Saturday Six – Songs You Associate With Other Things

Welcome to the Saturday Six, where each week I let you get to know me a bit better with the help of a list. Any idiot can do a Top 5 list, which is why I kicked it up a notch to a Top 6. This week’s topic: Songs You Associate With Other Things

Sorry it’s been awhile since I’ve had one of these. I haven’t had a good idea in a while. This one was suggested to me, and it’s kind of hard to explain. Basically, this is a list of songs that when you hear them you go “Oh yeah, that’s that song from [fill in the blank]”. I think you’ll get it once you see the list.

1. Queen – “Bohemian Rhapsody” – Wayne’s World – Freddie Mercury is pretty much the greatest singer in the history of ever. I was too young to be into them during their late 70’s/early 80’s heyday. Fortunately, there was Wayne’s World to reintroduce an entire generation of teens to the awesomeness that is Queen, and make it nearly impossible not to headbang whenever this song comes on the radio in your car. Don’t lie, you know you do it. We all do. The movie came out in 1992, just a few months after Mercury’s death. At the time, few radio stations were playing the song anymore. Spurred on by its use in the movie, the song shot up the charts to #2, which was higher than it’s initial peak chart position in the US at #9 in 1976, and it’s been a radio staple ever since.

 


2. Journey – “Don’t Stop Believin'” – Family Guy – A lot of people associate “Don’t Stop Believin'” with the finale of The Sorpranos, or if they are 14 year old girls, Glee. But before either of them used the song, there was this sketch from Family Guy, which is apparently only on youtube in crappy phone based clips. But you know the scene I mean. I now can’t ever hear this song without going “Is this Journey? It is Journey! I love this song. But I hate baseball cards! ::shakes fist::” in my best Adam West voice.

 


3. Katrina and the Waves – “Walking on Sunshine” – Fry from Futurama – Even though Fry only knows the one verse, it’s still his favorite song. It was a nice runner throughout the entire series. Fry sings it in the shower during “War is the H Word” and “The 30% Iron Chef”, he teaches Seymour to bark it in “Jurassic Bark”, Scruffy pays it on the bagpipes during Fry’s funeral during Leela’s bee sting induced dream in “The Sting”, and he uses it as his cell phone ringtone. It’s definitely the best use of song, with it mostly being used in car commercials or montages in rom/com movie trailers.

 


4. Real Life – “Send Me an Angel” – Rad – Speaking of montages, let’s talk about “Send Me An Angel”. While it’s also used in montages in The Wizard and Teen Wolf Too, most people associate “Send Me an Angel” with the Bicycle Boogie scene from Rad. That’s mostly because while The Wizard is great, their montage using this is boring and uneventful, and Teen Wolf Too is well, Teen Wolf Too and no one cares. I mean come on, this has Laurie Loughlin from Full House doing bunny hops and other awesome 80’s BMX flatland moves at a school dance. It’s just absurd, but also insanely awesome. Also because of this scene, I will regularly ask people if they are “Set to jet”. They usually then stare at me like I’m insane.

 


5. Barry Manilow – “Mandy” – Can’t Hardly Wait – There is a lot of music you could associate with Can’t Hardly Wait. Maybe you associate it with Third Eye Blind or Smash Mouth, as both have two songs in the film. Or maybe you think of the title song by The Replacements, even though it’s only used in the middle of the credits. Maybe Blink 182’s “Dammit” always reminds you of the scene when the cops show up. Maybe you know all the words to “Paradise City” because “a guy [you] tutored in math used to make [you] listen to it.” I always think of Barry Manilow and the scene above, and just the general craziness of calling Barry Manilow from a pay phone at 2am being a major life decision for a teen boy in 1998, which is just preposterous.

 


6. Van Halen – “Right Now” – Crystal Pepsi – So last week Pepsi announced they intended to bring back Crystal Pepsi. There’s a reason everyone who had one remembers them fondly. Pepsi spent a shit ton of money marketing the hell out of it, including the spot above during Super Bowl XXVII which they aired constantly afterwards. Personally, I always thought it tasted like flat Coke, but I just loved how insane the marketing was for it. I used to go to a pizza place that had an old faded Crystal Pepsi clock until like 2007, and the sequence of events that must have happened to lead to that just always baffled me. Coke counter released Tab Clear and marketed it as a medicinal sugar free drink to confuse the public. The public quickly caught on that just leaving out the color doesn’t make fizzy sugar water and less terrible for you, and the brand was dead just six months later.

 

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook