(Credits: Far Out / Sai Harish / CAR GIRL)
Music has always been integral to cinema. In the silent film days, pianists, organists, or orchestras would play live while the film rolled. When cinema progressed to the talkies, music gained even more importance as film scores became integral to setting the mood of a picture. Of course, over the years, this developed into movies containing scores while characters also listened to music within the story—or, to give this its technical term, diegetic and diegetic music. Over the years, movie buffs began to notice the same songs repeating again and again, with the most overplayed ones becoming synonymous with certain movies. According to science, though, what is the most overplayed song in cinema history?
Ask any cinephile what they believe are the most overplayed songs in cinema history, and a few obvious candidates will likely spring to mind. The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ must have appeared in hundreds of movies, right? Think how many Martin Scorsese pictures it’s been in, for starters. Similarly, Jimi Hendrix’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’, Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’, Judy Garland’s ‘Over the Rainbow’, and Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ have been used in so many films and TV shows that it would seemingly be impossible to count.
Thankfully, though, someone else has crunched these numbers for us. Daniel Parris of Stat Significant used the resources of the fine people at Chartmetric, “a platform that aggregates music data from streaming services and analytics providers”, to science the heck out of the question.
Parris decided to keep the numbers manageable by only analysing movies and shows released after 1970, but that still gave him 55 years of cinema to work with. After the algorithm did incomprehensible work, Parris was left with a chart of the top ten songs used most regularly. And wouldn’t you know it, none of the tunes we were positive would be candidates for the top spot were even part of that top ten.
So, what made the list? Well, the results were illuminating – and pretty darn surprising. The most recent song in the top ten was Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’, which has assaulted the ears of those with good taste in 42 movies and shows since its release in 2005. This put it at number four on the chart, which shows that our semi-serious belief that certain songs have appeared hundreds of times in movies is actually a wild overestimation.
Most of the songs that made the chart can be intrinsically attached to certain kinds of movie scenes. For example, Rupert Holmes’ 1979 ditty ‘Escape (The Pina Colada Song)’ and Marvin Gaye’s soul classic ‘Let’s Get It On’ are perfect for scenes where characters make the beast with two backs, and they’ve appeared in 36 and 38 movies/shows respectively. Similarly, Etta James’ ‘At Last’ and Mazzy Star’s ‘Fade Into You’ are synonymous with romance and falling in love, and that has carried them to 49 and 41 appearances.
The most popular category of song that finds its way most regularly onto the big and small screens, though, is the party anthem. Katrina & the Waves’ bouncy ‘Walking on Sunshine’ has graced 38 movies/shows, while Chumbawamba’s ultimate drunken one-hit wonder ‘Tubthumping’ has appeared 39 times. Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Push It’, meanwhile, is at the lofty height of number two on the chart with a huge 50 appearances.
Finally, then, we arrive at number one. The big kahuna. The single most overplayed song in cinema history. According to Chartmetric, that song is none other than Montell Jordan’s 1995 hip-hop party jam, ‘This Is How We Do It’ – and who could have predicted that? However, when you think about it, it starts to make perfect sense.
After all, in the 30 years since its release, this ultra-catchy, uber-fun Grammy-nominated tune has been used in 52 movies and shows, mostly in nostalgia-baiting, semi-ironic scenes of characters having the time of their lives while simultaneously looking like goofs. It’s appeared in films like Step Brothers, Pitch Perfect 2, 8 Mile, and the undisputed modern classic Sonic the Hedgehog 2. On TV, it’s popped up in Yellowjackets, Abbott Elementary, Euphoria, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
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