It's the last day of March and you know what that means. Time to reveal the next set of songs...
The Oscars, one of my favorite annual events if not my top favorite, took place this month so what better way to help celebrate it than do a full month of movie songs! This was a fun one to do as soundtracks have always been my favorite "genre" of music. I also did some special mini-themes to be a bit more festive and challenging this month, though this decision would come to bite me in the end as I missed out on several big movie songs I wanted to get.
Oh, and Loreen won Melodifestivalen. Gee, what a shocker! It's not like all of the other songs weren't up to snuff and she was deliberately primed by the show's producers to be the top choice. Now watch and see as she wins this year's Eurovision and become a two-time champion. Seriously though, she has a very, very strong chance of doing just that!
And the 31 songs of March 2023 are:
A.R. Rahman, Suzanne, and Kash n' Krissy - "Naina Miley"
The Bangles - "Hazy Shade Of Winter"
Bobby Brown - "On Our Own"
Bryan Adams - "Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?"
Bryan Adams, Sting and Rod Stewart - "All For Love"
Cher and Peter Cetera - "After All"
Corona - "The Rhythm Of The Night"
Diana King - "Shy Guy"
Diego Boneta - "Undercover Love"
Dolby's Cube feat. Cherry Bomb - "Howard The Duck"
Henry Mancini - "Moon River"
Hugh Grant - "Pop! Goes My Heart"
Jon Bon Jovi - "Blaze Of Glory"
MC Hammer - "Addams Groove"
Mental As Anything - "Live It Up"
Nitin Raikwar, Nisha and Simmie - "Excuse Me"
NSYNC and Gloria Estefan - "Music Of My Heart"
Oliver Onions - "Yor's World"
Olivia Newton-John - "Twist Of Fate"
Partners In Kryme - "Turtle Power"
Pia Zadora - "It's Wrong For Me To Love You"
Public Enemy - "Fight The Power (Soundtrack Version)"
Ray Parker Jr. - "Ghostbusters"
Roxette - "It Must Have Been Love"
Starship - "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now"
Steven McClintock - "Edge Of A Dream"
The Time - "The Bird"
The Time - "Jungle Love"
Vanilla Ice - "Ninja Rap
Village People - "Can't Stop The Music"
The Wonders - "That Thing You Do!"
Out of all of the movie songs available for purchase, what do you think I kicked off the month with? Who would you call up first? "Ghostbusters"!
I just had to start with "Ghostbusters", a beloved movie anthem that I surprisingly didn't already own. I literally grew up with this song, whether it was from the many rewatches of the movie via a "taped off from HBO" VHS to hearing it all the time whenever The Real Ghostbusters aired on television. Quite shockingly, it has never gotten old with me at any time.
The second reason I had to start off the month with "Ghostbusters" is because I didn't want to go out of order chronologically. For you see, the song I really wanted to start with and a song I have really put off from buying was "On Our Own" by Bobby Brown, aka the theme song of Ghostbusters II.
I watched Ghostbusters II nearly as much as the first one but strangely "On Our Own" never caught on with me as a kid. I always watched the ending credits where the song plays but I just never got hooked on it or remembered it all. It was probably buried within my subconscious, waiting for the time to explode, as it really wasn't until I started dipping my toes as a teen into new jack swing when the song started to stick. Bobby Brown has his issues but the stuff he was putting out in the late 80s always enthralls me, including this song. Also, dig that unique music video with its selective green screening of NYC locations and numerous celebrity cameos.
I don't care what anyone says, I fucking love Purple Rain. When I rented that movie at my local video store (Video World RIP), I literally watched it three times in a row. I was so blown away after the first viewing that I just had to stay up all night and watch it again and again. Once I finally had my fill, I broke the cycle by watching an episode of Gumby, which was airing in the wee morning hours every Saturday on Nickelodeon.
I purchased the Purple Rain soundtrack not long after that glorious weekend only to be gravely dismayed when looking over the tracks: It was just the songs performed by Prince & The Revolution! The Time were completely snubbed! No Morris Day! No "Jungle Love"! No "The Bird"! I was now fully hooked on Prince but I really wanted the two songs that greatly pick up the party side of the movie. I refused to purchase The Time's Ice Cream Castle at the time (heh) which had the songs so I settled by being a bad boy and getting them through Kazaa. I should be at ease now that I have the two songs and am able to create my own Purple Rain playlist but the third major soundtrack snub, Apollonia 6's "Sex Shooter", is still not available for purchase, not even after Prince's death.
