{"id":51982,"date":"2017-05-28T23:01:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-29T06:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=51982"},"modified":"2017-05-28T23:01:28","modified_gmt":"2017-05-29T06:01:28","slug":"behind-hits-soundtrack-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/behind-hits-soundtrack-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Hits: Soundtrack Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n

\"grammy\"<\/a>Movie soundtracks have long generated popular songs, from \u201cStayin\u2019 Alive\u201d to \u201cWhistle While You Work,\u201d to \u201cGoldfinger\u201d and hundreds more. Here are the origins of a few more soundtrack hits.<\/em><\/p>\n

Movie: Titanic
\nSong: \u201cMy Heart Will Go On\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong> While making his $200-million movie in the mid-1990s, director James Cameron planned for all of the music to be performed by ethereal Irish vocalist Enya. One problem: Enya wasn\u2019t interested. So Cameron asked composer James Horner, with whom he\u2019d worked on the 1986 movie Aliens, to score the film. Cameron didn\u2019t want any contemporary pop music in the film, but Horner disagreed. He secretly wrote the epic ballad \u201cMy Heart Will Go On\u201d with songwriter Will Jennings and got singer Celine Dion to record it. Then Horner asked Cameron to watch a rough cut of the movie with \u201cMy Heart Will Go On\u201d playing over the end credits\u2026and Cameron relented. The song was almost as big a hit as Titanic<\/em> itself\u2014it sold 15 million copies, went to #1 in 18 countries, and won the Oscar for Best Song.<\/p>\n

Movie: The Bodyguard
\nSong: \u201cI Will Always Love You\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong> The soaring love ballad was written by country pop singer Dolly Parton in 1972, before she was a superstar. At the time, she was best known as the co-star of Porter Wagoner\u2019s syndicated country music TV series. She was ready to go solo, but wanted Wagoner to know she appreciated all he\u2019d done for her, so she wrote the song. \u201cIt\u2019s saying, \u2018Just because I\u2019m going don\u2019t mean I don\u2019t love you. I appreciate you and I hope you do great, and I appreciate everything you\u2019ve done, but I\u2019m out of here,\u2019\u201d she told CMT in 2012. The morning after she wrote it, she played it for Wagoner in his office. He cried and said, \u201cThat\u2019s the prettiest song I ever heard.\u201d He agreed to release Parton from her contract, provided he could produce a recording of \u201cI Will Always Love You.\u201d He did, and the song went to #1 on the country chart in 1974, then again in 1982 when Parton remade the song for the film adaptation of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas<\/em>.<\/p>\n

All of that was completely overshadowed by Whitney Houston\u2019s 1992 cover version, which was not originally part of The Bodyguard<\/em> soundtrack. Houston\u2019s character was slated to sing a version of Jimmy Ruffin\u2019s \u201cWhat Becomes of the Broken-hearted\u201d\u2014until the movie Fried Green Tomatoes<\/em> featured Paul Young singing it. Bodyguard<\/em> co-star Kevin Costner came to producers with a song he thought would work better: \u201cI Will Always Love You.\u201d He was right. The single sold four million copies and propelled the soundtrack to sales of 45 million copies, spending a record 14 weeks at #1.<\/p>\n

Extra Cut: Among the other songs on The Bodyguard<\/em> soundtrack was soft-rock singer Curtis Stigers\u2019s version of \u201c(What\u2019s So Funny \u2019Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,\u201d written by British rocker Nick Lowe but made famous by Elvis Costello. Royalties for soundtrack sales are distributed among the many different performers on the albums, with an especially high cut for songwriters. Lowe, who has a large cult following, only ever had one hit: \u201cCruel to Be Kind,\u201d which went to #12 in America, Canada, and Britain in 1979. But royalties from Stigers\u2019s cover of his song on The Bodyguard<\/em> earned him an estimated $4 million.<\/p>\n

Movie: Con Air
\nSong: \u201cHow Do I Live\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong> In 1997 Diane Warren was well entrenched as Hollywood\u2019s go-to writer of movie ballads\u2014including Celine Dion\u2019s \u201cBecause You Loved Me\u201d for Up Close and Personal<\/em>, Starship\u2019s \u201cNothing\u2019s Gonna Stop Us Now\u201d for Mannequin<\/em>, and many more. Touchstone Pictures agreed to use her song \u201cHow Do I Live\u201d as an end-credits ballad for its action movie Con Air<\/em>. Warren promised LeAnn Rimes, a 15-year-old country music phenom, that she could sing the song. But Touchstone executives thought Rimes\u2019s voice was too poppy and young to sell a song about heartbreak. So they hired country star Trisha Yearwood to re-record it, and her version was included in the movie and released as a single. When Rimes and her label, Curb, found out, they were furious, and rushed her version to stores and radio. Both versions of \u201cHow Do I Live\u201d were released on the same day\u2014May 27, 1997. Yearwood\u2019s went to #2 on the country chart and #23 on the pop chart before her label, MCA, refused to make any more copies of the single for fear it would eat into her album sales. The song disappeared by August. Rimes\u2019s version, however, was a monster hit. It spent a record 69 weeks on the pop chart, where it peaked at #2. It sold 3.7 million copies. More impressively, Rimes\u2019s take stayed on the country charts until February 2003\u2014nearly six years.<\/p>\n

Movie: Armageddon
\nSong: \u201cI Don\u2019t Want to Miss a Thing\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong> Aerosmith was huge in the 1970s, had a massive comeback in the late 1980s, and was bigger than ever in the mid-1990s thanks to hits like \u201cCryin\u2019\u201d and \u201cCrazy,\u201d whose videos starred Liv Tyler, daughter of Aerosmith\u2019s lead singer, Steven Tyler. When producers of the 1998 asteroid movie Armageddon<\/em> approached Aerosmith with an opportunity to record the movie\u2019s love ballad, written by soundtrack song queen Diane Warren, Tyler said no. He feared the band would lose its hard-won rock cred if they recorded a sappy ballad. However, Armageddon co-starred Liv Tyler, really wanted her father\u2019s band to be involved. So she set up a screening of a rough-cut of the movie for him. He later reported that one scene in the rough cut changed his mind\u2014when Bruce Willis\u2019s character gets left behind, and his image disappears from a monitor as its being hugged by his daughter (played by Liv). The daughter-daddy stuff got to him\u2014he admits he cried, and agreed to have Aerosmith perform the song. Good move: The song became the first and only #1 hit of the group\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>This article is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em>. This behemoth of a book is overflowing with the incredible stories, surprising facts, weird news, little-known origins, fun wordplay, and everything else the millions of loyal fans have come to expect from the world’s best-selling bathroom reading series.<\/p>\n

Since 1987, the Bathroom Readers\u2019 Institute<\/a> has led the movement to stand up for those who sit down and read in the bathroom (and everywhere else for that matter). With more than 15 million books in print, the Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader series is the longest-running, most popular series of its kind in the world.<\/p>\n

If you like Today I Found Out<\/a>, I guarantee you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books, so check them out<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader Movie soundtracks have long generated popular songs, from \u201cStayin\u2019 Alive\u201d to \u201cWhistle While You Work,\u201d to \u201cGoldfinger\u201d and hundreds more. Here are the origins of a few more soundtrack hits. Movie: Titanic Song: \u201cMy Heart Will Go On\u201d Story: While making his $200-million movie in the mid-1990s, director James Cameron […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":51983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-i-found-out","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51984,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51982\/revisions\/51984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}