"Singin' In The Rain" by Gene Kelly (1952)
1929, revived in 1952
The first time "Singin' In The Rain" was used in a film came in 1929 when it appeared in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, the second full-length musical feature produced by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and one of the earliest "talking" motion pictures to have ever been made. Jimmy Durante sang it in 1932's Speak Easily, and Judy Garland in the 1940 film Little Nellie Kelly, but then it lay dormant for a dozen years, awakened as the title song to the classic 1952 film starring Gene Kelly, who sings it in one of the greatest scenes in cinema.The song's lyricist, Arthur Freed, got the idea when he saw a guy soaked by rain dancing past his shop window. He provided his own second wind when he became a producer for MGM and commissioned the musical based on the song.
This wasn't the last drop: The song also shows up in the 1959 Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest where Cary Grant whistles in the bathroom while pretending to take a shower, and in the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange.
"Love and Marriage" by Frank Sinatra
1955, revived in 1987
They might "go together like a horse and carriage," but Sinatra's hit didn't go anywhere for about 32 years, when in 1987 it was chosen as the ironic theme song to the Fox sitcom Married... with Children, a show that could have used Hooters' slogan: "Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined." Kind of an anti-Cosby Show, it was Fox's first prime-time series, preceding The Simpsons by two years."Love and Marriage" was originally recorded for Capitol Records in August of 1955, where it climbed to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for 15 weeks. Oh, and this is the first year the Billboard charts start. It was originally produced for a televised performance of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town for the NBC show Producers' Showcase. From George Gibbs to Al Bundy!
"Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel
1973, revived in 1992
Charting at #6 in 1973, this was Stealers Wheel's biggest hit. It was written by founding members Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty ("Baker Street"), and released on their self-titled debut album. That album was produced by none other than the legendary team of Leiber and Stoller.Thanks to Quentin Tarantino, many of us now associate the song with the 1992 crime thriller Reservoir Dogs. In the film, the song is used in a gruesome scene where somebody loses an ear, the bouncy melody contrasting with the psychotic act in a way only Tarantino (and maybe Kubrick) can work to perfection.
Shortly after the film's release, Stealers Wheel enjoyed a career resurgence, with numerous groups covering the song. A dance version was released in 2001, and finally the band - without the founding members - reformed in 2008. Tarantino might be a Leiber and Stoller fan in general, if his subsequent use of The Coasters' 1956 hit "Down in Mexico" in his 2007 thriller Death Proof is anything to go by. We could go on about Tarantino's revival of old hits all day, but let's move on to less obvious examples.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen
1975, revived in 1992
Do we even have to tell you which work brought this song back to the mainstream? For those few of you who were not immediately teleported to a car with Mike Myers and Dana Carvey headbanging along on an unforgettable nighttime ride, the film that brought this song back is 1992's Wayne's World, which along with The Blues Brothers is the best of the SNL character movies. Pity those whose only exposure to this genre is The Ladies Man, Superstar and A Night at the Roxbury.Hard to believe, but "Bohemian Rhapsody" only made it to #9 in America when it was first released in 1975, but the 1992 revival went to #2 and powered a soundtrack that also includes "Dream Weaver" and "Foxy Lady." The re-release came with a video mixing Queen footage with scenes from the film, earning an MTV Video Music award in the now-defunct category Best Video From A Film.
All of this happened just months after Queen frontman Freddie Mercury's death. Sad that he didn't get to see it, but wonderful that a new generation discovered his music.
Wayne's World 2 (1993) pumped some air into Joan Jett's "I Love Rock And Roll," originally written by The Arrows. Check out our interview with Alan Merrill to get that story.
"Sweet Jane" by The Velvet Underground
1970, revived in 1994
We'll take any excuse to Velvet Underground! The song's ride to renown begins with a cover version by the Toronto alt-country group Cowboy Junkies in 1988. This version didn't do much damage on the charts, but in 1994 it made the Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers.There's Quentin Tarantino again, this time writing the screenplay. The soundtrack, produced by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, went Gold and reached #9 on the albums chart, higher than any entry in the entire Velvet Underground catalog. "Sweet Jane" was Lou Reed's old stand-by, written by him and released on the doomed 1970 Velvet Underground album Loaded.