There are many songs that just scream the 90's; one of those is Diana King's "Shy Guy". I used to hear that song on the radio all the time and just adored it as a kid, even though I never knew who actually sang it. Then I later find out that it became popular mainly because it was included on the soundtrack to Bad Boys. People really kinda forget just how big Bad Boys was when it first came out. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, the two biggest young black male stars of television, doing a bombastic R-rated buddy cop flick directed by some hot shot music video director named Michael Bay. It literally oozed cool and was a pop culture moment, hence why the series refuses to die.
To help countdown to the Oscars, from August 6th to the 12th (the night of the event), I decided to get seven of my favorite movie songs that were Oscar nominated for Best Original Song. And the first one up was... Bryan Adams' "Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?" Are you kidding me? Yeah, the song is a bit of weird and gets made fun of a lot nowadays but as I've said again and again here, I grew up with it and still love it to this day. I haven't seen Don Juan DeMarco save for catching its ending one night on HBO but I'm not exactly currently in the mood to watch a Johnny Depp movie.
"Blaze Of Glory" pretty much had the exact same journey as "On Our Own". I have more cherished memories of the movie it came from than the actual song. I vividly remember going to a beloved local movie theater, the "last chance" mini-plex that was Cine 10, to go see Young Guns II. I don't recall if I watched all of it there or if I had one of my infamous naps that plagued me as a kid when I went to "special events". All I can remember was I watched up to a sequence involving a nighttime shootout. Anyway, I didn't really fall in love with the song until much later when I was very interested in exploring all of Billboard's #1 hits while also rewatching the movie whenever it aired on HBO.
One of these days, I will finally sit down and watch Tom Hanks' directorial debut That Thing You Do! But until that day happens, I will continue to listen to the title track, which translated very well to the radio in 1996 and has since out-lived the film. You know your movie about a fake one-hit wonder band is a total success when the band's one hit song literally becomes a hit song in the real world.
"After All" was another childhood favorite (seeing a pattern here?). It was one of those songs that played all the time on adult contemporary radio stations or in waiting rooms when I was a kid before eventually fading into the ether. It came back into my life, funnily enough, when I decided to watch an old 1990 episode of Siskel & Ebert about that year's Oscar nominees. I say funnily enough because the song comes from Chances Are, a 1989 movie where a widow's dead husband is reincarnated into a young man... who just happens to be the college boyfriend of her daughter. Yeah, that's pretty icky. Just stick with the song. Also, give a watch of the song's performance at that year's Oscars, where James Ingram and Melissa Manchester take over for Peter Cetera and Cher respectively and do an alright job.
I warned you back in January and now she's here again: Diane Warren is one of most famous American songwriter still working today though her peak popularity and quite frankly creativity have long passed. But the Academy and its voters think otherwise and have treated her very well with 14 (!) nominations for Best Original Song, with the majority of them coming within the last decade. Unfortunately, those latter nominated songs aren't very good and her failure at getting a real Oscar (the 2022 honorary one doesn't count) has given her the new nickname as "The Susan Lucci of The Oscars". Randy Newman certainly knows that feeling.
Despite my constant eye-rolling at seeing her name come every Oscars nowadays, she did make some great movie songs and there were two of them that were Oscar nominated and hold a special place in my heart and mind: "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" and "Music Of My Heart".
You might call me a stupid apologist and wish to burn a scarlet letter on to my chest for spouting heresy but I frankly just plain enjoy Starship. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jefferson Airplane selling out during the 80's certainly struck a fatal blow for a lot of grown-up flower children but I'm always a huge sucker for synth-rock and arena butt rock.
That all being said, despite them giving us the so-called musical travesty that is "We Built This City", practically everyone nowadays seem to love or at least have a soft spot for "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now". This despite the sheer fact that it came from Mannequin, a critically panned 1987 film that reeks of the 80's yet has gone on to cult classic status. As for myself, the song always either makes me smile or get in the groove.
Oh, and to anyone that just loves to shit all over Starship and how it "ruined" the legacy of Jefferson Airplane, how about you try and listen to the reunited band's 1989 self-titled album and their lead single "Planes" and tell what really is the drizzling shits.
