45 Rock Songs Inspired by Movies

Inspiration can strike from wherever, however as many artists will inform you, there’s a clear similarity  between songwriting and making films.

For these hoping to mix their love of music with a ardour for cinema, there’s a whole part of the recording trade devoted to movie scoring and writing music particularly for the massive display. We have a complete listing, actually, of rock artists who additionally penned tunes for films.

But it really works the opposite means spherical, too — a movie could encourage a songwriter to provide you with one thing model new, generally retelling the story their very own means, or in different instances including their very own inventive spin to the narrative.

Below, we’re looking at 45 Rock Songs Inspired by Movies.

1. “Bad Dance,” Sleater-Kinney
Movie: They Shoot Horses Don’t They?

Here’s the premise of 1969’s They Shoot Horses Don’t They? in a nutshell: it is mid-Depression and a bunch of individuals set their sights on successful a dance marathon. (At the time it was launched, the film obtained 9 Oscar nominations and received just one — Gig Young for Best Supporting Actor.) “I’ve seen that movie, like, 10 times. I find it unfortunately incredibly relevant in almost any era of corruption,” Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney defined to Mojo (through Songfacts), talking about their 2019 track “Bad Dance.” “I was thinking of that film, that endless cycle of exhaustion. It’s probably why it sounds so denominated in a kind of vaudeville way.”

2. “Bad Moon Rising,” Creedence Clearwater Revival
Movie: The Devil and Daniel Webster

“I got the imagery [for “Bad Moon Rising”] from an old movie called The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941),” John Fogerty of CCR informed Rolling Stone in 1993. “Basically, Daniel Webster makes a deal with Mr. Scratch, the devil. It was supposed to be apocryphal. At one point in the movie, there was a huge hurricane. Everybody’s crops and houses are destroyed. Boom. Right next door is the guy’s field who made the deal with the devil, and his corn is still straight up, six feet. That image was in my mind. I went, ‘Holy mackerel!'”

3. “Barbarella,” Scott Weiland
Movie: Barbarella

“Barbarella” from Scott Weiland’s first solo album is titled after the 1968 sci-fi film starring Jane Fonda, by which Fonda’s titular character should cease a mad scientist from destroying the world. There’s additionally a lyrical reference to the ’60s TV sequence Lost in Space: “Shoot the bad guys and I’ll gladly sing a tune for you / We’ll watch Lost in Space on my TV.”

4. “Beautiful Madness,” Robbie Robertson
Movie: Bigger Than Life

Robbie Robertson each wrote music for films and located musical inspirations in films. Such was the case when he noticed 1956’s Bigger Than Life, a movie a few man whose life falls aside attributable to his drug habit. “I was watching it with an eye like, ‘Jesus, that guy’s crazy!’ At the same time…it probably was me saying, ‘I know how he feels!'” Robertson stated to Uncut in 2019. “In the ’60s and ’70s, there was a definite madness in the air. At that time, Martin Scorsese and I would watch movies all the time. Bigger Than Life was one of them. I thought, ‘I like riding close to the edge. But I don’t want to go over.'”

5. “Beauty and the Beast,” Stevie Nicks
Movie: Beauty and the Beast

For a really transient time within the late ’70s, Stevie Nicks and her bandmate Mick Fleetwood had been an merchandise. She wound up writing the track “Beauty and the Beast” about their relationship, based mostly on the 1946 movie. “I first saw it on TV one night when Mick and I were first together, and I always thought of Mick as being sort of Beauty and the Beast-esque, because he’s so tall and he had beautiful coats down to here, and clothes made by little fairies up in the attic,” Nicks informed Entertainment Weekly in 2019. “And also, it matched our story because Mick and I could never be. A, because Mick was married, and then divorced and that was not good, and B, because of Fleetwood Mac.”

6. “Between a Man and a Woman,” Kate Bush
Movie: The Godfather

Francis Ford Coppola’s world-famous 1972 movie The Godfather is accountable for prompting Kate Bush to jot down 1989’s “Between a Man and A Woman.” “It’s about a relationship being a very finely balanced thing that can be easily thrown off by a third party,” she defined of the track to NME in 1989 (through The Quietus). “The whole thing really came from a line in The Godfather, during some family argument, when Marlon Brando says ‘Don’t interfere, it’s between a man and a woman.’ It’s exploring the idea of trying to keep a relationship together, how outside forces can break into it. … Rubbish, really, but I quite like the cello.”

