This is my collection of Top 20 songs. You may comment, agree, disagree, or suggest additions or deletions from each list. Come in, take a look, have a laugh and become a follower.
Music has the power to set a mood, evoke emotion, and give a moment cohesiveness. Many directors have used music with amazing results in film - sometimes making a particular scene unforgettable and even surpassing the movie itself. These are my Top 20 Musical Movie Moments...
1. Hombre Mirando al Sudeste (Beethoven's 9th Symphony)
2. Almost Famous (Elton John - Tiny Dancer)
3. Risky Business (Bob Seger - Old Time Rock'n'Roll)
TV has changed a lot. Now, reality TV is emerging force behind situation comedies and drama. Also, many shows opt to use a classic rock song (for example, CSI using The Who) instead of their own TV theme song. I do not doubt that there would be a sound business case there, but many times the TV theme is what we remember from a TV show... These are my top 20 TV themes of all time...
1. M*A*S*H*: "Suicide in Painless" by Johnny Mandel
2. Cheers: "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" by Gary Portnoy
3. Gilligan's Island: "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" by The Wellingtons
4. The Addams Family: "The Addams Family" by Vic Mizzy
5. WKRP in Cincinnati: "WKRP In Cincinnati Main Theme" by Steve Carlisle
6. The Flintstones: "Meet the Flinstones"
7. Batman: "Theme from Batman" by Nelson Riddle
8. Friends: "I'd Be There For You" by The Rembrandts
9. The Banana Splits Adventure Hour: "The Tra la la la Song" by The Banana Splits
10. Mission: Impossible: "Main Title" by Lalo Schifrin
11. The Muppet Show
12. The Greatest American Hero: "Believe it or not" by Joey Scarbury
13. The Simpsons
14. Happy Days
15. Dukes of Hazzard: "Good Ole Boys" by Waylon Jennings
16. Beverly Hillbilies: "The Ballad of Jed Clampett"
17. The Sopranos: "Woke Up This Morning" by A3
18. Hawaii 5-0
19. Bonanza
20. Big Bang Theory: "Big Bang" by The Barenaked Ladies
To me, musicals are just contemporary Operas in English with rock or pop music. Whether Broadway or the West End, musical theater has made greater contributions to pop culture than we can ever imagine. In fact, I challenge you to go through this list and tell me if there is not at least one of this songs that does not crack a smile on your face... These are my top 20 musicals...
1. Les Misarables: I Dreamed a Dream; One Day More, Stars, Do You Hear the People Sing?, Master of the House, Look Down, Lovely Ladies, Red and Black, Drink with me, Beggards at the Feast...
2. Rent: Seasons of Love, Rent, One Song Glory, Tango: Maureen, Santa Fe, La Vie Boheme, I'll Cover You, Today 4 U, Over the Moon, Light my Candle..
3. Phantom of the Opera: The Music of the Night, The Phantom of the Opera, All I Ask of You, Wishing you Were Here Somehow Again, The Point of No Return, Angel of Music...
4. Chicago: All That Jazz, Cell Block Tango, Press Conference Rag, Roxie, Mr. Cellophane, Razzle Dazzle, Class, I Can't Do it Alone, Nowadays, Class, Hot Honey Rag...
5. Fiddler on the Roof: Tradition, If I Were a Rich Man, Sunrise Sunset, Matchmaker, Anatekva, Far From the Home I Love, Little Bird, Do You Love Me?, Miracle of Miracles...
6. A Chorus Line: What I Did for Love; One; Nothing; Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love; I Can Do That, I Hope I Get It; At the Ballet; Sing...
7. Cats: Memory; Magical Mr. Mistoffolees; The Rum Tum Tugger; Gus: The Theatre Cat; Bustopher Jones; Macavity: The Mystery Cat; Skimbleshanks; Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats...
8. Jesus Christ Superstar: Gethsemane, Superstar, Heaven on Their Minds, Last Supper, I Don't Know How to Love Him, Can We Start Again Please?, The Trail Before Pilate, Herod's Song, Hossana, This Jesus Must Die, Simon Zeloates...
9. West Side Story: Quintet, Maria, Jet Song, Somewhere, America, I Feel Pretty, Tonight, Gee Officer Krumpke...
10. Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: Any Dream Will Do, Go Go Joseph, Close Every Door, One More Angel in Heaven, Song of the King, Poor Poor Pharoah, Those Canaan Days, Benjamin's Calypso...
11. Hair: Easy to be Hard, Aquarius, Let the Sun Shine In, I Got Life, Hair, Ain't Go No, Where Do I Go?, Manchester England, The Flesh Failures, Good Morning Starshine, Sodomy, I'm Black, Walking in Space...
