AFI 100 Songs

[PillowRock]

The other night I watched the AFI 100 Years 100 songs special. (Well, sorta. I was working on something at home while having it on.) They picked the top 100 songs in American movie history. They were not working by Oscar elligibility rules for Best Song, the songs need not have been written especially for the move. That means that things orginally written for stage versions of things later made into movies, that is to say all of the great musical theater numbers, are back in the running. It also means that songs that were originally written / produced years before the story was conceived are elligible .... *if* they are deemed to have had a big enough impact on movies / pop culture / whatever through their connection to the movie. For example, number 100 on the list is Bob Seger's Old Time Rock and Roll from Risky Business.

The top three were:

1) Somewhere Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz
2) As Time Goes By from Casablanca (speaking of older songs picked up for use in a later movie!)
3) Singing in the Rain from Singing in the Rain


The complete list is here.


When watching (well, mostly "listening to") the show I found that there was a group of songs whose presense on the list made me groan as soon as I started hearing a few notes of them. These were songs that I got sick of when they were overplayed to death as hit songs when they were new. This group included Celine Dion's song from Titanic, Whitney Huston's song from The Bodyguard (sorry, I don't recall those titles off-hand; I've blocked them out of my mind), Evergreen by Streisand, and it seems like one or two others that aren't leaping to mind right now.

It Had to be You by Frank Sinatra made the list from its use in When Harry Met Sally. It is a great song. It was used well in soundtrack of the movie. However, it didn't come close to being such a singular stand-out use of a song that it deserves to be on this list in my mind. It certainly did not become the kind of iconic moment that Cruise dancing to Seger in Risky Business did (or even that Meg Ryan's "faking it" scene in Harry/Sally did).

Two songs from Mel Brooks comedies are on the list: Springtime for Hitler from the The Producers and Puttin' on the Ritz from Young Frankenstein. Those are fun scenes, but Top 100 song in American movie history? Considering some of the things left off, I don't think so.

There is nothing on the list from Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma!, or The Music man. There is a link at the bottom of the page that I linked to which allows you to see the 400 nominee songs from which the Top 100 were selected. It amazed me that Tradition was not even on the nominee list. Heck I would take The Time Warp over some of the songs that made the top 100.

Since thematic repetition is an acceptable consideration (that was specifically discussed during the show as it related to As Time Goes By), I think that you could even make a case for The Lady from Seville (I'm not entirely sure that is actually the correct title) from Victor/Victoria. The two performances of that song, Julie Andrews doing it straight and then Robert Preston's send-up of that performance, almost certainly don't belong on such a list individually. However, taken together thay are really wonderful.


The thing that might not leap out at most people from reading the list, but which did hit me when watching the show and seeing the clips, is that a couple performers are the primary singers of a bunch of songs. Judy Garland is just all over that list everywhere, from a number of different movies. The other was Fred Astaire. One of the interviewees on the show pointed out that people don't tend think of Astaire as a great singer, yet it seems like every time he introduced a new song in movie (across many different movies and many different composers) it bacame a "standard".

I wonder if Bob Hope's duet of Thanks for the Memory would have made this list if Hope hadn't used it as his signature sign off for the following 5 or 6 decades.

Comments?

Discussions?

Arguments?

Or, JMS might want a few of .....
Bar fights?

 

[A_Ranger]

How did Goldfinger make it on that list? I hate that song! Goldeneye is what a good Bond song sould be.

 

[PillowRock]

The theme from Goldfinger isn't one of my favorite songs. However, it is a prime example of a particular combination of time period and style of music.

I don't think that I would put it on that list. However, I can kinda see the line of reasoning for it.

 

[B5_Obsessed]

There is nothing on the list from Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma!, or The Music man.

Is it possible that these were excluded because they were motion picture versions of Broadway musicals? They may have excluded those because they would end up taking up half the list.

 

[GKarsEye]

This group included Celine Dion's song from Titanic, Whitney Huston's song from The Bodyguard (sorry, I don't recall those titles off-hand; I've blocked them out of my mind)

I believe they are "My Heart Will Go On" and "I Will Always Love You," respectivelly. Heh.

My favorite movie song is "Freddie's Dead" from Superfly. Just saw that flick recently.

"Another junkie plan
Pushin' dope for the maaaan..."

 

[PsionTen]

My favorite movie song is "Freddie's Dead" from Superfly. Just saw that flick recently.

That was a cool song, I have to give you that. What those blaxploitation flicks lacked in cinematic creativity, they more than made up for in music.

 

[PillowRock]

There is nothing on the list from Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma!, or The Music man.

Is it possible that these were excluded because they were motion picture versions of Broadway musicals? They may have excluded those because they would end up taking up half the list.

