When Bruce Springsteen was asked why he was invited to write the theme song for 'Philadelphia', the first mainstream motion picture about the AIDS crisis, and one of the first films made in Hollywood featuring a gay protagonist, he responded that the film's director, Jonathan Demme, had 'wanted to take a subject that people didn’t feel safe with and were frightened by and put it together with people that they did feel safe with'. The song that Springsteen would create in response to this brie...
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When Bruce Springsteen was asked why he was invited to write the theme song for 'Philadelphia', the first mainstream motion picture about the AIDS crisis, and one of the first films made in Hollywood featuring a gay protagonist, he responded that the film's director, Jonathan Demme, had 'wanted to take a subject that people didn’t feel safe with and were frightened by and put it together with people that they did feel safe with'. The song that Springsteen would create in response to this brie...
#18 - I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) / Whitney Houston
The Secret Life of Songs
1 hour 2 minutes
3 weeks ago
#18 - I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) / Whitney Houston
'I Wanna Dance with Somebody' is now safely embedded in the pantheon of great songs: a 2023 Billboard poll named it the greatest pop song of all time, and it continues to be an ever-present on pop radio and wedding playlists. When it was first released, however, as the lead single from Whitney Houston's second album, it prompted a widespread critical backlash. Rolling Stone found it 'ridiculously safe' and the novelist Trey Ellis called it 'lifeless'. This would culminate in the notorious mom...
The Secret Life of Songs
When Bruce Springsteen was asked why he was invited to write the theme song for 'Philadelphia', the first mainstream motion picture about the AIDS crisis, and one of the first films made in Hollywood featuring a gay protagonist, he responded that the film's director, Jonathan Demme, had 'wanted to take a subject that people didn’t feel safe with and were frightened by and put it together with people that they did feel safe with'. The song that Springsteen would create in response to this brie...
