Movie Hits

These songs send your mind's eye straight to the movies that helped make them hits — lots of them started out in a world of their own, but by now they're forever bound to their silver-screen companions. Hearing "Stayin' Alive," how can you not picture an immaculately coiffed John Travolta strutting the Bay Ridge streets of Saturday Night Fever to the thumpin' disco beat of the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive"? Speaking of Italian-American working-class heroes of the '70s, no image in Rocky is more iconic than a sweat-suited Sly Stallone racing up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art while Bill Conti's majestic "Gonna Fly Now" soars behind him. And for all the rock-star moments Simple Minds have had, you can bet they're best remembered for "Don't You (Forget About Me)" pumping out at the climax of classic teen flick The Breakfast Club.

Movie songs pump up the profile of synth-poppers and funkateers, in Next Steps.

Sometimes a movie song not only creates the ideal sonic setting for a scene, but it also makes the artist in the process. Rose Royce kicked off their career with a #1 smash, thanks to the thumb-slappin' funk of their Car Wash theme. Michael Sembello might have stayed a session musician if Jennifer Beals had never gyrated in legwarmers and leotard to the synth-pop sounds of his Flashdance blockbuster, "Maniac." And there's no telling how far the infectious, Beatles-esque theme from That Thing You Do! could have taken '60s garage-pop flash-in-the-pan the Wonders, if only they had been a non-fictional band.

The silver screen has surprises in store for soul men and country pickers, in Deep Cuts.

When a song is inextricably linked to a movie, it can end up with an image that's a long way from what the artist might have had in mind. Stealer's Wheel's unassuming folk-rocker "Stuck In the Middle With You" started out as an early-'70s pop hit before Quentin Tarantino put it to much more sinister use in Michael Madsen's notorious knife-wielding scene from Reservoir Dogs. Southern soul godhead Otis Redding could never have guessed that his '66 Stax/Volt hit "Try a Little Tenderness" would find new life in 1991 with a band of Irishmen whose own soulful story is told in The Commitments. And when country picker Arthur Smith penned the perky "Feudin' Banjos" in the '50s, how could he have imagined it offering an eerie backdrop for the dark visions of 1972's Deliverance as "Dueling Banjos"?

These are the songs that made the movies just as much as the movies made the songs. Blaxploitation classic Shaft couldn't exist without the sleek, serpentine orchestral funk of Isaac Hayes' unforgettable theme song. And how far would Ghostbusters have gotten without Ray Parker, Jr. inspiring millions to shout out, "Who you gonna call?" From the Peter Gabriel hit that came blasting out of John Cusack's boombox in Say Anything ("In Your Eyes") to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? tune that spearheaded a full-fledged bluegrass revival ("I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow"), we've roamed through reel after reel to find the real movie hits that have hit home with film buffs and music maniacs alike down through the decades.