Every time you hear “My Heart Will Go On,” you know Dion is supposed to be singing about a love that outlived her beloved. Robinson” and “ The Graduate” to “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life” and “ Dirty Dancing” don’t have high enough stakes to compete. “You can’t think about it without ‘As Time Goes By.’ ” The key ingredients to these power song-movie couples: “an epic love story against the backdrop of a huge historical event.” “If you go even farther back, you can go to ‘ Casablanca,’ ” Burlingame added. Horner had Celine Dion record a demo and persuaded Cameron to include it in the film.
A similar thing, incidentally, happened with “Titanic” James Cameron didn’t want a theme song, so composer James Horner “quietly employed a lyricist, Will Jennings,” said Burlingame. Both were cases in which the instrumental music was so powerful, lyrics were added to create radio singles after the movies were released. “The ones that immediately leapt to mind for me were ‘ Doctor Zhivago’ in 1965 and ‘ Love Story’ in 1970,” said Burlingame. Has there ever been a more fitting, or outrageously ubiquitous, theme song-to-movie match? As soon as you think you’ve escaped it, there it is again: in the waiting room at the dentist’s office, on that “Lite FM” station you put on when you’re in the car with your parents, as inescapable a part of the American soundscape as the NBC chimes and the roar of the MGM lion. But maybe just the sound of that key change - you’re here, there’s NOOOOthing I fear! - makes you want to take a scalpel to your brain and carve out the spot where that song is stashed away. Kate Winslet does, though fair to say it has a lot more baggage for her than it does for you. You leave the film thinking about that, with that song resonating in your head.” “You’ve got this haunting tune which goes throughout three hours of the film, and then it’s turned into a song at the end of the movie. “ ‘My Heart Will Go On’ is not just a song stuck on the end of a popular film,” said Jon Burlingame, a film music historian and author of “Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks,” which includes a section on the “Titanic” music phenomenon. Now every time you hear the line “ You are safe in my heart and my heart will go on and on . . .” you automatically insert the voice of LEO!!! - whose name in this context cannot be written without abusing the caps lock key and invoking multiple exclamation points - piping up out of the ether to say, “You jump I jump. Perhaps you remember the radio version of the “Titanic” hit that literalized this idea, the one with dialogue spliced between the verses.
Do not leave a comment about “Over the Rainbow.” “Over the Rainbow” does not qualify.) (Note: For level-playing-field purposes, musicals are excluded from this survey. Together they constitute the ultimate marriage of theme song and movie.
#Titanic theme song no words movie
“ Titanic” is not the best movie of all time. “My Heart Will Go On” is not the best song of all time. Just the mere mention of that behemoth of a boat movie is enough to dig the trill of the recorder out of the “1997” file in your memory and drop it directly into your ears. There’s nothing to be done about it, really. Apologies in advance: You’re going to have the “Titanic” theme song stuck in your head.