12. Evita: Don't Cry for me Argentina, Waltz for Eva and Che, Oh What a Circus!, Another Suitcase in Another Hall, a New Argentina, High Flying Adored, And the Money Kept Rolling In, Buenos Aires, On This Night of a Thousand Stars, The Rainbow Tour...
13. My Fair Lady: Why Can't the English?, I Could Have Danced All Night, Get Me to the Church on Time, Wouldn't It Be Loverly?, On the Street Where you Live, A Hymn to Him, With a Little Bit of Luck, Just You Wait...
14. Grease: Summer Nights, We Go Together, Beauty School Drop Out, Alone at the Drive-In, Rock'n'Roll Party Queen, Those Magic Changes, Greased Lightning, There are Worse Things I Could Do, Look at me I'm Sandra Dee...
15. Avenue Q: The Internet is for Porn, Purpose, Mix Tape, Everyone's a little bit Racist, If You Were Gay, There's a Fine Fine Line, Sucks to be Me...
16. Camelot: I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight, Camelot, The Lusty Month of May, If Ever I Would Leave You, What do the Simple Folk Do?, Guenevere...
17. Man of la Mancha: The Impossible Dream, Man of la Mancha, The Knight of the Woeful Countenance, Little Bird Little Bird, Dulcinea, Golden Helmet of Mambrino
18. Spamalot: Always Look in the Bright Side of Life, You Won't Succeed in Broadway, The Song that Goes Like This, Knights of the Round Table, Brave Sir Robin, Diva's Lament, Find Your Grail...
19. Pirates of Penzance: The Pirate King, The Very Model of a Major General, Climb Over Rocky Mountain, When the Foreman Bares His Steel, A Paradox, A Rollicking Band of Pirates We, Finale Act II
20. Wicked: Defying Gravity, Popular, No One Mourns the Wicked, the Wizard and I, No Good Deed, Dancing Through Life, One Short Day, What is This Feeling?
A couple of days ago, we elected our first woman president. Election campaigns here in Costa Rica are very colorful and intense; however, candidates hardly ever choose an official campaign song (as they do in the US). I really like it when candidates incorporate pop/rock/country music to their campaign because I think it livens things up and gets people in the right mindset for voting. Inspired by these thoughts, here is my Top 20 US Campaign Songs…
1. Fleetwood Mac – Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow (Bill Clinton, 1992)
2. Frank Sinatra - High Hopes (John F Kennedy, 1960)
3. Brooks & Dunn – Only in America (George W Bush, 2004)
4. Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA (Ronald Reagan, 1984)
5. Woody Guthrie – This Land is Your Land (George HW Bush, 1988)
If left to their own devices, these songs will creep into your brain, set up a tent, build a fire, hang out their clothes to dry, and refuse to leave until you have not one shred of sanity left. These songs have not only the power to annoy you but they’re also armed and dangerous… these are my top 20 most annoying songs ever
1. Disney - It's a Small World
2. Barney - I Love You, You Love Me
3. Napoleon XIV - They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha
This is an odd list. Some fictional bands are put together for the purposes of a movie or a TV show and do not exist beyond their own universe. However, some fictional bands start off as fictitious, only to later become real due to their popularity. Here are my top 20 songs from Fictional TV & Movie Bands.
1. Spinal Tap - Stonehenge
This is the greatest fictional band that ever lived. We met them as the fictional subject of Rob Reiner’s "This is Spinal Tap", one of the best mockumentaries / rockumentaries ever. In fact, in the years since the 1984 film, the three actors who portrayed the band members (Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer) have played occasional concerts, made TV appearances, and even released music under the Spinal Tap name.
2. Daydream Believer – The Monkees
The Monkees were "assembled" for a live action TV series that would compete with The Beatles cartoons. At the start, the band members provided vocals, and were given some performing and production opportunities, but they eventually fought for and earned the right to collectively supervise all musical output under the band's name. The group undertook several concert tours, allowing an opportunity to perform as a live band as well as on the TV series. By 1970, they had achieved 6 top ten singles (including 4 Billboard Hot 100 number ones) and several gold and platinum records.
When the Eddie & the Cruisers film came out, “On the Dark Side” by Eddie & The Cruisers was released and flopped in the charts. A year later, after several successful screenings in HBO, the studio re-released the song under the name of the real Jersey band that had recorded the songs for the film, John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band. The song re-entered the charts and sky-rocketed to number one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWddBTxPDYQ
4. Ellen Aim and the Attackers - Tonight it’s What It Means to Be Young
In the 1984 film Streets of Fire, Ellen Aim and the Attackers performed "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" with members of new wave band Face to Face playing the part of the Attackers and actress Diane Lane lip-syncing to singer Laurie Sargent's vocals. When the Streets of Fire soundtrack came out, the song was attributed to Fire Inc., a Wagnerian rock ensemble composer Jim Steinman assembled to record two songs for the movie. A fictional band recording the music for another fictional band...
5. The Archies - Sugar, Sugar
The Archies is a fictional garage band founded by Archie Andrews and a group of fictional characters of the Archie universe for the animated TV series, The Archie Show. The fictional band's music was recorded by session musicians featuring Ron Dante on vocals and released as a series of singles and albums. Their most successful song, "Sugar, Sugar", became one of the biggest hits of the bubblegum pop genre that flourished from 1968 to 1972
6. The Blues Brothers - Rubber Biscuit
The Blues Brothers started out as a musical sketch in Saturday Night Live, where comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd played Jake and Elwood Blues – The Blues Brothers. After several appearances in SNL, the band released an album and starred in a film, The Blues Brothers, created around its characters.
7. The Commitments - Try a Little Tenderness
The Commitments is a 1987 movie about a group of unemployed young people in Dublin, Ireland who start a soul band. The interesting thing here is that although the group in the film was entirely fictional, the cast later began touring as a real band known as "The Stars from The Commitments".
8. Josie & The Pussycats – Three Small Words
Josie & The Pussycats began as an Archie comic book that later developed into a Saturday morning cartoon series. In preparation for the 1970 cartoon series, Hanna-Barbera began working on putting together a real-life "Josie and the Pussycats" girl group, who would provide the singing voices of the girls in the cartoons and also cut an album as well. After interviewing 500 finalists, they cast Cathy Douglas, Cherie Moor and Patrice Holloway, who recorded an album and six singles. In 2001, Universal Pictures released a Josie & The Pussycats film starring Rachel Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson and Tara Reid. The songs in the film were actually performed with Kay Hanley, former singer for Letters to Cleo, as the singing voice of Josie while the three actresses sang backup vocals on many of the songs. Josie & The Pussycats live twice...
9. The Soggy Bottom Boys - Man of Constant Sorrow
The Soggy Bottom Boys are the fictitious Depression-era "old-timey music" trio and accompaniment from the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?" played in the film by George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson. The voices behind the Soggy Bottom Boys are well known bluegrass musicians and the song “Man of Constant Sorrow” won a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.
10. The Partridge Family - I Think I Love You
The Partridge Family was a 1970 sit-com about a widowed mother and her five children who start a music career as a traveling band.The Partridge Family became an instant phenomenon, not only as a TV show but as a band that produced actual hit songs. David Cassidy, who starred in the show as Shirley Jones' eldest son and sang lead vocals, became an overnight teen idol. In response to his instant fame, producers quickly signed him as a solo act as well. Although the Partridge Family did not actually exist as a live band, Cassidy began touring with his own group of musicians, performing Partridge songs as well as hits from his own albums.
11. Hannah Montana - The Best of Both Worlds
Hannah Montana is a Disney Channel series that focuses on a girl who lives a double live as an average school girl named Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cirus, daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus) by day and a famous pop singer named Hannah Montana by night.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8iyHyxlzW8
12. Dusty & Lefty - Bad Jokes
Played by Woody Harrelson & John C. Riley for the 2006 Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion, based on the public radio show of the same name created by Garrison Keillor.
13. The Banana Splits – The Tra La La La Song
The Banana Splits were Fleegle the Beagle, Bingo the Gorilla, Drooper the Lion, and Snorky the Elephant and hosted the Banana Splits Adventure Hour that featured both animated and live action segments. In 1968, The Banana Splits released an album titled We're the Banana Splits. The show’s theme song, titled "The Tra La La La Song", released as a single, peaked at number 97 on Billboard's Top 100 in February 1969.
14. The Folksmen –OldJoe’s Place
The three actors who made Spinal Tap famous (Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer) reunited as a folk trio for the 2003 mockumentary A Mighty Wind about a folk music reunion concert and the three groups that must come together to perform on national television for the first time in years.
15. Stillwater - Fever Dog
Stillwater is a fictional band fronted by actors Jason Lee and Billy Crudup for the 2000 film “Almost Famous”.
16. The Bandits – Catch Me
In the 1997 German movie, four female inmates form a band while in prision. When they are slated to perform at a police ball and take the opportunity to escape. While on the run, the heroines perform concerts and attain fame as a rock band. The soundtrack of the movie became a hit in Germany, selling almost 700.000 copies.
