Three Songs I’ve Discovered Because of Movies

God bless movie soundtracks for introducing me to new songs and also making up an important chunk of my formative years. (Ahem Footloose, Pretty Woman.)

Here are three songs I’ve recently discovered thanks to movies watched. Let’s take them in reverse order.

One of the things I hated about what was called oldies radio in the 80s and early 90s, was that they played the same five (or three, or one) song by artists over and over again. So unless my parents had albums or 45s (they mostly didn’t), I didn’t hear anything else by those artists. Thus, there are large gaps with many artists, even with Elvis. I didn’t hear “A Little Less Conversation” until the Ocean’s 11 franchise, and I didn’t hear “In the Ghetto” until someone sang it at my 40th birthday karaoke party. “Suspicious Minds” may have been floating around, but didn’t really come to me until I watched Intolerable Cruelty.

Which means I didn’t hear “If I Can Dream” until just last night, when I watched the Elvis movie. It has lyrics that are so heartfelt they tip slightly over to cheesy (a plus) and a great big sound that builds and builds.


“Life’s Adventures,” by Tim Myers was from the Kissing Booth 3, which I finally got around to watching on Friday. The soundtrack also features Bright Eyes’s “First Day of My Life,” which is a favorite of mine and has appeared on this blog before.

This song is relaxingly sweet.


According to the comments on YouTube, I’m not the only person who found this song via Along for the Ride the Netflix movie based on a Sarah Dessin novel. It’s a good song for a transition point in the movie and a positive song overall.

Random Song: “The Last Worthless Evening” Don Henley

Don Henley’s album The End of the Innocence is one that takes me right back to high school, which is interesting, since it was released on June 27, 1989 and I was more than a year away from being in high school. I think it’s because when I was in high school I heard a cover of “The End of the Innocence” (the song) at the Western Idaho State Fair and it struck a chord.

Regardless, this was a successful enough album that at least three songs, “Innocence,” “The Heart of the Matter” and “The Last Worthless Evening” were in fairly heavy rotation for years. They seem to have fallen out of rotation in the last decade or so, at least where I access songs.

So it was nice to hear this on KINK Sunday Brunch.

YouTube isn’t coughing up an official video, so here’s this one:

Random Song: “Holy” Justin Bieber

Yet another song I found by listening to the Daily Download while doing early grocery shopping on Saturday morning. Carson Daily suggested I watch the video, which he called “very moving,” and so I did that too.

It’s definitely a song that sticks in my head.

My views of famous and wealthy underaged children has been evolving. I think Justin Bieber has done a lot of stupid things in his life. But I also think getting famous is hard for adults with fully formed personalities, and so I think we have entirely unreasonable expectations that a minor could navigate that situation with grace and class.

Bieber’s publicity (because how does one separate the person from the machine that made him?) is going full tilt on his new phase. The songs I’ve heard from the album feel very much like he’s processing his rich and famous youth. He’s gone the path of Christianity and marriage. Both of those eventually might not be the saviors he seems to think they are, but according to the glowing Vanity Fair profile I read, have done a lot to smooth out a lot of the not-so-flattering things that have been published about him in the last few years.

This song is repetitive, because those are the kinds of songs that kids today make, but I like his repetition of the word holy, and I enjoy the bridge that seems to be a response to the criticism of the short engagement period and his relative youth when he married.

They say we’re too young and
The pimps and the players say, “Don’t go crushin'”
Wise men say, “Fools rush in”
But I don’t know 

I also tip my hat to the rhyme of “crushin” with “fools rush in.”

Justin Bieber has thousands of bad choices behind him, some of which are probably harder to forgive than others (like his treatment of the women in his life.) He probably has one million stupid choices in front of us, just like the rest of us who aren’t millionaires have thousands of bad choices in front of us. But hopefully he’s on the upswing and finding a life that isn’t so extreme.

In further Justin Bieber news, I greatly enjoy this song.

80’s Blast From the Past: Crash

Not the “Crash” sung by Dave Matthews Band (which I also like) but this fun one, that I’m a little sad disappeared from the airwaves.

I think I might have heard this on KINK’s perfect playlist? I love radio stations that throw in the outliers now and then. I was driving to WinCo for Friday night grocery shopping, because that’s what my 40s are all about.

Have a listen.

One of the YouTube comments: The worst thing about this song it is ends.

True that!