7. “Big Daddy of Them All,” John Mellencamp
Movie: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Those with information of the theater in all probability acknowledge the title of John Mellencamp’s “Big Daddy of Them All” as stemming from the 1955 Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which was made right into a film in 1958 starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives and extra. Ives performed the central character of Big Daddy each on stage and on display. In the liner notes to 2010’s On the Rural Route 7609 field set, Mellencamp drew a comparability to his personal life, writing: “This song was more or less a postcard to myself, saying, ‘You think Burl Ives wasn’t so nice? Guess what, John.'”

8. “Chain Saw,” Ramones
Movie: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

It’s fairly apparent the place Ramones bought the inspiration for 1976’s “Chain Saw.” The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper, got here out two years prior, and although it obtained blended critiques, it wound up an extremely worthwhile launch. “I loved The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it really scared me,” Johnny Ramone as soon as stated. “I liked it enough that we used it as a song title.”

9. “Chance Meeting,” Roxy Music
Movie: Brief Encounter

“Chance Meeting” is definitely simply one in all a number of songs on Roxy Music’s debut, self-titled album that has to do with films. In this case, it was impressed by the 1945 movie Brief Encounter starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. (There’s additionally “The Bob,” which took its title from 1968’s Battle of Britain.)

10. “Chinese Democracy,” Guns N’ Roses
Movie: Kundun

Guns N’ Roses first began performing the track “Chinese Democracy” again in 2001, a complete seven years earlier than it turned the title monitor to the album Chinese Democracy. When the band performed it stay for the primary time, Axl Rose defined that it had been written after seeing the 1997 film Kundun (directed by Martin Scorsese) concerning the Dalai Lama. “It’s not necessarily pro or con about China,” he stated. “It’s just that right now China symbolizes one of the strongest, yet most oppressive countries and governments in the world. And we [Americans] are fortunate to live in a free country. And so in thinking about that it just kinda upset me, and we wrote this little song called ‘Chinese Democracy.'”

11. “Chosen Ones,” Megadeth
Movie: Monty Python and the Holy Grail

At first look, the names Megadeth and Monty Python could appear to be they don’t have anything to do with each other. But truly, the 1985 track “Chosen Ones” from Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! borrowed from the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Dave Mustaine did some extra borrowing from the identical film when he included the road “bring out your dead” within the title monitor to 2016’s The Sick, The Dying…And The Dead!

12. “Cinderella Man,” Rush
Movie: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Rush’s “Cinderella Man” was based mostly off one in all Geddy Lee’s private favourite movies: 1936’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. “I was a big film guy as a teenager, and as a young man, I was really a film buff – I watched films all the time,” he stated to Louder in 2019. “I studied directors because I sort of secretly wanted to be a film director. It was just one of those dreams for when I grow up. And when I realized that most directors have to be part megalomaniac, I think I sort of went off that idea. … So that song is really just about that movie and the kind of themes that movie resonated with.”

13. “Debaser,” Pixies
Movie: Un Chien Andalou

Black Francis of Pixies did not simply dream up the road in “Debaser” about “slicing up eyeballs” — he actually noticed the scene within the 1929 brief movie by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali referred to as Un Chien Andalou, by which a lady’s eye is lower with a razor. “I guess the only thing I put in the lyric that could be considered an original concept was that I just echoed the sentiment of the filmmakers,” Francis defined to Louder in 2021. “Which was: ‘Hey, we’re just doing what we wanna do. It doesn’t make sense and it might be shocking, but to me it’s normal. I am debasing the norm, I am breaking down the societal norm and cutting it up to come up with something surreal and jarring.’ That was the sentiment of the people who were making those films: I am a debaser.”

14. “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away),” Motley Crue
Movie: Heartbreak Ridge

As Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx stated to Rolling Stone in 2009, the title for 1989’s “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” got here from a movie, although on the time he couldn’t recall which one. “I saw that line in a movie somewhere, I can’t even remember what movie,” he stated. “I thought, ‘Great idea for a song.’ A little tongue-in-cheek. A little sarcasm there.” Further analysis has revealed Sixx was probably referring to 1986’s Heartbreak Ridge.

15. “Electric Barbarella,” Duran Duran
Movie: Barbarella

Here’s a second track impressed by 1986’s Barbarella: Duran Duran’s “Electric Barbarella.” And as if that wasn’t sufficient, the band actually bought their title from one of many movie’s characters, Dr. Durand Durand. (Fun reality: it was with this 1997 monitor that Duran Duran turned the primary main label recording artist to promote a single as a digital obtain on the web.)

16. “Enough Space,” Foo Fighters
Movie: Arizona Dream

Foo Fighters’ “Enough Space” is purportedly concerning the 1993 movie Arizona Dream, starring Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway.

