It seems like we just started the countdown and we're already halfway! The quality of movie songs, and the impact they had on those movies, is about to greatly increase. Find your seats, get your popcorn and drinks, and let's open the curtain to reveal The Top 100 Movie Songs of the Rock Era*!
#100--"Climb Ev'ry Mountain by Margery MacKay (from the movie The Sound of Music--1965)
This great song is from the classic 1965 movie The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. It appears during a dramatic moment in the movie in which Andrews, playing Maria Rainer, must decide if she want to continue to try to be a nun. "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" is among the most inspirational songs of all-time and has proved challenging for even the most accomplished of singers. Peggy Wood, who plays the Mother Abbess, was one of these but she felt the song was just too difficult for her at her age and thus Margery MacKay's voice is the one you hear in the movie.
The Reverend Mother sends Maria to the home of Captain Georg Von Trapp, a widowed father to seven children, to be their governess. Maria loves the children and eventually their father, who himself is engaged to be married. This storyline is enough to make the movie a classic, but it hits another level when we find that it is set against the backdrop of Austria during the evil Adolph Hitler's reign of terror. Thankful for the world, the United States teamed with the British and the Russians to save the world. Who is going to be able to perform the Herculean task of defeating Donald Trump and his reign of terror as the "leader" of the United States? Who is powerful enough?
Richard Haydn, Charmian Carr and Eleanor Parker are among the co-stars in this excellent cast.
Plummer made his debut on Broadway in the 1954 play The Starcross Story. He earned Best Actor in a Musical for his role in Cyrano in 1974 at the Tony Awards and another for Best Actor in a Play in the 1997 play Barrymore. Christopher was also nominated for J.B., Othello, No Man's Land, King Lear and Inherit the Wind.
His great success in The Sound of Music allowed him more and better opportunities for roles on the big screen, and Plummer starred in The Man Who Would Be King, The Return of the Pink Panther, The Spiral Staircase, the great movie Somewhere in Time, Malcolm X, the classic movies The Insider and A Beautiful Mind, Dragnet, Blackheart, National Treasure, The Lake House, Up, the great holiday movie The Man Who Invented Christmas, Knives Out and Beginners (which gave him a Best Supporting Actor honor at the Oscars).
Plummer won an Academy Award, two Tony Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards.
"The Sound Of Music" Soundtrack is right there at the top, among the creme de la creme of all movie soundtracks. Both the movie and its soundtrack album are beloved the world over and the soundtrack has been issued in German, French, Italian and Spanish. It was a #1 album for two weeks in one of the strongest years in history--1967, and set a Rock Era record for soundtracks with 109 weeks in the Top 10, competing against great albums by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and many more.
In our special of The Top 100 Albums of the Rock Era*, we didn't include Greatest Hits compilations or soundtrack albums, but if we had, this soundtrack would have been ranked near the top. "The Sound Of Music" Soundtrack was the top-selling album in the U.K. in 1965, 1966 and 1968 and #2 for the 60's with 70 weeks at #1. The album was on the Norwegian charts for 73 weeks and as of 2017, it ranked as the 10th-best of all-time. The soundtrack is nearing 7 million in U.S. sales and 20 million worldwide.
In 2018, the United States Library of Congress selected the album for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
The movie was a smash from the beginning and by 1966, it surpassed Gone With the Wind as the top-earning movie of all-time. The Sound of Music grossed $286 million during its theatre run, phenomenal numbers in its day. It is generally considered to be one of the best movies in history; if you see any list that doesn't include it near the top, move on for their list is bogus. In 2001, it was also selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry.
The Sound of Music won 5 Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Sound, Best Film Editing and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaption or Treatment) and was nominated for 5 more (Best Actress for Andrews, Best Supporting Actress for Wood, Best Cinematography-Color, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color and Best Costume Design, Color) and won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical and Andrews won Best Actress while the movie also scored nominations for Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Wood.
#99--"Take My Breath Away by Berlin (from the movie Top Gun--1986)
Tom Whitlock wrote "Take My Breath Away" with veteran composer Giorgio Moroder, who also wrote "Danger Zone", for the 1986 movie Top Gun. Berlin recorded the song, which is played during romantic scenes involving Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis.
Cruise plays Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (he is indeed a maverick!) who is competing for the Top Gun Trophy at the Naval Fighter Weapons School in Miramar, California. Everyone around Maverick can see that he is an excellent pilot while at the same time telling him he is dangerous and out of control.
Maverick's character was loosely based on Duke Cunningham and his accomplishments during the Vietnam War, according to a 2022 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette. McGillis plays Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood, an instructor of Top Gun. Val Kilmer is Lieutenant "Iceman" Kazansky, Maverick's chief rival for the Top Gun Trophy, while Anthony Edwards is Lieutenant Junior Grade "Goose" Bradshaw, best friend and radar intercept officer of Maverick. Tom Skerritt, Michael Ironside, John Stockwell, Barry Tubb, Rick Rossovich, Tim Robbins and Clarence Gilyard play supporting roles.