"Music Of My Heart" should not have worked for me. It was the lead soundtrack single for a Meryl Streep drama (directed by Wes Craven!) that no one really cared about at the time or have since. It was pushed heavily on MTV via TRL and especially on VH1 due to the film's encouragement of music programs in public schools. It is largely "Because You Love Me" 2.0. And more importantly, it was sung by NSYNC (I was a secret Backstreet Boys fan at the time). But god damn it all, it stuck like glue to my soul as a teenager. It was a big ole guilty pleasure for me at the time, largely thanks to those damn fine harmonies and that blasted key change. Oh, and because Gloria Estefan sang it on, and she's always great.
And to help celebrate Oscar night, I bought one of the best Oscar songs if not one of the best American songs of all time, "Moon River" from Breakfast At Tiffany's. Mickey Rooney's racist performance aside, Breakfast At Tiffany's is on my all-time list of favorite films and is probably the only true blue romance flick on it. Now as for what version of the song, I went with Henry Mancini and his unknown chorus. Yes, the Audrey Hepburn version is far more popular but whenever I watch the film and it gets to the ending where the Mancini version blares out right when Holly and Paul find Cat in the rainy alley, I nearly always burst into tears of happiness.
Well, I did a week devoted just to Oscar nominated songs so why not go the opposite way and do a week devoted to songs that were nominated for the Razzies? They incredibly suck nowadays but the Razzies were once a big part of my movie lifestyle and helped fuel my curious exploration into the trashbins of cinema. Plus, my 2017 listicle about the worst Razzie noms and winners is one of my most popular non-Christmas articles I have ever done on this site and I'm pretty proud of it. I was only able to find five worthy songs; I had a sixth song and a track from a score picked out but I decided to move them to a more worthy month down the line. I also considered getting "Wild, Wild West" but Will Smith is still currently on my shit list to a certain degree.
I started off by going to the very first big winner of the Razzies, Can't Stop The Music. The infamous musical all about The Village People is certainly one of the absolute worst films I have ever seen but it's also one of my absolute favorite cult films. Seriously, I have seen this movie as about as many times as The Thing, and that's really saying something about myself. Unfortunately for myself and Village People fans, the soundtrack still has not come out on iTunes or streaming services save for the catchy title track, which plays during the movie's unbearably long finale.
Ah, Pia Zadora. The most famous target of the Razzies. I still haven't seen her "magnum opus" The Lonely Lady but I did see and own a DVD copy of her "debut" feature film Butterfly. It's pretty icky with its maybe-or-maybe-not incest plotline and is largely boring but I did enjoy the score by Ennio Morricone and the "love theme" that Zadora sings over the ending credits. She's dreadful as an actress but Pia Zadora certainly could sing.
IN YOR'S WORLD! HE'S THE MAN! God bless you Reb Brown, god bless those crazy Italian musicians that gave us "Yor's World", and god bless that editor that plays the track when Brown hang glides with a dead giant bat or when he does circus swing tricks in Yor, The Hunter From The Future.
When I think of Howard The Duck, I always recall the VHS tape of the movie that my maternal grandparents had in the cabinet underneath their television and the one time I tried to watch it there only to either get bored/horrified by it quickly or to have it stopped by someone after the infamous duck tits scene in the film's opening. I eventually got around to watching it all and yeah it sucks big time but the soundtrack largely produced by Thomas Dolby is a real hoot.
My family had MC Hammer's second album Too Legit To Quit on cassette and I just remember how I would chiefly just play "Addams Groove" a lot. Eventually, with the help of my dad and his big fancy audio equipment, I had it copied on to a mixtape for myself and played it some more. I sadly couldn't get the track off the album on iTunes, apparently because the song was a cassette-only inclusion, but I was thankfully able to get it via Hammer's Greatest Hits.
To keep the "worst movie songs" train going, I then picked up three tracks that could have or should have been nominated for a Razzie. First up was "Twist Of Fate" from the 1983 bomb Two Of A Kind, sung by one of its stars, the late great Olivia Newton-John. Her last hit song, it's a real treat for 80's synth-pop fans or for those looking for more from the Xanadu era of Olivia.
Next up was Vanilla Ice, who was nominated for a song from Cool As Ice but strangely wasn't for "Ninja Rap" from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze. Like "Addams Groove", this is one of those 90's movie rap songs that plagued the nation but were too earwormy to truly hate.
And last was a song that would have been nominated if the 1988/89 film was actually noteworthy upon its release. It didn't become more well known until the great cast and crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 dug it up and lampooned it in one of their most famous episodes (and my #1 favorite). That's right, I'm talking about Space Mutiny and its "great" credits song "Edge Of A Dream", which is thoroughly mocked in the episode. I was so surprised at the fact that I could actually buy the song on iTunes. God bless you Steven McClintock, you B-to-Z movie musician you. And again, god bless Reb Brown.
