My wife and I have a bet: she says that Bruce Springsteen’s iconic Born in the USA has been used in more films than Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender. I think she’s wacked. Can you settle our bet?
This is a darn interesting question because it’s not always easy to figure out what songs are on what movie soundtrack. There are also two other complicating factors: movies also have scores and there are often songs included in the soundtrack that never make it to the cinematic release (usually due to the editing process, the portion of the film with that song ends up “on the cutting room floor”, as they say in the biz).
It’s also sometimes just about impossible to catch where in a movie the music appears. Sometimes it’s music playing on a car radio for just a few seconds, sometimes it’s overheard on a bus the character’s riding, and sometimes the music is reserved for playing during the closing credits. Other times it’s central to a portion of the film and some films are partially developed around specific musical sequences, from the obvious (Vincente Minnelli’s wonderful An American in Paris, written around the Gershwin songs and lyrics of the same name) to the more subtle (Wang Chung in To Live and Die in LA).
Back to your query, though. You could dig around in Gracenote, but while their database has the information we seek (song = “Born in the USA” AND title contains “soundtrack”) their search facility doesn’t let us do sophisticated two-field searches.
Fortunately IMDB.com comes through, as it often does. You need to hunt for it, but the site has a “soundtrack seach” capability you can find here: IMDB soundtrack search.
Now we’ll do two searches, one for Born In The USA and one for Love Me Tender.
The results: you’re right and she’s wrong. In fact, Born In the USA had made it into less than a half-dozen films, notably including Canadian Bacon, Mask, and Skins. By contrast, Elvis’ huge hit Love Me Tender appears in almost twenty movies, including Backbeat, Blue Money, Die Hard 2, FM, Honeymoon in Vegas, Porky’s Revenge, Princess Diaries 2, Touched by Love and Wild at Heart.
There’s probably a custom search engine somewhere that makes this kind of search easier, and lets you screen out the TV show matches, which IMDB can’t do, but even with its current capabilities, you can definitely figure out the winner of this bet.
Now, a tough trivia question: what song or songs have appeared in more soundtracks than Love Me Tender?
When I was young my mother took me to a movie in the early 1960’s. Thought-out the movie they played the song ‘More’. Movie was about a married man having an affair with an young woman. The young woman falls in love with the married man with a wife and two children. The man refused to leave his wife. So the woman sets fire to the man’s home with is family inside. He comes home seeing the home a blazed. Goes inside to save his children only to come out as the Fire Department comes. Himself burn, the young woman visit him in the hospital where the man says, “There is no place for you to hid. ” The story goes to the future where the burnt man is working a carnival. The carnival goes to the town the young woman lives and the burnt man sees her and kills her. The song “More” played every time the young woman & man were together.
Trying to find out if “Somewhere” (originally from West Side Story) has been in other movies.
IMDb has a soundtrack search feature you can get to from the advanced search. It’s not precise because it matches song and soundtrack tracks that contain the word “somewhere” too, but a click on this link will show that it’s still been used in a lot of movies! https://www.imdb.com/search/title-text?soundtracks=somewhere
I thought the song Tightrope by Leon Russell was in a movie and I can’t remember the movie. Does anyone know which movie?
I thought the song Tightrope by Leon Russell was in a movie and I can’t remember the movie. Does anyone know which movie?
What movie from the 1940’s included the song title “Let’s Misbehave”. This was a song belted out?
I know this is an old thread, but who can forget the song “I Will Survive”, which has 85 mentions in the search. I know it is not as high as some of the others, but still high up there.
Dave,
Would you happen to know who sang the song “You’re The One” in the 1996 movie “Dark Breed”?
hi dave did you happen to find the track as i have been looking for it as well , cheers
what recent movies have had the song “use me’ by Bil Withers??
Although this is probably not fair. I tried “What a Wonderful World”, only 36 and thought weddings???? The Wedding March has 222 credits and I am sure the missed a few.
Hi Dave, if I may, here is my comment as an answer to your opened question to us.
So, using the same method as yours I am coming with some interesting results:
“Love Me Tender” has been used 51 one times, and it is already quite an impressive result.
However, a standard, like “I will survive” makes the jump to 63. Already better but not as impressive as “Happy Birthday to you” (150 times) or a simple “Jingle Bells” (183 times !) . Yes yes, these are songs !
I’d be happy to see if some can be found with higher scores, let me know.
I have met your site tonight, and I am also convinced a lot can be answered !
Keep on the good work you are doing it well !
Bounty