love Dreams by The Cranberries. I love Zombie by The Cranberries. I love Linger by The Cranberries.
16:20 Stephen Thompson? The Cranberries are great, and they definitely are emblematic of a lot of 90s music. You know, and so they're evocative of a certain time and place. They're used extremely well in the show Dairy Girls. Like, there is a time and a place for The Cranberries' music. But this song has reached a point of saturation where you start to roll your eyes when you encounter it, and that's not what you're supposed to do.
16:43 Aisha Harris? All right. Well, it sounds like we don't want Dreams right now. So what?
16:48 Stephen Thompson? Not right now.
16:49 Aisha Harris? So what should we be replacing it with?
16:51 Stephen Thompson? Oh, man. I really could have replaced this song with a playlist. Of just like favorite songs of the 90s that sound like the 90s if you're trying to evoke that kind of 90s vibe, but that are not massively overexposed. So I'm going to pick one of my favorite bands of the 90s, a band that has not gotten nearly enough love and attention, kind of beyond an initial rush of critical acclaim and college radio airplay, a band called The Spinanes. Do you know them?
17:18 Aisha Harris? No, I do not.
17:19 Stephen Thompson? The Spinanes put out several phenomenal records. Lead singer Rebecca Gates, who is also just one of the best guitarists of the 90s, check out the interplay of drums and guitars from the song Noel, Jonah and Me.
17:45 Aisha Harris? This is very Reality Bites. Yes, very 90s, very 90s.
17:50 Stephen Thompson? It's very 90s. You could absolutely drop that song into any number of just like killer 90s soundtracks, just the, that explosion of drums, those big chunky buzzy riffs, that voice that's kind of floating over it all. It's a very 90s sound. You know, The Spinanes were of the 90s, but also a fan of music who has just heard the kind of endless echoes and reverberations of the 90s will immediately tap into that song as just a phenomenal piece of rock songwriting.
18:23 Aisha Harris? Yeah, I dig it. And I think it's perfect for evoking that feeling. I said Reality Bites, but also like, I'm just getting Daria. I'm getting every, every night, I'm seeing Flannel, I'm seeing it all. It is, I think that's a great choice. I'm into it.
18:39 Stephen Thompson? We love the 90s. They produced so much good music beyond the like nine songs that get played on retro radio.
18:46 Aisha Harris? I'm sure listeners are gonna be like, but what about this song? Are there any other songs that you want to run off quickly that we're just like, we're tired of? I feel as though we're, we kind of, we've gotten the 60s a little bit, but have we gotten the 60s?
19:00 Stephen Thompson? Oh, yeah. I think, I think I know where you're going with this. With this, and I posted a call out on Blue Sky, kind of just like, hit me with your suggestions, just like, let me make sure I'm not forgetting anything. And several people, very rightfully, brought up songs like "Fortunate Son," "All Along the Watchtower," both the Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix versions. Any sort of song that gets used anytime you're trying to evoke unrest, war, protest in the 60s.
19:28 Aisha Harris? Vietnam.
19:29 Stephen Thompson? Vietnam, for sure. My friend Mark Hirsch popped up on Blue Sky and was like, Vietnam needs a new soundtrack. In case you are somehow unfamiliar with this sound, let's hear a little bit of the Jimi Hendrix "All Along the Watchtower."
19:55 Stephen Thompson? It kills me. That's such an amazing, great song, and yet you could just replace it with a voiceover that says, "They were turbulent times."
20:06 Aisha Harris? Have you ever watched a movie made by a male boomer? Then you've probably heard this song.
20:14 Stephen Thompson? Well, and that's why, like, rather than trying to throw up another suggestion, my suggestion, my foolproof plan for replacing these overused songs is to never make another movie about the 1960s.
20:26 Aisha Harris? Done. I'm sold, sold.
20:28 Stephen Thompson? Sold. Cut print.
20:33 Aisha Harris? What a time, what a time that neither of us lived through, but we feel as though we have.
20:39 Stephen Thompson? I feel like I've lived it over and over and over again since I was born.
20:45 Aisha Harris? Well, we want to know what you think is the most overused song in movies. We know that there are plenty of people who have a lot of opinions about this, just as we did. Find us on facebook.com/PCHH. And that brings us to the end of our show. Stephen Thompson, thanks so much for being here and bringing us these replacement songs. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
21:04 Stephen Thompson? Thank you.
21:05 Aisha Harris? Yeah, I hope some filmmakers are listening and hopefully they can afford some different songs.
21:11 Stephen Thompson? My suggestions are much cheaper.
21:13 Aisha Harris? Yes, yes, they are. I hope so.
21:16 Aisha Harris? This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Hapsa Fakuma, and Mike Katsiv, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Coming provides our theme music. And thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.
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