History Main / BreakAwayPopHit

# The movie (/TV show/video game/whatever) has to fall into obscurity. This is the most subjective part of this entry, but you can tell if it fell into obscurity by the fact that the studio either didn't release a DVD of it (not due only to copyright hell) or they just gave it a "catalog" release (basically a bare bones DVD with just the movie and whatever cheaply available other materials such as trailers are on hand. The price is usually $14.99 or lower). Just having a special edition version does not automatically mean it hasn't fallen into obscurity (for example, see the Criterion Collection for a TON of obscure movies with the red carpet treatment). If the average person is unlikely to know about a movie (/TV show/video game/whatever), it counts.
# Quality of the movie (/TV show/video game/whatever) is irrelevant. ''{{Armageddon}}'', for example, is widely reviled. However, due to the fact that it gets referenced a lot (usually in a negative fashion), it has certainly not fallen into obscurity. As such, the song "I Don't Want To Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith would not count as an example (even if most people couldn't tell you that it was tied in to the film). On the flip side, a movie that is considered to be very high quality does not excuse it from obscurity. As mentioned in example 3, see the Criterion Collection for a lot of movies that are academically considered to be very high quality, yet are extremely obscure.

-->--'''The Nostalgia Critic''', surprised to find that "The Prayer" was written for ''QuestForCamelot''

* "A Little Less Conversation" was an obscure Elvis song from his film ''Live a Little, Love a Little''. A remix by [=JXL=] turned it into a smash hit.

* The Phil Collins song "Against All Odds" still gets a fair amount of airplay on '80s stations, but the movie is pretty much forgotten.

* Earth Wind and Fire did a fine, lively cover of TheBeatles' "Got To Get You Into My Life" that charted well. {{Aerosmith}} also has a pretty popular version of "Come Together." You could hardly believe that both were spawned from the turgid, Bee Gees-heavy musical ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''.

* A rare example of an ''entire album'' falling victim to this trope; Stevie Wonder's ''Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants'' is well remembered for being one of the first NewAge albums and for the [[LoveItOrHateIt polarized]] reaction it got from fans. However, how many people have actually seen ''The Secret Life of Plants'', the odd little documentary (the book, a history of the scientific -or not- study of if and how plants are aware of their environment, is much better known) that it was made as the soundtrack for?

* The film ''{{Gothika}}'' was successful upon release. But it is nowhere near as famous as the song recorded for the film: LimpBizkit's cover of "Behind Blue Eyes."

* Which is better known, the 80's cult film ''StreetsOfFire'' or it's sole pop single "I Can Dream About You?"

* The Glenn Miller Band's recording of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" was the first ever record to go gold. They appeared on screen as a FakeBand to introduce the song in ''Sun Valley Serenade'', a not so legendary Sonja Henie vehicle. Nevertheless, the song had been written by songwriters under contract to the studio.

* "There Will Never Be Another You" from ''Iceland''.

->''"Oh, I love that. I didn't even know it was from a show or anything. I thought it was just a song..."''
-->--'''The girl''', ''The Seven-Year Itch'' (play by George Axelrod)

* Although the fact that the song is called "Theme from ''Local Hero''" is a pretty good giveaway that it's a theme from something, it's arguable that more people have heard and can recognise the iconic theme by Mark Knopfler than have actually seen the movie.

* "Welcome Back", by John Sebastian (went gold as a single), from the '70s TV series ''Welcome Back, Kotter''.

* "Would?" by AliceInChains was originally released with the utterly forgettable movie ''Singles'' before it appeared on their album ''Dirt''. The movie is mediocre at best, but the song is one of their most famous and even ranked at #89 on VH-1's ''100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs of All-Time''. The soundtrack album was more popular than the movie itself in general, as it featured bands such as {{Soundgarden}} and PearlJam at a time when grunge was growing in popularity.

* "The Candy Man" from ''WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'', covered by Sammy Davis Jr.

** Just how famous is Elton John's cover?

** [[TragicTheDragon This editor]] has a HilariousInHindsight TroperTale about this particularly strange case. Her grandmother loves Andrea Bocelli and ''The Prayer'' is one of her favorites of his songs. She also likes ''Camelot'' and other media based off King Arthur. She and Grandma were delighted to learn that ''The Prayer'' was written for a movie that happened to be about Camelot and so they rented it to watch together and... Well, you can probably imagine [[BeserkButton Grandma's reaction]] when she got to the [[LyricalDissonance particular scene]] in which her beloved song appears...

* {{Eminem}}'s "Lose Yourself" in ''8 Mile''.

* The first PinkFloyd song that got any sort of airplay on US pop radio was the jangly "Free Four". With the exception of diehard Floyd fans and fans of French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, no one has seen ''La Vallee'' the obscure French hippie film that the song is from the soundtrack of. The soundtrack itself (''Obscured by Clouds'', which doubled as the band's seventh studio album) is similarly more well known than ''La Vallee''.

* The song ''Fame'' is more famous that the movie of the same name.

* We are willing to bet that the songs "[[TearJerker Angel]]" ([[RefrainFromAssuming sometimes mistakenly called "In the Arms of the Angel"]]), "[[AntiLoveSong Uninvited]]", and "[[AwardBaitSong Iris]]" are far, far, FAR better known and more well-loved than the film ''City of Angels'' (a [[{{Understatement}} pretty terrible]] [[{{Americanitis}} American]] [[TheyJustDidntCare remake]] of the beloved German film ''WingsOfDesire''.)

* We are willing to bet that the songs "[[TearJerker Angel]]" ([[RefrainFromAssuming sometimes mistakenly called "In the Arms of the Angel"]]), "[[AntiLoveSong Uninvited]]", and "[[AwardBaitSong Iris]]" are far, far, FAR better known and more well-loved than the film ''City of Angels'' (a [[{{Understatement}} pretty terrible]] [[{{Americanitis}} American]] [[TheyJustDidntCare remake]] of the beloved ''Wings of Desire''.)