Nope. Among other things (The king and I and Guys and Dolls being represented, for instance), there were three songs each from The Sound of Music and West Side Story.

Also, all three of the movies mentioned above were represented on the list of 400 nominees from which the final 100 were selected. I think (but am not certain) that 76 Trombones was the only nominee from Music Man. Oklahoma and Oh What a Beautiful Morning were nominees from Oklahoma!. If I Were a Rich Man and Sunrise, Sunset were nominated from Fiddler (though, as I mentioned before, Tradition didn't even make the nominees list; that still amazes me).

I wasn't sure if The Rocky Horror Picture Show would be considered to have enough of an American contribution to count as "American" to the American Film Institute. Apparently it did, since Time Warp did make it onto the list of 400 nominees. (Sweet Transvestite did not make the nominees list. I tend to think of the two songs as a unit, since they happen immediately after each other in the movie with no action and *virtually* no dialogue between them.)


One rule that they did apply was that these had to be "songs" with lyrics and not "pieces of music". That elimnated such classics as the themes from Jaws and The Godfather. The theme from Rocky barely qualifies under this rule with its couple lines of lyrics right near the end of the piece (which it seems like most people hear mostly as vocal instrumentation more than registering the words consciously).

 

[PillowRock]

My favorite movie song is "Freddie's Dead" from Superfly.

Now this brings up the question of the difference between "greatest" and "favorite". Were people voting for their personal favorites or the ones they say saw as having had the most impact on movies and pop culture in general? I don't really know.

I have noticed that asking movie critics for "greatest" or "favorite" movie does tend to yield different answers. Citizen Kane is cited as "greatest" much more often than "favorite".

 

[PillowRock]

My favorite movie song is "Freddie's Dead" from Superfly. Just saw that flick recently.

That was a cool song, I have to give you that. What those blaxploitation flicks lacked in cinematic creativity, they more than made up for in music.

I think that Shaft was the only one of those that made this particular list, though.

 

[PsionTen]

I think that Shaft was the only one of those that made this particular list, though.

Yeah, that bothered me a little bit, but this list was mainly just about showtunes and musicals. Who picks the stuff for these lists anyway? I keep imagining a room full of 60-something white dudes smoking cigars in a small room somewhere.

 

[PillowRock]

Though I can't find it now, I thought that I saw something about 1500 people having voted on that list. I don't know if they were the AFI's membership or a collection of movie music / scoring professionals and critics or what. At any rate it seems like it should have been a somewhat more diverse group than you described, though probably still skewed (the Oscar voters are certainly a skewed sample space).

A more interesting question might be:
Who put together the list of 400 nominees from which the 1500 voted?

There wasn't much more from the "blaxspoitation" and similar genres from what I can remember even on the nominees list. Basically, I remember Shaft, which made the final 100, and one or two from The Wiz, which did not.

I suppose that one could argue that when they started setting their criteria around things like wider pop culture impact they set conditions that would tend to eliminate most of those kinds of "genre" movies that were never seen by a wider audiance. I don't think that argument holds water, though. Even if the mainstream audiance didn't see the actual movie, the music often had a strong influance on the music world going forward. The musicians and composers would see (or at least hear) those works and incorporate the influances. That stuff did have an impact on the wider pop culture.


I think that the list shows a bias toward the sentimental. The highest ranked song from West Side Story (of three on the list) is the most sentimental song in the show (at least aruably): Somewhere. However, I wouldn't rate that as being in the top 5 numbers in that show in terms of memorable moments, in terms of the song and movie evoking thoughts of each other, or in terms of how widely and deeply it has taken root in pop culture in general. I mean even Cool has burned indelibly enough into the common sonsciousness that it was essentially re-staged as jeans commercial within the last couple years. Can you imagine Somewhere getting that kind of recognition?. America and [/i]Tonight[/i] (which were both on the list, but further down) should rank ahead of Somewhere in my opinion; as should Maria and I Feel Pretty. That doesn't necessarily mean that I think that all of those are better songs in and of themselves. However, I do think that all had greater impact, both in the context of the movie (though Somewhere is a solid tear-jerker in full context, and even more literally so in the broken-voiced reprise later in the show) and in terms of their staying power in the popular consciousnees.

 

[PillowRock]

I guess that to be fair I should admit here that in the case of Cool it is the choreography much more than the song that made the impact and has been copied / re-done in the rest of pop culture.

On the other hand, in terms of my personal preferences, I would probably also put the song Officer Krupke ahead of Somewhere. Hey, you gotta like a pre-Counter-culture musical theater number that manages to work multiple instances of the phrase "social disease" into its lyrics.

 

[GaribaldisHair]

There is nothing on the list from Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma!, or The Music man.

