Pop Culture Happy Hour - Most Overused Songs In Movies

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Some great songs are so overused in movies, they’ve become cliches. Everyone’s mileage is bound to vary, but we’re rounding up a few songs we love that need to be retired and suggesting a few worthy replacements.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

There are some songs that are so overused in movies, they become cliches. So we're rounding up a few. We're nominating for retirement and suggesting a few worthy replacements. I'm Aisha Harris, and joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is my co-host, Stephen Thompson. Hello, friend. Hello, Aisha. It is great to have you here. You are the perfect person to talk about this with.

You know, obviously there's no real science to determining when a song has become overplayed, Although I would argue perhaps you could go and look at a artist's IMDB page and get a gander at how many times certain songs have been used. I've done that before. That's for sure in the past. But yeah, it's more of a you know it when you hear it situation. Everyone's mileage is going to vary. And we should also note that we had to narrow down our possibilities quite a bit because there are a lot of songs that are overused. That's just how it goes.

So we deliberately left out instrumental and classical music. So don't come to us, you know, about. Beethoven's second or something. I don't know. For release, whatever. Just. So, Stephen, you're going to guide us through this. So give us the first song you think we should retire from the movies.

Well, one caveat I want to open with, before we even get started, before you get your emailing fingers ready to yell at me, these are all great songs. I specifically decided I'm going to pick three songs I love. It's not going to be me dumping on, I hate Brian. Adam's summer of 69. No, these are great songs. So when I say that they should be retired, I'm talking about specifically retiring them from use as signifiers in movies.

They have been used again and again. They have turned up again and again in recent years. My first pick, a great song by ACDC from 1990s The Razors Edge called Thunderstruck. I remember this. I remember this song. You can imagine Deadpool punching a guy to this song. It was used in the Super Mario Brothers movie, the Chris Pratt one, not the Bob Hoskins one. It was used in The Fall Guy.

It was in movies dating back as far as like varsity blues. This song, and particularly that, like there are other riffs. So many. There are other bands. ACDC has other songs. And of course there are other ACDC songs that are also overused in movies. But what I'm suggesting is simply. Explore the hard rock canon for other sounds, for other riffs, for other styles, for other variations on guys are about to fight.

I love it. I love it. So what would you replace it with? Because, you know, you've already mentioned that ACDC has a lot of other songs. So I'm guessing we're going with a different artist here. Yeah, I'm not just going to suggest a different ACDC song. Anyone interested in plumbing? the depths of the ACDC catalog has the means and the will to do so. I am going to suggest, to my mind, the album that I go to whenever I want to be pumped up, I thankfully don't get in a lot of fights, but if I did to get pumped up for them, I would listen to the album and the song, I Get Wet by Andrew WK. It's like a song that I both feel like I've heard before but haven't and I don't know, but I like it. It's cool. It gets you pumped. It gets you going. This is running through a brick wall music. Every second of it is engineered for maximum rock and roll fury.

There are three different songs on this album with the word party in the title. There's party till you puke. It's time to party and party hard. And all three of them are incredible. All of them would work brilliantly to achieve the exact kind of effect that you're going for with a lot. a song like Thunderstruck, which is like big guitars, big action's going to happen, you're going to have a good time, which is what Thunderstruck has sort of become. It's just become a signifier of like, this is an action movie. This is a movie in which buildings are going to get knocked down and punches are going to get thrown. And this Andrew WK record, which came out in 2001, it's not that it's an obscurity. It definitely has its devotees. I'm far from the only one.

But I think it has been underutilized in this particular realm. I'm sure somebody can point to, you know, the occasional movie or commercial here and there. He definitely has appeared on soundtracks and commercials and stuff before. Just nowhere near to the degree of an ACDC. I can just envision chairs being thrown and people getting hit over the head, maybe even a food fight at a cafeteria. I don't know. There's a lot of uses. So thank you for that, Stephen.

That's I Get What, by Andrew WK. and replace this instead of Thunderstruck by ACDC. We just want some variety here, right? That's right. Yes, yes, yes. That's my one plea. Okay, so the next song on your list is actually the first song that I thought of when we were talking about doing this, and I have many thoughts about, but tell me what is the second

song you think is way too overuse in movies. I absolutely love Nina Simone. My daughter's middle name is Simone because of Nina Simone. I love her dearly. And in 1965, released a version of Feeling Good, a classic standard. It has become, over time, possibly her signature song, which Aisha, I have read an essay that you have written that makes a very good and very 100% right case, that that represents kind of an extreme flattening out of who Nina Simone was and what she stood for, what she sang about. what she represented. If you were to sum up Nina Simone's view of the world,

it would not be represented by the song Feeling Good. No, not at all. Yeah, I did write an essay about this in the art journal scene. And the thing about this song is that they always use the same part. It's the opening. That's the signature part. It's a new dawn. It's a new day.