Iceman was Kilmer's breakthrough role, and he was also phenomenal as Doc Holliday in 1993's Tombstone. Kilmer also starred in The Doors, Batman Forever, Willow, The Ghost and the Darkness, Heat, and a reprise role in the 2022 movie Top Gun: Maverick.
Val got throat cancer in 2015 and died from pneumonia on April 1 of this year at the age of 65.
Berlin began in 1970 but really didn't get off the ground until 1984, when they released the single "No More Words". It didn't take off due to improper promotion and crowded radio station playlists in the highly-competitive year, but the song proved its worth and is one of The Top Unknown/Underrated Songs of the Rock Era*. That song opened enough doors for them that they landed the break in getting to record their single for Top Gun.
"Take My Breath Away" reached the Top 10 in every major country in the world except Finland, going all the way to #1 in the United States, the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium and getting to #2 in Canada, Australia, France, Sweden, Switzerland and South Africa. The single went Gold in the U.S. and has sold over 1 million units worldwide. Berlin took home trophies for Best Original Song at both the Golden Globe Awards as well as the Oscars.
The soundtrack album has sold over 12 million copies, 9 million in the United States. It was a Top 10 album throughout the world, reaching #1 in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland and Finland, and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.
Top Gun grossed $357 million during its box office run, ending 1986 as the #1 highest-grossing film. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress chose Top Gun for preservation in the National Film Registry. The movie won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture, Harold Faltermeyer earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score and Top Gun scored Academy Award nominations for Best Sound, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Effects Editing.
#98--"The Windmills Of Your Mind" by Noel Harrison (from the movie The Thomas Crown Affair (1968))
Alan and Marilyn Bergman teamed to write the lyrics for this first song in The Top 100* with music from French composer Michel Legrand, thanks to the advice of Quincy Jones. Noel Harrison first recorded the song in 1968 and it is heard in the opening credits of the movie The Thomas Crown Affair.
Alan talked to ASCAP about this unique song and its amazing lyrics:
Michel played us seven or eight melodies. We listened to all of them.
We all three decided on the same one, a long baroque melody. The
lyric we wrote was stream-of-consciousness. We felt that the song had
be a mind trip of some kind. The [eventual] title was [originally] a line
at the end of a section. When we finished we said "What do we call
this? It's got to have a title. That line is kind of interesting." So we
restructured the song so that the line appeared again at the end. It
came out of the body of the song. I think we were thinking, you know
when you try to fall asleep at night and you can't turn your brain off
and thoughts and memories tumble.
Millionaire businessman Thomas Crown (McQueen) needs more than money to give him satisfaction. He decides to organize a robbery of over $2 million from a Boston bank, but the bank brings in investigator Vicki Anderson, played by Faye Dunaway. Looking at a list of bank customers who have made recent trips to Geneva, where the money was deposited, Anderson zeroes in on Crown.
As Vicki continues to work on the case, she becomes attracted to Crown and the two become lovers, presenting a dilemma for her--does she pursue her man for love or for justice?
Alan & Marilyn Bergman both lived in New York, but they didn't meet until both had moved to California. They married in 1958 and achieved their breakthrough when they wrote lyrics for the movie In the Heat of the Night. The work they did with Legrand began a long partnership. The couple also wrote the lyrics to "The Way We Were" and "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" and with Legrand on "How Do You Keep The Music Playing?" for James Ingram & Patti Austin, nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars.
They also wrote "It Might Be You" for the movie Tootsie and worked with Legrand on the 1983 movie Yentyl. The Bergmans won three Oscars and four Emmys and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
McQueen earned an Academy Award nomination for the 1966 movie The Sand Pebbles. He starred in The Magnificent Seven, Papillon, Love with the Proper Stranger and The Towering Inferno, in addition to The Thomas Crown Affair. McQueen died at the age of 50 of a heart attack.
The song was already charting when "The Windmills Of Your Mind" received the Academy Award for Best Original Song in April. The recognition catapulted the song into the #8 position in the U.K. It also scored a Golden Globe in the same category. Legrand also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score for a Motion Picture (Not a Musical).
The original The Thomas Crown Affair grossed $14 million.
Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheelNever ending or beginning on an ever spinning reelLike a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloonLike a carousel that's turning running rings around the moonLike a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in spaceLike the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its ownDown a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shoneLike a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dreamOr the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a streamLike a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in spaceLike the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your headWhy did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?
Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sandIs the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a songHalf remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over you were suddenly awareThat the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheelNever ending or beginning on an ever spinning reelAs the images unwind, like the circles that you findIn the windmills of your mind!
#97--"Main Title from 'Jaws'" by John Williams (from the movie Jaws--1975)
Never before in history have two main notes been so iconic. Genius John Williams came up with this 1975 composition with it's two-note repetition representing the shark. When he first heard it, legendary director Steven Spielberg thought it was a joke, but after it grew on him, he went with the song much to his credit.
As Amanda Howell says, "The widely preproduced and widely recognised leitmotif ultimately achieved a life of its own beyond the haunted waters of the film."
