You may have noticed that Name That Tune was conspicuously absent from the site last week. It won’t be here this week, either, and that’s because we’ve fired Scraps. No, just kidding. His computer exploded, leaving him without access to his mp3s. Have no fear: he’ll be back next week, and coming up, we’ll be featuring a guest Name That Tune post from Coverville’s Brian Ibbott! In the meantime, though, I have a challenge for all of you.
Last night, my wife, best friend and I went to see Huey Lewis and the News at the Seaside Summer Concert Series in Brooklyn. They were awesome, by the way, but that’s not the point of this post. The band played their brand-new song “Pineapple Express,” the title track from, uh, Pineapple Express. I think the song itself is quite good, but the lyrics are relatively awful (“How’d we get into this mess? / Pineapple Express”). Hearing these lyrics led my wife to posit “Any song written for a movie that mentions the title of the movie in its lyrics sucks.”
My best friend and I jumped all over this theory with some of our favorite soundtrack songs from the ’80s. Some of them may not be amazing, but they’re certainly don’t suck: “Ghostbusters,” “Footloose” and “Fame” were the first ones that came up. This morning, my friend threw in “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” and “Purple Rain.” It’s been a pretty easy theory to disprove, as she has yet to come up with a song other than “Pineapple Express” to support her claim. (To be fair, she’s busy taking care of sick children right now, but whatever.) Jeff has added a few as well, and suggested we have you join us in this game.
So, Popdosers, here’s your challenge: name songs that either prove or disprove the theory.
The Rules (which we are kind of making up as we go):
- The full title of the movie has to be mentioned. (This disqualifies “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” because while she mentions “beyond” and “thunderdome,” she never mentions “Max Max beyond thunderdome.”)
- It can’t be a song that merely mentions another movie. (Disqualifying Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”)
- You can mention the Bond films, but that’s the easy way out. Jeff thinks “Live and Let Die” sucks but I like it. I also like “View to a Kill” and “For Your Eyes Only (Only For Yuhhhh).”
So far, in the “Soundtrack songs that mention the title of the movie are AWESOME!” group, we have: “Ghostbusters” (download), “Fame,” “Footloose,” “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” (download), and “Purple Rain.”
In the “Soundtrack songs that mention the title of the movie BLOW CHUNKS!” group, we have “Goldeneye,” “Spy Hard,” and “Spies Like Us” (download). Bonus points if you can mention another song for a movie with “spy” or “spies” in the title — and the theme song to The Spy Who Loved Me was “Nobody Does it Better,” just FYI.
Obviously this game is ridiculously subjective — but we know you guys have strong opinions on important matters such as these, so let’s hear from you! And Name That Tune will (thankfully) return next week!
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