Now, here's an album title to conjure with! What could
The All Time Greatest Movie Songs be? Let's see, if we go by the most popular songs ever heard in the movies, we'd be talking about "White Christmas," "I Will Always Love You," "The Third Man Theme," "Cheek to Cheek," and "Buttons and Bows," to cite the longest running number one hits. Are any of those here? No. Well, OK, how about "greatest" as in "best," say, for example, Oscar winners like "Over the Rainbow," "All the Way," "Moon River," "The Way We Were," and "(I've Had) The Time of My Life"? Any of those here? Nope. OK, we give up. What are the all-time greatest movie songs? As it turns out, they are (with one, licensed exception) all songs that happen to be under the control of Sony Music and (with one exception) all songs from movies of the 1990s. Granted, there are some big hits and Oscar winners here, starting with
Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" and including
Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" and
Peabo Bryson &
Regina Belle's "A Whole New World," and some of Sony's biggest stars of the moment, including
Will Smith,
Lauryn Hill, and
Babyface, as well as blue-chip talents like
Barbra Streisand,
Billy Joel, and
Michael Jackson, are represented. But that title could only have been conceived by a marketing staff as ignorant as it is arrogant. ~ William Ruhlmann