Hit Movie Theme Songs a Thing of the Past

Remember the days when a film’s theme song would help sell the movie, not to mention help sell the soundtrack? Never since 1997, when the epic, record breaking Titanic arrived in theatres has there been such campaigning for movie theme songs. There simply aren’t songs for blockbuster films like “My Heart Will Go On,” sung by Celine Dion and written by songwriting pro Diane Warren. Why is this? Why don’t films like the newly released Dark Knight have a song people can subconsciously link to the film? It mainly has to do with money.

Back in the day, the success of a film’s theme song used to be able to gauge the success of the film before release. Bryan Adams delivered the melodramatic tune “Everything I Do (I Do it For You) for the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood in the 90’s, Whitney Houston sang her heart out in The Bodyguard theme song “I Will Always Love You,” and Aerosmith practically carried the film Armageddon’s success by their mega hit “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing.” But where are the hit songs for franchises like X-Men or Pirates of the Caribbean?

They’re simply too expensive. “Artists want a ton of money now,” Kathy Nelson, president of film music for Universal Pictures, told Billboard Magazine. “I remember the days when I would spend 300,000 dollars for a soundtrack like Pulp Fiction and I thought the cost would put the label under. Now artists want 300,00 just to show up.” Which is particularly why the Spiderman 3 soundtrack was so expensive, as soundtrack producers paid for an original theme song from band Snow Patrol. Another reason why hit theme songs aren’t helping to sell films is because record sales are also at an all time low.

This is why the trend made by writer/actor/director Zach Braff is starting to become successful. His quirky 2004 film Garden State basically compiled a lot of hip, Indie songs on the soundtrack by bands like Remy Zero and Coldplay, selling 1.2 million copies in the states alone. More recent films like Juno and Little Miss Sunshine have been benefiting from the same idea.

Another trend of avoiding the bank-breaking theme song as well as not dating the film is to create an original tune with an original artist that fits “the fabric of the movie.” (Mark Savage, BBC News) For example, Annie Lennox teamed up with Howard Shore to create the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King theme song, “conceived as an Elvish lament for those who have sailed across the Sundering Sea.” Now obviously these types of songs may not make it to the top 40 list, but nonetheless, they compliment the film directly. The new Chronicles of Narnia installment Prince Caspian composer Harry Gregson-Williams had a similar idea, collaborating with quirky Indie singer Regina Spektor to create its theme song.

Hans Zimmer, who co-wrote the score for The Dark Knight, says “there was never any doubt that we were going to be songless, and trust me, we were flooded with requests from every band in the world. I actually had to say no to some really interesting people.” But his reasoning, along with writer/director Chris Nolan’s, wasn’t much about the money. The film’s budget would have been able to yield a pretty hefty soundtrack with big hitters in the music industry. But Zimmer points out that in the first Batman film, Prince songs were added onto the soundtrack, which “really dates the movie.” Directors like Nolan and composers like Zimmer, who are hardly rookies in the entertainment industry, have been following the trends of pairing music with film, and wish for their collaborations to remain timeless.