‘U Can’t Touch This’ Is The Most-Featured Song in Movies
This really might be an untouchable record.
It’s an interesting question: What’s the most-used pop song in movie history? Maybe something by The Beatles? Or the Rolling Stones? Or what about “Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf? It seems like every movie set in the 1960s and/or involving super cool (or super dorky) people on motorcycles trots out that one.
According to new research, the answer is none of those seemingly obvious contenders. In fact, none of those artists or songs cracked the top five. Based on the movies and songs these researchers analyzed, here are the top five most-used songs in the history of film:
- “U Can’t Touch This,” MC Hammer
- “Under Pressure,” Queen and David Bowie
- “Push It,” Salt-N-Pepa
- “Spirit in the Sky,” Norman Greenbaum
- “It Takes Two,” Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock
In order to arrive at this top five, data was supposedly analyzed from Tunefind, “which lists the songs used in over 4,000 different movies.” They also noted they “omitted movie composers, looking just at mainstream recording artists.” They found “U Can’t Touch This” appeared in 15 movies, including Tropic Thunder, Into the Wild, and Grown Ups 2. The same research declared Bob Dylan the artist with the most movie appearances. They tracked 123 uses of his songs across half a century in the music business.
So there you have it. Take note that “U Can’t Touch This” wasn’t the winner by that much; if a few more filmmakers get lazy and throw “Under Pressure” into a montage, it would become the new champion pop song in movie history. And if that happens we can only say: Please Hammer, don’t hurt them.
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