17. “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve),” Buzzcocks
Movie: Guys and Dolls

Like others on this listing, Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks perked up when he heard an ear-catching line in a movie. “We were in the Blenheim Guest House with pints of beer, sitting in the TV room half-watching Guys and Dolls,” he informed Edinburgh News in 2018. “One of the characters, Adelaide, is saying to Marlon Brando’s character, ‘Wait till you fall in love with someone you shouldn’t have.’ “I assumed, ‘fallen in love with somebody you should not have?’ Hmm, that is good.” He wrote the lyrics to 1978’s “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” the next day.

18. “Eyes Without a Face,” Billy Idol
Movie: Eyes Without a Face

“I’ve all the time had a fascination with the titles of horror movies,” Billy Idol wrote in his memoir Dancing With Myself, referring to his song “Eyes Without a Face.” It took its title from a 1960 French film Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face). Idol went on to describe the film as being about “a superb plastic surgeon who vows to revive the face of his daughter, who has been horribly disfigured in a automobile accident. This vow leads him to homicide, as he units out accumulating the facial options of his victims, which he then grafts onto his daughter’s hideous countenance, making an attempt to revive her magnificence. Her staring eyes stay the one factor seen.”

19. “Godzilla,” Blue Oyster Cult
Movie: Godzilla

The title says it all — even the sleeve in which this Blue Oyster Cult single came featured a still from the 1966 film Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Interestingly, despite being one of the most popular songs in their entire catalog, “Godzilla” was not a chart hit.

20. “Heartlight,” Neil Diamond
Movie: E.T. the Extra Terrestrial

Apparently there is such a thing as being too inspired. To be fair, nowhere in the lyrics to Neil Diamond’s 1982 song “Heartlight” does he mention E.T. the character or the movie title E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), but he did write the song after seeing a screening of the film with his friends Carole Bayer Sager and Burt Bacharach. It’s not hard to put two and two together considering the adorable little alien’s heart begins to glow at the end of the movie. Years later, Diamond had to settle a lawsuit out of court with MCA/Universal, who felt the songwriter had stepped a bit too close to the narrative they owned.

21. “Imitation of Life,” R.E.M.
Movie: Imitation of Life

Sometimes you don’t actually have to see a movie to be inspired by it. Such was the case with R.E.M.’s “Imitation of Life,” which took its title from the 1959 film of the same name. In the liner notes to In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003, guitarist Peter Buck admitted none of the band members had watched the film. “I assumed on the time that the title was an ideal metaphor for adolescence,” he said. “Unfortunately I’ve come to imagine that it’s a good metaphor for maturity, too. But that is one other story.”

22. “Johnny Thunder,” The Kinks
Movie: The Wild One

Ray Davies found inspiration for the Kinks’ “Johnny Thunder” in the form of the 1953 film The Wild One starring Marlon Brando, which had been banned in Britain up until about a month before the song was released. “I noticed him as a Neal Cassady kind character,” Davies said to Rolling Stone in 2018. “All rebels appear like Marlon Brando on a bike.”

23. “Juliet of the Spirits,” The B-52’s
Movie: Giulietta Degli Spiriti

In Italian, it’s Giulietta degli spiriti, which translates to Juliet of the Spirits, a title the B-52’s used for one of the songs on their 2008 album Funplex.

24. “Man on the Edge,” Iron Maiden
Movie: Falling Down

Iron Maiden has a number of songs inspired by films, several of which appear on this list. “Man on the Edge” from 1995’s The X Factor is based on the 1993 film Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas. “Quite a lot of issues occurred in that film,” singer Blaze Bayley once explained to Songfacts. “One of the important thing lyrics is ‘cannibal state,’ the place the system of presidency consumes the person and the materialistic society consumes the person and digests him and spits him out, so his identification is totally gone.”

25. “Me and Bobby McGee,” Janis Joplin
Movie: La Strada

Janis Joplin is the name most closely associated with “Me and Bobby McGee,” but it was actually Kris Kristofferson behind the birth of the 1971 song. “For some cause, I considered La Strada, this [Federico] Fellini movie, and a scene the place Anthony Quinn goes round on this bike and Giulietta Masina is the feeble-minded lady with him, taking part in the trombone,” Kristofferson told Wide Open Country in 2022. “He bought to the purpose the place he could not put up together with her anymore and left her by the facet of the highway whereas she was sleeping.” This story became the essence of “Me and Bobby McGee.”