17. The Wonders – That Thing You Do
According to the 1996 film written and directed by Tom Hanks, The Wonders was a one-hit wonder band. In the movie, The Wonders rise to brief stardom on the strength of "That Thing You Do", a song written as a wistful ballad but which becomes an up-tempo rocker during the band's first performance at a talent show. Written and composed for the film by Adam Schlesinger, bassist for Fountains of Wayne, and released on the film's soundtrack, the song became a genuine hit for The Wonders in 1996 peaking at #41 on the Billboard Hot 100.
18. Strange Fruit – The Flame Still Burns
In the 1998 film Still Crazy, Strange Fruit is a fictional rock band from the 1970’s who, after being split up for several decades, are convinced to get back together to perform at a reunion of the same concert venue where they played their last gig.
19. Mitch & Mickey – A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow
This is another fictional band from the 2003 mockumentary “A Mighty Wind”. Mitch & Mickey are a folk duo played by seasoned actors Eugene Levy & Catherine O’Hara. The song "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow", was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song, and was performed at the 76th Oscar Ceremony by Levy and O'Hara (in character).
20. DriveShaft - You All (Everybody)
In the TV series Lost, Charlie Pace was a former member of a fictional one-hit wonder band named DriveShaft and “You All (Everybody)” was their claim to fame.
This is probably the most personal list I can ever come up with. All the songs in this list remind me of people, places and events in my life. Some happy, some sad. Some of these songs are very painful to me, and, depending on the day, I might choose to change the radio station if one of them should come on. Whatever the case, all of these songs are linked to powerful memories of happy times and people who might not be in my life anymore and I miss tremendously. I know some of you might recognize yourselves in one of these songs. If so, you'll understand why it is on the list. This is basically the soundtrack of my life...
Icehouse – Crazy
Well, you've gotta be crazy, baby to want a guy like me. Yeah, you've gotta be out of your mind - crazy.
Miguel Bose – Amiga
El tiempo no fue tiempo entre nosotros, Estando juntos nos sentimos infinitos Y el universo era pequeño comparado con lo que éramos tú y yo
Survivor – The Search is Over
Now I look into your eyes, I can see forever The search is over, You were with me all the while
Fire Inc. – Nowhere Fast
And I don't know where I ever got the bright idea that I was cool So alone and independent but I'm depending on you now And you'll always be the only thing that I just can't be without And I'm out for you tonight, I'm comin' out for you tonight
Journey – Send Her my Love
It’s been so long since I’ve seen her face You say she’s doin’ fine… I still recall, a sad café How it hurt so bad to see her cry I didn’t want to say good-bye
Sui Generis – Confesiones de Invierno
Dios es empleado en un mostrador, da para recibir. ¿Quién me dará un crédito, mi Señor? Sólo sé sonreír..
Lucio Dalla – L’Ultima Luna
L'ultima luna la vide solo un bimbo appena nato Aveva occhi tondi e neri e fondi e non piangeva Con grandi mani prese la luna tra le mani e volo' via E volo' via e volo' via, era l'uomo di domani
Cirque Du Soleil – Alegria
Beautiful roaring scream Of joy and sorrow, so extreme There is a love in me raging Alegria, a joyous, magical feeling
Olivia Newton-John – Twist of Fate
Don't understand what's going on Woke up this morning, all the hurt was gone This is a new beginning I'm back in the land of the living
Scorpions – Blackout
I realize I missed a day But I’m too wrecked to care anyway
Cats – Memory
Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise I must think of a new life and I musn't give in When the dawn comes Tonight will be a memory too And a new day will begin
Pink Floyd – Brain Damage / Eclipse
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear You shout and no one seems to hear And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon
Moving Pictures – What About Me?
What about me?, it isn't fair I've had enough now I want my share Can't you see I wanna live? But you just take more than you give
Meat Loaf – Read’em and Weep
Oh, it's there in my eyes and coming straight from my heart, It's running silent and angry and deep! Oh, it's there in my eyes and it's all I can say, Come on and look at me and read 'em and weep!
Blues Traveler – Runaround
But you Why you wanna give me a run-around Is it a sure-fire way to speed things up When all it does is slow me down
Rod Stewart – Forever Young
And when you finally fly away I’ll be hoping that I served you well
But whatever road you choose I’m right behind you, win or lose
Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl
Do you remember when we used to sing, Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da
Ana Belen – Derroche
Y a la noche se le fue la mano...
Joaquin Sabina – Eclipse de Mar
Que ha caído la bolsa en el cielo, que siguen las putas en huelga de celo en Moscú. Que subió la marea, que fusilan mañana a Jesús de Judea, que creció el agujero de ozono, que el hombre de hoy es el padre del mono del año 2000.
Metallica – Turn the Page
Here I am - on the road again There I am - up on the stage Here I go - playing star again There I go - turn the page