It's a new life for me. Yeah. You just get her voice, no accompaniment whatsoever, and she's just gliding over the melody. And I'm feeling good. And then the big, the band, it sounds like a marching band, is coming in and strutting in. And I get why it's used so many times. But my goodness, it's been used now, especially in the last several years. It's like clockwork at this point.

Yeah, it's in Cruella. in 2021. It's a very pivotal scene in perfect days, the Vimenders film from 2023. It's in a very, very pivotal scene in a quiet place day one. It just gets rolled out constantly, not only just turning up on these soundtracks, but turning up at key moments in films. It's meant to be a song where usually a character is suddenly reaching an epiphany or the apex of their self-actualization. It's a moment where they, for lack of my better word, they're feeling good. But I think it's notable that there's so many other songs that she has written that have a lot more, not to say that this song is not political, but that have so much more political bite and heft,

whether we're talking about her cover of Strange Fruit, even I Love Zy Porgy. That one I truly could listen to every day for the rest of my life. Yeah, but something about this song has now just become such a, I expect it. and it feels like it's kind of doled down her impact and her cultural impact. I'm curious as to what you would replace this song with. The way that I approached this wasn't necessarily to try to find a song that thematically maps over feeling good. So much as I come to this with two suggestions. One, unlike ACDC, Nina Simone has a few other songs that turn up a lot in movie soundtracks,

but she really has a deep and rich catalog. I love Zy Porg, you jumped immediately to my mind. You could easily just swap in a different Nina Simone song. But I also want to recommend another voice, another voice that I would love to hear more on movie soundtracks. One theme that I really want to get back to in this conversation, as much as possible, when we're talking about this issue, is this phenomenon that has happened where the more songs there are in the world, the fewer of them we hear? Yes. This is happening all over the pop charts. This is happening on movie soundtracks.

This is happening on radio stations. You listen to a classic rock radio station, and it's formatted the way a pop station is formatted, where you get like 10 songs in high rotation. Like, there's so much music. You have all the music in the world to choose from. Don't give me these signifiers of a mood that are cliched shortcuts. So the voice that I'm recommending here is that of the late great Jimmy Scott. Yes, yes, yes.

Did you? You don't hear a ton of Jimmy Scott's voice in movies and on TV shows. You know, one filmmaker who got Jimmy Scott, loved Jimmy Scott, and occasionally used his music, David Lynch. Oh, yes, you're right. Which you tell you, David Lynch had some of the best taste in music imaginable, and he knew Jimmy Scott would evoke a certain mood. Jimmy Scott, as a kid, he was diagnosed with Coleman syndrome, which prevented him from experiencing kind of traditional. puberty. His voice never changed. So his voice has kind of this amorphous quality to it. And it soared so beautifully. So when did you leave heaven? It has this kind of mysterious quality, but it's also just a very, very beautiful straight-ahead love song. I love that kind of out-of-left field pick because you're right. He is not someone who is remembered in the same way that other contemporaries of his era have been. That's a great, great choice. I love it, Stephen. I will offer my choice.

I tried to, when I was thinking about it, I was like, I kind of feel as though I want something that's a little bit more thematically in sync with feeling good if we're trying to replace it. Since it is so often used in a literal context, it's usually meant to symbolize a character's transformation in some way. And so I would love to see a little bit more Dina Washington, specifically, what a difference a day made. What a difference a day made. 24 little hours. There's just something beautiful about that song. It kind of has a similar theme where it's like things have gotten better or things are different. Or like she's describing the beauty of the world in the same way that like feeling good kind of does the same thing.

And her voice is again another iconic transcendent voice. And I think that's what people are really mining here, right? It's their voices. when we're talking about Nina and Jimmy Scott and someone like Dinah Washington. Or a little more recently somebody like Roberta Flack. Yes, yes. Oh, first time ever I saw your face, like something like that. Yeah, yeah.

We love feeling good. I would just love to hear it when I want to hear it and not when some filmmaker. I decided to just drop it in at any moment. Well, coming up, we've got a few more overuse songs we're going to talk about. So stick around. All right, welcome back. Stephen, what is your next pick for most overused song? Well, I've said it before.