"Start Me Up" by The Rolling Stones
1981, revived in 1995
While the Stones certainly hadn't languished into obscurity by 1995, their 1981 single "Start Me Up" from their album Tattoo You had been off the radar for quite some time. Then along came Microsoft, which paid $3 million to license the song for a commercial promoting its new operating system, Windows '95, with a "start" button on the main screen.Today, it's hard to imagine a hysteria over an operating system, but back then Windows '95 was greeted with a fervor seen these days in whatever Apple's latest and greatest might be. Having the biggest corporate entity in America use your song in a worldwide advertising campaign tends to renew interest in your work, although the association wasn't always positive: When users saw their PCs crash and got the famous Blue Screen Of Death ("BSOD"), they could identify with the line, "You make a grown man cry!"
Keep in mind, the advertising industry is known for leaving out the negative lyrics in a song when they use it in a commercial. A good example: Wrangler misrepresenting "Fortunate Son" to sell jeans.
"Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley
1987, revived in 2008
Internet culture mavens, you can stop holding your breath now! Written in 1986 by the prolific UK songwriting and producing trio of Stock Aitken Waterman, "Never Gonna Give You Up" was already a major hit, peaking at #1 on dozens of charts all over the world. But nigh on 20 years had gone by when a little meme on the imageboard 4chan was discovered and popularized by one Linus Torvalds, author of the Linux operating system, who on March 31, 2008, filed bug report #439858 with Red Hat Linux complaining that he couldn't get the YouTube plug-in to work and thus couldn't Rickroll anyone for April Fool's Day!Rickrolling is of course the web-user prank of linking to a video of the song while claiming it's a link to something else. Rickrolling quickly spread to Fark, Digg, Reddit, and other social news sites (they still had geeks on these sites in those days), and then around the world. Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to Rickrolling. The practice has even spilled over into the real world, with Astley himself sometimes getting in on the action.
For Rick Astley, it may not be his first choice for a second life, but he's cool with it. "It's just one of those odd things when something gets picked up and people run with it," he says. "That's what's brilliant about the internet."
When we interviewed Astley in 2018, we never mentioned Rickrolling because it was so played out. By then, Astley had another career revival: a new album that went to #1 in his native UK.
"Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac
1977, revived in 2020
The Mac returned to the Hot 100 in 2020 thanks to Nathan Apodaca, a 38-year-old Iowan known on TikTok as Doggface208. One day, he went skateboarding with a bottle of cranberry juice in one hand and a phone in the other, recording himself skating along while singing "Dreams," Fleetwood Mac's 1977 chart-topper. The 22-second video caught fire, propelling the song back up the chart to #12.The viral video was widely mimicked, including by Mick Fleetwood. Apodaca popped up in commercials (including for skateboards) and in five episodes of Reservation Dogs.
This wasn't the first time a Fleetwood Mac song came back into the zeitgeist. In 1992, Bill Clinton made "Don't Stop" his campaign song when he was running for president. When he won, Lindsey Buckingham (out since 1987) and Stevie Nicks (out since 1991) returned to play Clinton's inaugural gala, reuniting the Rumours-era lineup. The reunion was a one-off, but Buckingham and Nicks came back to the fold in 1997 for a triumphant tour and live album, The Dance.
"Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush
1985, revived in 2022
We started Songfacts to help deconstruct songs like this one. It's even deeper than you think, telling the story of a man and woman who try to strike up a deal with God so they can trade places in an effort to truly understand each other.Kate Bush was huge in her native UK but had just a small cult following in America, where to this day she's never performed. When it was released in 1985, the song peaked at #30 in the US, the only Top 40 showing for Bush.
Enter Stranger Things. Max, the coolest character on the show, got even cooler when we found out she's a big Kate Bush fan, always listening to the Hounds Of Love album on her Walkman. In season 4, which dropped on May 27, 2022, there's a pivotal scene where "Running Up That Hill" is used as a talisman in the fight against the evil Vecna. The song started trending, returning to the charts around the world, and it showed staying power. By the end of July it was #3 in America, where it spent 15 weeks in the Top 10. Many newly minted fans dove into Bush's catalog to discover other great songs like "Cloudbusting" and "Babooshka."
Bush wasn't the only artist to get a lift from Stranger Things. Another song used to battle Vecna in season 4 is "Master Of Puppets" by Metallica, which made the Hot 100 for the first time on July 16, 2022 when "Running Up That Hill" was at #4. Children of the '80s saw this as evidence that their music was totally awesome.
May 12, 2010, last updated September 18, 2023
Additional writing by Pete Trbovich
More Song Writing