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Hollywood has been naming movies after pop songs since at least 1956, when executives detected the new youth culture and gave us Rock Around the Clock and Love Me Tender. By now, the list is as long as the track rundown on a double LP (a format only AARP-aged music fans remember): Stand by Me, Sweet Home Alabama, My Own Private Idaho, Pretty in Pink, Pretty Woman, American Pie, Proud Mary. And that’s not counting deep-cut homages like 1997’s The Myth of Fingerprints, named after Paul Simon’s Graceland track “All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints."
This year's films that use tunes as titles include the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, with Rami Malek as singer Freddie Mercury and Mike Myers, 55 — who's responsible for popularizing the song in his 1992 film Wayne's World — as Freddie's record executive (released Nov. 2). Also out this year, I Think We’re Alone Now, the end-of-the-world film starring Peter Dinklage, 49, named after Tommy James’ enduring ’60s make-out anthem, and I Can Only Imagine, the story of the band Mercy Me’s “I Can Only Imagine,” the No. 1 top-selling Christian pop song, whose popularity helped make the film America's No. 3 highest-grossing music biopic. The song-to-film tradition is littered with duds — anyone remember the Whoopi Goldberg film Jumpin’ Jack Flash? — but also boasts films worthy of the songs they draw on. Here are the five best movies ever named after songs, one of them released this week and all worth watching right now:
Courtesy Everett Collection; Photo by NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
1. Blue Velvet (1986)
Courtesy Everett Collection; John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The nightmare-noir classic by David Lynch, 72, took its name from Bobby Vinton’s swooning 1963 love song, heard in all its croony splendor in the opening credits. It’s an appropriately sardonic, Lynchian choice for a dark masterpiece that revels in kink, kidnapping and missing body parts. You’ll never hear “Blue Velvet” — or Roy Orbison’s 1963 “In Dreams,” lip-synched by a kidnap victim played by Dean Stockwell — the same way again.