I'll say it again. The more songs there are, the fewer we hear. And having lived through the 90s, I can promise you that there is a deep and rich mine of incredible music that does not get played in movies or on TV shows nearly as often as the song Dreams by the Cranberries. I guess. This is in the trailer for a babysitters club. I remember that's where I first read this song. I have so many, so many memories. What is remarkable about the list of movies that this song has appeared in,

Dreams by the Cranberries has been surging for more than 30 years. It is in the next karate kid. It is in Boys on the Side. It is in You've Got Mail. That is just a handful of the movies it appeared in in the 1990s. For some reason, filmmakers just didn't burn out on this song. The way they've gotten burned out on some of what you think of as these classic movie montage songs like taking care of business or bad to the bone or whatever. These days, if you heard taking care of business or bad to the bone in a movie, you would assume that it was parody.

Oh, my God, yes. Yet dreams, that popped up in Madam Webb. Of course. No less a classic than Madam Webb. It also pops up in trailers a lot. Liza Ann, terrific singer-songwriter, has a cover of Dreams that's in the trailer for After Sun. So, like, you'll also just pick up these reverberations in the form of covers, you know, slowed-down versions, you know, all these different ways that songs get endlessly redeployed. Look, I love the cranberries.

I love dreams by the cranberries. I love zombie by the cranberries. I love linger by the cranberries. The cranberries are great. And they are definitely are emblematic of a lot of 90s music. You know, and so they're evocative of a certain time and place. They're used extremely well in the show Dairy Girls. Like, there is a time and a place for the Cranberry's music.

But this song has reached a point of saturation where you start to roll your eyes when you encounter it. And that's not what you're supposed to do. All right. Well, it sounds like we don't want dreams right now. So what should we be replacing it with? Oh, man. I really could have replaced this song with a playlist of just, like, favorite. songs of the 90s that sound like the 90s if you're trying to evoke that kind of 90s vibe,

but that are not massively overexposed. So I'm going to pick one of my favorite bands of the 90s, a band that has not gotten nearly enough love and attention, kind of beyond an initial rush of critical acclaim and college radio airplay, a band called the Spananes. Do you know them? No, I do not. The Spananes put out several phenomenal records. Lead singer Rebecca Gates, who is also just one of the best guitarists of the 90s, check out the interplay of drums and guitars from the song Noel, Jonah, and me. This is very reality bites, yes, very 90s, very 90s.

It's very 90s. You could absolutely drop that song into any number of just like killer 90s soundtracks, just that explosion of drums, those big, chunky, buzzy riffs, that voice that's, kind of floating over it all. It's a very 90s sound. You know, the Spanines were of the 90s, but also a fan of music who has just heard the kind of endless echoes and reverberations of the

90s will immediately tap into that song as just a phenomenal piece of rock songwriting. Yeah, I dig it. And I think it's perfect for evoking that feeling. I said reality bites, but also like I'm just getting Dari. I'm getting every night. I'm seeing. I'm seeing flannel, I'm seeing it all. It is, I think that's a great choice. I'm into it. We love the 90s. They produced so much good music beyond the like nine songs that get played on retro radio. I'm sure listeners are going to be like, but what about this song? Are there any other songs that you want to run off quickly that we're just like, we're tired of? I feel as though we're kind of, we've gotten the 60s a little bit, but have we gotten the 60s?

Yeah. I think I know where you're going with this. And I, you know, I'm posted a call out on Blue Sky, kind of just like, hit me with your suggestions. Just like, let me make sure I'm not forgetting anything. And several people, very rightfully, brought up songs like Fortunate Sun, all along the Watchtower, both the Bob Dylan and Jimmy Hendricks versions. Any sort of song that gets used any time you're trying to evoke unrest, war, protest in the 60s. Vietnam. For sure. My friend Mark Hirsch popped up on Blue Sky and was like, Vietnam. needs a new soundtrack. In case you are somehow unfamiliar with this sound, let's hear a little bit of the Jimmy Hendricks all along the Watchtower.

It kills me. That's such an amazing, great song. And yet, you could just replace it with a voiceover that says, they were turbulent times. It's like, have you ever watched a movie made by a male boomer? Then you probably heard this song. Well, and that's why, like, rather than trying to throw up another suggestion, my suggestion, my foolproof plan for replacing these overused songs is to never make another movie about the 1960s. Done. I'm sold. Sold.

Cut print. What a time. What a time that neither of us lived through, but we feel as though we have. I feel like I've lived it over and over and over again. since I was born. Yes. Well, we want to know what you think is the most overused song in movies. We know that there are plenty of people who have a lot of opinions about this just as we did.

Find us on Facebook.com slash PCH. And that brings us to the end of our show, Stephen Thompson. Thanks so much for being here and bringing us these replacement songs. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I hope some filmmakers are listening and hopefully they can afford some different songs. My suggestions are much cheaper.

Yes, yes, they are. I hope so. This episode is produced by Liz Medsker, Hapsa Fathema, and Mike Katsiv, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Kamen provides our theme music. And thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.