Music in Movies

Who doesn't love musicals?  They're movies and music! And it's totally normal that you randomly burst into song when you're happy.  Or sad. Or angry.  Who doesn't do this?

Okay, nobody does, and a lot of people really hate musicals, but I don't see why.  A lot of really great music comes from them.  And not all musicals have the characters in the movie or production singing.  Look at Footloose, one of my favorite old movies (The original is so much better than the new one).  It's about dancing and music in a small country town.  Kevin Bacon never bursts out into song, but there is a really neat dance scene in an old warehouse.  From this musical, we got some pretty good music, such as "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler, "Let's Her It for the Boy" by Denise Williams, and, of course "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins.  These are songs that became wildly popular because of this movie.

Another one of my favorite old movies, and a classic that I believe everybody should see at least once in their lifetime (Or hundreds like me), is Grease.  This is a musical about high school romance, and has amazing songs.  This one does have the actors singing, and it's done well.  Still, it's not very natural for a person to burst into song at a drive-in movie theater, or an entire school to start singing and dancing in time at a carnival, but it's done in a way that it seems normal.  I admit that some of the songs in this musical are a little bit "out there," but it was released in 1978, what do you expect? They're not bad, they're just old. Despite this, they are still some of my favorites.

Then we can look at almost any Disney movie.  Most of the most famous are in fact musicals, whether they are animated, like The Little Mermaid, or (who could forget?) Frozen, or real actors like Camp Rock and High School Musical.  Will the music from these movies be wildly popular and well known in 30 years? The classic Disney movies, possibly.  Most of them were released a good while ago, and are loved by all.  But Camp Rock?  I believe this will die out and be forgotten.  High School Musical, however, I could see sticking around for a while.  This was a trilogy of three movies that every preteen or child loved, me included.  They might not be played often now, but I'm sure Grease wasn't constantly played for almost 40 years.  Time will tell I suppose.