7 Songs That Movies and TV Shows Brought Back from the Dead
A good needle drop can work wonders for a movie or a TV show. Pick your song perfectly enough, time it up with a good scene, and you could have an iconic moment no one will ever forget — a reference that will be pirated out the wazoo on YouTube years later.
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The movie or TV show isn’t always the only beneficiary, though. If you’re the artist that provided this perfect tune, you might find that a song of yours, the royalties on which had long dried up, is suddenly rejuvenated with a brand new audience.
Here are seven songs that were hauled back into relevancy by movies or TV shows…
‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ Wayne’ s World
Now, it’s not like Queen was some little-known band before the release of Wayne's World. They’d already been a global phenomenon, and were in the spotlight again for tragic reasons: Freddie Mercury had died of AIDS shortly before the film was released. Had he survived, he would have seen the film send the classic ballad rocketing into popularity a second time, earning the number two spot on the pop charts nearly two decades after its original release.
‘Running Up That Hill,’ Stranger Things
A more recent instance of visual media carrying audio works with it is from the most recent season of Stranger Things. Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” plays a central role in it, which also had the effect of reminding and/or teaching everyone just how much of a banger that song is. Unlike Mercury, Kate Bush was (and is) still around to see her song's second ride to cultural prominence. In fact, “Running Up That Hill” is now her highest-charting song ever on the Billboard charts, reaching number three 27 years after its release.
‘Goo Goo Muck,’ Wednesday
Bush is slightly further off-the-beaten path than Queen, but an artist that found modern success via Wednesday is one plenty of people might have never heard of. If there were betting markets on the next band to get some second-degree success thanks to popular media, I doubt anyone would have even offered odds on The Cramps. Iconic but under-recognized members of the early New York punk scene, Wednesday Addams dancing to their song “Goo Goo Muck” gave them the only Billboard chart appearance of their career.
‘Where Is My Mind?,’ Fight Club
There might not be a song and movie that are harder to pry apart on this list than the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” and the movie Fight Club. Just as the tale of Tyler Durden changed dorm-room walls forever, it also had an effect on the popular music charts, launching what wasn’t even the Pixies’ most popular song into one that you could comfortably sing at karaoke. You’d have a real argument that Fight Club is directly responsible for “Where Is My Mind?” making Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
‘Lust for Life,’ Trainspotting
Iggy Pop isn’t only featured, but repeatedly name-dropped in Trainspotting. Not particularly surprising, given that the movie is about heroin use, and Iggy Pop, well, let’s just say the vibes sync up. Maybe the most famous combination of the two is the movie’s opening scene, where our horse-loving protagonists are introduced over his song “Lust for Life.” Pitchfork makes the case that Pop’s role in Trainspotting didn’t just positively affect plays of “Lust for Life,” but cemented his role in popular rock history.
‘Stuck in the Middle With You,’ Reservoir Dogs
The band Stealers Wheel found one of their songs inextricably tied to a bit of extremely bloody filmmaking thanks to Quentin Tarantino. The band is basically unknown outside this one song, which was already a one-hit wonder and gives them the distinct of honor of being a one-hit wonder with the same song twice. All it took was Michael Madsen less than cleanly removing a human ear to their dulcet tones.
‘Believe It or Not,’ Seinfeld
If a song receives a second bout of fame from Seinfeld, you can be sure there’s going to be something weird about it. “Believe It or Not,” the theme from the 1980s TV show The Greatest American Hero, might be the only song to be made popular by an objectively terrible parody performed on an answering machine. George Costanza goes Weird Al on the song to record his famous answering machine message in “The Susie,” and his version brought the original back into public consciousness.
