That Thing you Do was recently rated the 8th best fictional song in TV and movie history. Did you know that this song really did become a hit, getting as high as 24 in the Top 40 Mainstream charts.
You can check out the entire list here:
http://redstaplerchronicles.com/the-12-best-fictional-songs-in-tv-and- movie-history/
I'm having a bit of semantic disconnect in trying to figure out what a "fictional song" is. So far as I can tell, the song "That Thing You Do" is as real as any other song.
If the test is whether the song is performed by a fictional character in a movie, there are hundreds of "fictional" songs, including just about every song in every musical.
Personally, I think "Shrimp Shack" deserves special status, as it was pre-recorded by unnamed real offscreen musicians standing in for unnamed fictional offscreen musicians, then mimed by actors pretending to be musicians pretending to play the song in a movie in a movie.
It's a fictional song because it was written into the plot of a movie and given an artificial history. Who it was written by and how it came to be were made up. It was never actually played on the radio in the 60's. There was no band called The Oneders. That is why it's a "fictional" song.
share"Sugar Sugar" was #1 for four weeks, and it was played by cartoon characters.
"White Christmas" was "written" and performed by a fictional nightclub performer named Jim Hardy. It's kind of popular.
Although this comment was made 3 years ago, I just happened upon this and noticed that no one replied and corrected this, White Christmas was not fictional it was written by the late great Irving Berlin and it was and still is quite popular. It is probably the most recorded song in musical history, every known artist has probably recorded this for the holidays.
shareThe reason no one "corrected" it is probably because they understood it.
Read it in context.
White Christmas was recorded in 1943, and took 18 minutes to get the version we hear today. To this day, it is the no.1 single ever done.
shareThe song "That Thing You Do" may have a fictional origin and history in the context of the movie, but the SONG is real enough. Somebody sat down and wrote it. It has melody, rhythm and harmonic structure. It has lyrics. It exists as a published and copyrighted work.
A fictional song would be a song that's mentioned by name but doesn't exist. For example, the bawdy ballads "A Space Suit Built for Two" and "That Red-Headed Venusburg Gal" in Robert Heinlein's story The Green Hills of Earth. Sorry to pick a rather obscure example, but it's the first one that popped into my head.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
Stephen King writes a lot of fictional songs in his books.
shareIt's still a real song tho! I that someone wrote it and some people performed it... And it exists!
sharePersonally, I think "Shrimp Shack" deserves special status, as it was pre-recorded by unnamed real offscreen musicians standing in for unnamed fictional offscreen musicians, then mimed by actors pretending to be musicians pretending to play the song in a movie in a movie.
I like That Thing You Do too-it's snappy. None of that lover's lament crap. The other songs in the movie are good too (especially the "tell your momma that you're leaving, tell your daddy that you're gone" song) but for originality and creativity, I'd have to rate Spinal Tap higher. Big Bottom was hilarious and how can you beat a song named "Sex Farm Woman"?
share> the "tell your momma that you're leaving, tell your daddy that you're gone" song
"Dance With Me Tonight." That's the title. Just saying.
If we're talking about songs in movies about fictional bands, particularly songs which are kind of supposed to be take-offs, rather than just straight current music:
"A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" manages simultaneously to be (i) an amusing send-up of a style of song that was once popular, (ii) a significant plot point and (iii) actually kind of bizarrely touching. Which are three things it's hard to be, especially simultaneously.
Writing good "retro" music isn't easy. "That Thing You Do" perfectly fits the bill for the movie -- it sounds like a second-rate Beatles tune, it's just good enough that it could plausibly have been a hit in the mid-1960s, and you can hear it played over and over and over again without getting completely sick of it!
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
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Semiotics, schmemiotics. If "That Thing You Do" is a fictional song, then the Hula-Hoop could be called a fictional toy because it was given a totally fictitious origin in The Hudsucker Proxy. It isn't a matter of semiotics; it's a matter of definitions. Fictional means fictional, i.e., something that didn't happen or doesn't exist.
If, like Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, you can make words mean whatever you want them to mean, then we have linguistic anarchy.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
I'd go with you on the hula hoop thing, scotbpens, except for one thing: the hula hoop really existed in the real 1950s (and was then satirized in Hudsucker), while "That Thing You Do" (the song) did not exist in the real 1960s, only the world of the film.
I do agree that the song is not fictional, though.
The war is not meant to be won... it is meant to be continuous.
Well, I think you meant to say semantics rather than semiotics, which is way too general, but anyway:
I don't necessarily have a problem with defining "fictional song" to mean something that really exists but appears in a fictional context.
My main point is that, if you define it this way, the number of fictional songs is huge. It includes many famous songs that nobody really considers different from, you know, "songs." For many, many years, one of the principal ways a new popular song was introduced was in a musical.
I mentioned "White Christmas" and "Sugar Sugar" already. Some others might be "Put on a Happy Face," "Last Train to Clarksville" and, of course, "Do the Clam."
How about "Edelweiss"??
sharei didn't know that! i love that song i have it on my mp3 player :)
shareThis song is based on a few songs : The Beatles 'Saw Her Standing There' and 'I Call Your Name' but the main source is 'Lies' by The Knickerbockers.
shareI hated the movie but liked the song. But to me it sounds much more like a late 80's/ early 90's power-pop song than something from the 60's. Sort of like The Grays or The Greenberry Woods.
sharebeatlenut8, have you listened to The Rutles?
sharePeople need to stop putting that Friends song on lists like these. I don't know all the songs, it's hilarious that they put Degrassi on there, but some of them are songs that can be played on the radio. Smelly Cat was an annoying joke that they overplayed from the most annoying and least popular character on Friends.
That Thing You Do would be number 1 for me.
Sorry I'm late to the party but if you want new (at the time) songs that sound retro and "kind of like the Beatles", you can't do any better than Eric Idle's "The Rutles". The songs were written by Neil Innes, who apparently was good friends with the Beatles and hung around with them in the studio. Just check it out if you haven't seen/heard of it. The "documentary" was called "All You Need Is Cash".
shareEric Idle was good friends with George Harrison. The show started as a spot on SNL.
shareThe soundtrack is one of the best!
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