Yeah, yeah, it's the epitome of the big dumb pop sound of the 90's but dammit, I still like "All For Love". Plus I'm always a huge sucker for duets/collaborations of major music stars.
Despite only watching it once, Crocodile Dundee often pops up in my brain from time to time and I don't exactly know why. It was really good but not a movie that I absolutely adored. I think it mainly has to do more with my love for "Live It Up", the pop tune that pops up during a party scene.
Another movie that has a strange residence in my head is Music & Lyrics, a fairly forgettable rom-com for the most part save for its pretty good soundtrack and its amazing opening credits sequence. Seriously, this movie contains one of my absolute favorite openings (move over Touch Of Evil!). If you ever want to show someone why Hugh Grant is an absolute gem, show them this opener, where he sings (for real) and mugs at the camera as Not Andrew Ridgeley in an on-point recreation of 80's new wave music videos.
I still really, really don't like Rock Of Ages. But largely thanks to my semi-love for bad musicals, the damn bomb still hangs around with me. However, I do enjoy "Undercover Love", the supposed-to-be-bad (but is actually kinda good) NKOTB inspired original song that actually rocks more than any of the other tracks.
I thought about doing a Bollywood week but there sadly isn't a lot of songs that I would actually want to buy, not unless I want it to be the entire soundtrack from Bang Bang! So I settled with just two: "Naina Miley" and "Excuse Me". The internet was all a buzz in 2010 when the trailer for Robot (aka Enthiran) went viral. I was luckily enough to see it when a soon-to-be-dead movie theater started showing Bollywood movies. The film itself is a bit of a mess but it has its moments, with the "Naina Miley" number being my favorite. And yes, I went with the Hindi version instead of the original Tamil version aka "Irumbile Oru Idhaiyam" because, well, it's more pleasant to my ears.
As for "Excuse Me", it comes from a very forgettable 2001 movie called Style. Yeah, with a title like that, you are most assured to have no cultural impact with movie audiences. Anyway, I came across the song and its musical number from a Bollywood jukebox DVD that I picked up from a local Indian grocery store in the late 2000's. Not exactly one of the best Bollywood songs ever but I really like the playful lyrics of the tune and it is one of the few Hindi songs that I can sing-a-long to.
I seriously can't believe that I was all ready and willing to buy "Ninja Rap" yet nearly forgot to pick up "Turtle Power". You know, the ending credits song that totally energizes you as a kid when you got done watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on VHS for the umpteenth time?
The Bangles' amazing rock cover of "Hazy Shade of Winter" is definitely one of my absolute favorite songs. Along with the performances of Robert Downey Jr. and James Spader, it's one of better things to come out of the otherwise mediocre Less Than Zero.
Man, it really sucks how no one is able to buy the Pretty Woman soundtrack on digital storefronts. That album went triple platinum yet it remains locked up in EMI's vault. Luckily, there is a way to pick up and enjoy Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love". The utterly fantastic song should never, ever be locked away from the public. Now just give the rest of the soundtrack!
Beau Travail, the so-called 7th best film of all time according to the 2022 Sight and Sound poll. It most certainly is not. I first checked out Claire Denis' loose adaptation of Billy Budd during my film studies in college. It's fine but I roll my eyes at how the film cranks its artsy fartsy and homoerotic dials all the way to 11. However, I will say that this film does in fact have one of my favorite movie endings of all time. I never would have expected for Corona's "The Rhythm Of The Night" to be so integral to a French film.
And to conclude the month, I bought Public Enemy's "Fight The Power", one of my all time favorite songs from one of my all time favorite movies. I'm more well acquainted with the album version of the tune but I really wanted to get the soundtrack version, which features the uncensored third verse where Chuck D and Flavor Flav tore into Elvis and John Wayne. And I can't go out without talking about my most "cherished" memory of "Fight The Power": One day in December 1999, I was decorating the Christmas tree while I had MTV playing in the background. The channel was airing MTV's 100 Greatest Music Videos Ever Made, where "Fight The Power" placed at #75. I was grooving and singing with the tune when a member of my extended family came right up to me. They shouted at me to knock it off because, in their bizarre mind, the song was endorsing the killing of white people. No joke.