Is it possible that these were excluded because they were motion picture versions of Broadway musicals? They may have excluded those because they would end up taking up half the list.

Could it be the B5 Season 4 Hugo problem?

So many great songs from each that none garners enough votes to make it by itself, but total vote for the film overall is huge?

Just a thought ...

 

[GKarsEye]

It seems to me like something from the Blues Brothers should have made this list, as arguably the best movie about popular music. Soul Man or Somebody To Love.

I don't know if This Is Spinal Tap is considered American or British (director and cast, respectively), but if American, than Tonight We're Gonna Rockin' or Stonehedge definitely should be on there.

I suppose it would be too much to expect classical music being represented, and it might not fit some definition of "song." My favorite musical/movie moment of all time is Mozart dictating the music for his Requiem Mass to Salieri in Amadeus. The Confutatis section, with Mozart singing bits out loud, Salieri scribbling it down furiously ("Yes, I see it, I see it!"), Mariner's orchestra kicking in with the fully realised piece- "Confutatis, maledictus.." right when it cuts to Constanz' chariot racing home to her husband.

 

[PillowRock]

It seems to me like something from the Blues Brothers should have made this list, as arguably the best movie about popular music. Soul Man or Somebody To Love.

One song from The Blues Brothers made the 400 nominees list: Aretha Franklin's Think.

I don't know if This Is Spinal Tap is considered American or British (director and cast, respectively), but if American, than Tonight We're Gonna Rockin' or Stonehedge definitely should be on there.

Under the "Criteria" heading it says:

American Film: The film must be in the English language with significant creative and/or financial production elements from the United States.

Apparently This Is Spinal Tap is considered to have enough of an American contribution to qualify (which doesn't preclude it having enough British contribution to qualify for a similar British list), because there is one song from it on the 400 nominees list. That one is Big Bottom.

I suppose it would be too much to expect classical music being represented, and it might not fit some definition of "song." My favorite musical/movie moment of all time is Mozart dictating the music for his Requiem Mass to Salieri in Amadeus. The Confutatis section, with Mozart singing bits out loud, Salieri scribbling it down furiously ("Yes, I see it, I see it!"), Mariner's orchestra kicking in with the fully realised piece- "Confutatis, maledictus.." right when it cuts to Constanz' chariot racing home to her husband.

An interesting and worthy suggestion. I must admit that I hadn't thought of that one in connection with this. However, if the semi-abstract singing of "Gonna fly now" qualifies the Rocky theme in the working out scene (which made the top 100) then I would think that the words of the Latin requiem mass ought to also qualify that as a song by their brief definition (which was just "Music and lyrics").

 

[GKarsEye]

Maybe since the words are Latin thay don't qualify? I think they're just not thinking about classical music, here. Which is a shame, because the words actually do have something to with the scene- it's a death mass, and he's, um- dying.

If Spinal Tap and Blues Bros qualify then it's a real shame, because those are actually movies about music. And the songs are awesome.

 

[hypatia]

Nothing from "Fiddler on the Roof" is the biggest surprise to me. Practically every tune in that movie is pretty well known, or so I thought.

As always, these "lists" are kind of fundamentally meaningless, aren't they? A curiosity that gets people talking about musicals, really.

 

[PillowRock]

Yeah, if I had to pick a single biggest surprise movie that is entirely unrepresented, I would have to go with Fiddler.

However, Oklahoma! is also an absolute classic musical with many well known songs. Oliver would also fit that description. The Music Man may not have as many songs that are familiar tunes to everyone (though it does have more than its share), but "76 Trombones" and "Ya Got Trouble" ("right here in River City. Ya got trouble with a capital T. And that rhymes with P. And that stands for Pool!") have become icons that can be (and are) invoked as shorthand for what they represent.

I think that we can put Robert Preston with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Dean Martin on the list of performers who make everything look so natural, effortless, and easy that they tend not to get as much appreciation and credit as their talent and skill deserves.

 

[Bab5nutz]

The Whitney Houston song 'I Will Always Love You" was originally performed and recorded by Dolly Parton. I prefer Parton's version.

 

[Jade Jaguar]

I'll have to admit that I has fewer quibbles with this list than I do with Rock and Roll lists. I actually agree with the top three. Personally, I would move Springtime for Hitler up the list, not off. To me, the biggest omissions are: none of Marlene Detrich's great songs in the top 100, but a couple were nominated, like my favorite from Destry Rides Again , See What The Boys In THe Back Room Will Have , and I don't think any Danny Kaye songs from any of his very funny musicals was even nominated. As to what was the best, most influential, and meaningful song, IMO, This Land Is Your Land from Bound For Glory was only nominated. I think the most suprising listing to me, was Windmills Of Your Mind . For a song from that era, I would have gone with What's New Pussycat?