26. “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream),” Stevie Nicks
Movie: Twilight

Stevie Nicks is often likened to a witch (the cool, mysterious, not evil kind), but what about vampires? Look no further than “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)” from 2011’s In Your Dreams. Nicks wrote much of the song after watching Twilight. “The second verse,” she later explained to AOL’s Spinner (via Songfacts), “‘She’s lonely, misplaced, and disconnected’ – was written in Brisbane proper after I noticed the film. So the track, actually, is historical occasions as much as right this moment. The refrain – ‘It’s unusual, she runs from those she will be able to’t sustain with’ – is all concerning the love affair between Bella and Edward.”

27. “Moonlight Shadow,” Mike Oldfield
Movie: Houdini

“Moonlight Shadow” is Mike Oldfield’s most successful single, with vocals by the Scottish singer Maggie Reilly. It was reportedly inspired by the 1953 Tony Curtis movie Houdini.

28. “Motorpsycho Nightmare,” Bob Dylan
Movie: Psycho

As its title suggests, Bob Dylan’s “Motorpyscho Nightmare” draws from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, particularly with its lines about a certain famous murder scene — “She stated, ‘Would you wish to take a bathe? / I’ll present you as much as the door’ / I stated, ‘Oh, no! no! / I’ve been via this earlier than.'”

29. “Nebraska,” Bruce Springsteen
Movie: Badlands

Bruce Springsteen was reportedly inspired to pen the song “Nebraska” after seeing the 1973 crime drama Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. The film was loosely based on the real-life 1958 murder spree committed by Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, who killed 10 people in the span of just a few weeks.

30. “Night Moves,” Bob Seger
Movie: American Graffiti

Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” is not technically about a movie, but it was still very much inspired by one. “The album in addition to the track had been impressed by [1973’s] American Graffiti,” Seger said to Mix in 2001. “I got here out of the theater considering, ‘Hey, I’ve bought a narrative to inform, too! Nobody has ever informed about the way it was to develop up in my neck of the woods.'”

31. “One,” Metallica
Movie: Johnny Got His Gun

Metallica’s “One” tells a gruesome story of a terribly wounded soldier who has lost his arms, legs and sight. But the band didn’t conjure that up entirely out of their own heads — they were inspired by the 1971 anti-war film Johnny Got His Gun, clips from which Metallica used in the music video for “One,” seen below.

32. “Pretty Baby,” Blondie
Movie: Pretty Baby

The 1978 movie Pretty Baby starring Brooke Shields, Keith Carradine and Susan Sarandon got its title from the Tony Jackson song of the same name, which was included on the film’s soundtrack. In turn, Pretty Baby inspired another song with the same name, this time by Blondie and released on 1978’s Parallel Lines.

33. “Space Oddity,” David Bowie
Movie: 2001: Space Odyssey

While it is true that David Bowie’s 1969 song “Space Oddity” was rush-released to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing, that groundbreaking event was not what had inspired Bowie to pen the number. That distinction goes to the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. “I used to be out of my gourd anyway, I used to be very stoned once I went to see it [Space Odyssey], a number of occasions, and it was actually a revelation to me,” Bowie said to Performing Songwriter in 2003. “It bought the track flowing.”

34. “The Clansman,” Iron Maiden
Movie: Braveheart

“The Clansman” by Iron Maiden was written about the plight of Scottish clans fighting for their independence from the English, as inspired by the 1995 movie Braveheart starring and directed by Mel Gibson. Or, in the words of Steve Harris in Run to the Hills: The Official Biography of Iron Maiden, it’s “about what it is wish to belong to a neighborhood that you just try to construct up after which you need to battle to cease having it taken away from you.”

35. “The Crimson Ghost,” Misfits
Movie: The Crimson Ghost

Long before the Misfits formed in 1977, there was the 1946 film The Crimson Ghost. It was from this film’s titular villain that the Misfits borrowed their skeletal iconography. They even wrote a song titled “Crimson Ghost” and included it on their 1997 album American Psycho.

36. “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of,” Carly Simon
Movie: The Maltese Falcon

If the title of Carly Simon’s 1987 song “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” sounds familiar to you, it may be because you’ve seen the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart. It’s Bogart’s character, the detective Sam Spade, who uses that line, describing the jewel-encrusted falcon statuette as “the stuff that desires are fabricated from.”

37. “The Union Forever,” The White Stripes
Movie: Citizen Kane

Jack White loves Citizen Kane (1941). At one point, he was trying to learn to play one of the songs from the film, “It Can’t Be Love,” and wound up writing an entirely new song with lyrics heavily inspired by the movie’s dialog. “I used to be attempting to play it on guitar,” he explained to Rolling Stone, “and I went via the movie and began writing down issues which may rhyme and make sense collectively.” That song became “The Union Forever,” which appeared on the White Stripes’ 2001 album White Blood Cells. (Two years after the song was released, Warner Bros. considered filing a copyright-infringement suit against the White Stripes for borrowing material as liberally as they did, but it never came to pass.)