Jaws is of course one of the Top 10 movies of all-time, with a tremendous cast featuring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. Though Dreyfuss had appeared in several movies previously, it was Jaws that catapulted him to stardom. The scene on the boat late in the movie with the three main characters telling stories is magical--cinema at its best. The movie is based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley, who appears in a cameo during the film.
Shot on location at Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, the all-time classic grabs you from the beginning with an incident involving a young girl after a beach party and doesn't let go. Scheider plays Amity police chief Martin Brody, a well-meaning official who also happens to not being able to swim despite being police chief in a beach town.
Brody wants to call an investigation into as he sees it, a death by shark attack, but mayor Larry Vaughn (played by Murray Hamilton) is fearful that such news would ruin his town's summer tourist dollars. After a second death, the city council agrees to put up a $3,000 bounty on the shark, but the salty shark hunter named Quint (one of the best movie characters ever) agrees to do it for $10,000.
The council eventually awards Quint (Shaw) the job, who takes oceanographer Matt Hooper (played by Dreyfuss) and Brody along with him to hunt down and kill the menacing shark. Their quest is an adventure of its own, and Jaws does an excellent job of revealing the idiosyncrasies of each of the three main characters.
Scheider also starred in Klute, The French Connection, Marathon Man, All That Jazz, Blue Thunder and the amazing sequel to 2001, 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
Williams won both the Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Original Score and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. The film's score was ranked as the sixth-greatest in history by the American Film Institute.
Jaws became the top-selling movie in history with $476 million until it was beaten by Star Wars two years later. It also won Academy Awards for Best Sound and Film Editing and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Director at the Oscars and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globe Awards. The fact that the classic it did not win Best Picture is one of the all-time historic blunders of awards shows.
#96--"Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker, Jr. (from the movie Ghostbusters--1984)
Ray Parker, Jr., formerly the leader of the group Raydio, wrote this 1984 gem for the action-packed science-fiction movie Ghostbusters. Martin Page, known for having one of The Top Underrated Songs of the Rock Era*--"In The House Of Stone And Light"--plays keyboards and synthesizer effects on the track.
Columbia professors Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Akykroyd) and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) experience an encounter with a ghost at the New York Public Library. They go to the dean with this news, who doesn't believe the men and fires them. The trio responds by establishing "Ghostbusters", an investigative team to find and eliminate ghosts. Sigourney Weaver stars as cellist Dana Barrett, who encounters a ghost and gives the crew their first lead. Rick Moranis also stars as Louis Tully, a neighbor of Barrett's.
Weaver famously got her start in the horror movie Alien in 1979. She reprised her role in Aliens in 1986, and also starred in Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl, Wall-E, and Avatar and its two sequels.
"Ghostbusters" controlled the #1 position for three weeks in the U.S. and finished #2 on the U.K. chart. It reached the Top 10 in every major country in the world, including attaining #1 in Canada, France, Argentina, Belgium, South Africa and Spain.
It has sold over 3 million copies (1 million in the United States) and was nominated for Best Original Song at both the Academy and Golden Globe Awards but lost to "I Just Called To Say I Love You" by Stevie Wonder.
The soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special.
Ghostbusters grossed $370 million and was recognized at the Oscars with a Best Visual Effects nomination and at the Golden Globes with nominations for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical and Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical (for Murray).
#95--"Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence (from the movie Daredevil--2003)
Here's the debut single by Evanescence written by Amy Lee, Ben Moody and David Hodges. Lee, who wrote the song at age 19, is joined on vocals by Paul McCoy of 12 Stones. Released in 2003, it is featured in the superhero movie Daredevil.
Ben Affleck stars as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who fights for justice in the courtroom and transforms into the masked Daredevil to fight for freedom on the streets of New York. Jennifer Garner, Jon Favreau, Colin Farrell, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Keith and Joe Pantoliano co-star. Development of the film began in 1997 but it wasn't finished and released until 2003.
Garner first became famous in the television show Alias for six years, which won her a Golden Globe Award and four Primetime Emmy nominations. She played Elektra in Deadpool and Wolverine and also starred in Pearl Harbor, Catch Me If You Can and Draft Day.
The Triple Platinum "Bring Me To Life" (and 6 million in sales globally) earned the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance and was nominated for Best Rock Song. It peaked at #1 in the U.K., Canada, Australia, Scotland and Italy, #2 in Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Italy and Scotland and #5 in the U.S.
The soundtrack album hit #9 and went Gold in the U.S.
Leading you down into my core where I've become so numb
Without a soul my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
Save me from the nothing I've become
Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
(I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside)
Bring me to life
Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love, darling
Only you are the life among the dead
All this time I can't believe I couldn't see
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me
I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems
Got to open my eyes to everything
Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul
Don't let me die here
There must be something more
Bring me to life
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
(I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside)
Bring me to life
Barry won five Academy Awards and one Golden Globe Award among 10 nominations.
#91--"Say You, Say Me" by Lionel Richie (from the movie White Knights--1985)
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