In 1984, Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” was not a song that I would have earmarked for future immortality. It peaked at No. 34, the fifth-ranked of five Hot 100 singles from Footloose, behind Kenny Loggins (including his second single), Deniece Williams. Mike Reno & Ann Wilson, and Shalamar.
Four decades later, Loggins’s “Footloose” and Williams’s “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” are still staples at Classic Hits and AC radio. But “Holding Out for a Hero” has been in the 150-175-spins range for the last two weeks. It’s around 10 spins at Cox’s successful WDUV Tampa and KONO San Antonio. It gets 4-5 spins a week on iHeart’s national Classic Hits log. If more stations thought to research the song with listeners, it would probably be even more.
Both the durability of “Footloose” and “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” and the surprising footprint of Tyler’s song speak to the ability of movies and TV to affect the durability of songs, especially with the generation who didn’t experience them on the radio as currents. (If you did see Footloose at the time, you’re probably at least 50.) At least three out of the top five Classic Hits titles (“Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Don’t You [Forget About Me],” and “Eye of the Tiger”) have a TV or movie connection, and “In the Air Tonight” makes it four out of 10.
There are also enduring songs where the movie tie-in is probably coincidental. I don’t think that “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship is still around because new generations are watching Mannequin. Or “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls because of City of Angels. Whatever the endurance of Boomerang these days, “End of the Road” by Boys II Men does attest to a second golden age of R&B soundtracks from roughly 1990-95.
Sometimes, the effect of a sync is additive. War’s “Low Rider” was prominently in Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke. That helped make it one of the few R&B songs on Classic Rock radio, which helped it endure, even if you never saw the movie. “Forever Young” by Alphaville is bigger now than it was at the time because of Napoleon Dynamite. But also maybe a Jay-Z sample, and because Alternative radio nurtured it for years. Recently, TikTok and the David Guetta remake as well.
As with TV, movie, and advertising syncs in general, the impact isn’t symmetrical. Shalamar’s “Dancing in the Sheets” didn’t endure the same way. The Stranger Things effect propelled Kate Bush’s “Runnin’ Up That Hill” back into prominence in 2022, but hasn’t done the same for Diana Ross “Upside Down.” I wish Goodfellas had made Nilsson’s “Jump Into the Fire” as lasting as Almost Famous did Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” Then again, most of radio isn’t even asking listeners about those songs.
This year’s Top 885 Countdown on Triple-A WXPN Philadelphia is movie and TV songs. The definition is broad — both songs written for movies and TV and those used in famous syncs later. Even those songs propelled by live TV performances are eligible, which gives you “Don’t Be Cruel,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and Adele’s “Someone Like You” as possibilities. Voting is open through Thursday, October 29. The countdown runs Dec. 3-10.
WXPN on-air personalities have posted their top 10s here. Shortly afterwards, off-air staffers posted their own picks. (“Jump Into the Fire” appears prominently on the lists.) I’ve written before about my difficulty in synthesizing my favorites down to a mere handful (much less an all-time No. 1). Two days ago, when I filed my ‘XPN votes, I stopped at 10. This is a movie list. It’s supposed to go to 11. And I still left off some songs on the “That Thing You Do” level, figuring that other favorites would need my help more:
- Bobby Rush, “Chicken Heads” – A minor R&B chart hit in 1970, it loomed a lot larger if you worked in Chicago, even 20 years later. When Craig Brewer used it in “Black Snake Moan,” it was a secret handshake.
- Booker T. & the MGs, “Time Is Tight” – This one sounds like a music supervisor should have found it as well, but it’s from 1968’s Uptight. The song I would aspire to play if I learned drums.
- Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Fortunate Son” – CCR always had a huge footprint on Classic Hits and Classic Rock radio, even as the ’60s/early ’70s started to fade, but CCR was more represented by a half dozen other songs. This song’s fortunes changed because of Forrest Gump; by the late ’10s, it was one of CCR’s most streamed songs, which in turn helped put it back on radio to some extent.
- Curtis Mayfield, “Move On Up”; Gladys Knight & Pips, “On and On” – Mayfield’s movie contributions of the ’70s didn’t end with Superfly. “On and On,” from Claudine, was overshadowed by other hits from the Pips’ 1971-75 streak, but I hear it at least twice a year on American Top 40 and it always sounds great. “Move On Up” was already a bigger pop hit in the UK than here when Bend it Like Beckham came along, but it’s in the top echelon of party songs there, and always motivational here.
- Dolly Parton, “Hard Candy Christmas” – From 1982’s The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. A modern “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that was resonant in the economic recession and emotional depression of those years. For years, as somebody who schedules holiday music, I regarded this as a secret weapon that allowed people to go through the season without forced jollity. With Parton gone, I’m expecting to hear it more this year.
- Joan Jett & Blackhearts, “Light of Day” – Bruce Springsteen’s makegood for stealing the working title of the movie then known as Born in the U.S.A. for himself. By 1987, Jett had gone four years without a hit and hit songs didn’t really sound like this anyway. In 2026, it’s a great song to hear about 20 minutes into a running mix.
- Mac Dre, “Feelin’ Myself” – It was already the anthem of Bay Area rap in the mid-’00s. In Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, somebody plays it on a crowded subway car on New Year’s Eve and everybody is momentarily festive and deceptively unified. For me, it rivals “What a Wonderful World” in Good Morning Vietnam for impact.
- Maxine Nightingale, “Right Back Where We Started From” – Before Slap Shot, the song playing on the car radio was almost never a real hit. (Occasionally, it was the movie’s own theme song, as if a character was already supposed to know it and be singing along.) A great car-radio song and the one that really would have been playing on the car radio when the movie was made.
- Monkees, “Circle Sky” – The climactic moment of their movie Head. “Words” was one of my first favorites, and that one could have counted too because of their TV show.
- Phil Collins, “We Said Hello Goodbye” – Miami Vice turned “In the Air Tonight” from a programmers’ favorite “almost hit” to the most enduring song of the next 30 years. This ballad was already floating around as a B-side when it ended up in the 1986 movie Playing for Keeps, but it was also one of the secret weapon songs that Top 40 programmers passed among themselves for the next three years.
I have as much trouble in a conversation with strangers providing five “Desert Island Discs” as I do with isolating a favorite song. I’m going to start including the soundtrack to Times Square, the 1980 Robert Stigwood-produced film that was supposed to be Saturday Night Fever for new wave, even if it became that only in terms of song -by-song curation.
As with the decreased impact of both new hit music and the album overall, new hits created for movies and successful album soundtracks have flagged in recent years. By 2023, a strong multi-artist compilation such as Barbie was a rarity. It will be interesting to see if any of its four radio hits achieve Footloose-type endurance. The success of “Golden” from Kpop Demon Hunters was gratifying — a plot song that worked as well on the radio. A music business that needs more hits would be wise to let movies and TV create more, not just revive old ones.
Voting for WXPN’s female-artist countdown three years ago spurred a playlist, because I couldn’t hold myself to just 10 choices then either. So it’s no surprise that I’ve done a playlist of movie songs, either. To keep things manageable, I limited myself to those songs that were either written for movies or TV or were used when they were still relatively new. Later syncs like “Jump Into the Fire” or “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone might be in the sequel. Here’s the playlist.