38. “Tin Man,” America
Movie: The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz (1939) is famous for its phenomenal use of Technicolor — a metaphor, really, for the difference between one’s old life and their new one. This was not lost on Dewey Bunnell of America when he wrote the song “Tin Man,” released in 1974. “It was my favourite film as a child and it’s nonetheless one in all my Top Ten. I in all probability even would go to this point that if somebody stated ‘What’s your favourite film of all time?’ I would go there,” he told American Songwriter in 2021. “The track is like surrealism, which was a style of artwork that was all the time mesmerizing for me. There’s the entire psychedelic factor, popping out of the ’60s, the Woodstock era, opening your eyes, increasing your thoughts and taking a look at issues in a different way. We actually did, we had been a straight tradition out of the ’50s. It was all black and white.”

39. “Total of the Eclipse of the Heart,” Bonnie Tyler
Movie: Nosferatu

Before Bonnie Tyler got her hands on it, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was written by Jim Steinman as an ode to a classic icon of horror film: Nosferatu. The silent movie, which was based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, was released in 1922 under the title Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. At the time that Steinman wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” he had been planning on making a musical adaption of Nosferatu.

40. “Walk This Way,” Aerosmith
Movie: Young Frankenstein

It was during a break from recording 1975’s Toys in the Attic at Record Plant in New York City that Aerosmith found some new inspiration. Most of the band, along with producer Jack Douglas, had gone down to a movie theater in Times Square to see the movie Young Frankenstein starring Gene Wilder — Joe Perry, who had already seen the film, stayed behind. “When the fellows returned, they had been throwing strains backwards and forwards from the movie,” Perry recalled to The Wall Street Journal in 2014. “They had been laughing about Marty Feldman greeting Gene Wilder on the door of the fort and telling him to observe him. ‘Walk this fashion,’ he says, limping, giving his stick with Wilder so he can stroll that means, too. While all this was happening, Jack stopped and stated, ‘Hey, ‘stroll this fashion’ is perhaps a terrific title for the track.’ We agreed.”

41. “We’ve Got Tonite,” Bob Seger
Movie: The Sting

Bob Seger’s “We’ve Got Tonight” began its life as a song called “This Old House.” But things changed when he saw the 1973 film The Sting. In one scene, Robert Redford’s character tells a waitress that he feels as though nobody really knows him. “That simply hit me actual onerous,” Seger told the Detroit Free Press in 1994. “The subsequent day I wrote ‘We’ve Got Tonight,’ this track about two individuals who say ‘I’m drained. It’s late at night time. I do know you do not actually dig me, and I do not actually dig you, however that is all we have, so let’s do it.’ The sexual revolution was nonetheless going sturdy then.”

42. “Where Eagles Dare,” Iron Maiden
Movie: Where Eagles Dare

Here’s a sort of two for the price of one situation thanks to Iron Maiden. Their 1983 album Piece of Mind includes not just one but two songs inspired by films: “Where Eagles Dare” based on the 1968 film of the same title and “Quest of Fire” based on the 1981 film, again of the same title.

43. “Why Didn’t Rosemary?” Deep Purple
Movie: Rosemary’s Baby

Like Aerosmith above, Deep Purple went to the cinema one day and came back with song inspiration. In their case, the film was 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby starring Mia Farrow. At that time, the use of the contraceptive pill among both American and British women was steadily rising, having been introduced into the U.S. and U.K. markets in 1960 and 1961 respectively. In “Why Didn’t Rosemary” Deep Purple cheekily asked the question: “Why did not Rosemary ever take the capsule?“

44. “Year of the Cat,” Al Stewart
Movie: Casablanca

Here’s another song inspired by Casablanca: Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat.” The song’s opening lines came to Stewart after watching the film — “On a morning from a Bogart film, in a rustic the place they flip again time / You go strolling via the gang like Peter Lorre considering against the law.“

45. “2HB,” Roxy Music
Movie: Casablanca

There’s one more Casablanca-inspired song to cover, and that’s Roxy Music’s “2HB,” which stands for “To Humphrey Bogart.” It includes, as one of the lyrics, the actor’s famous line “Here’s taking a look at you, child.” Bryan Ferry recorded the song again for his 1976 solo album Let’s Stick Together.

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