History Main / NothingButHits

* Creator/OliverStone's ''BornOnTheFourthOfJuly'' opens in the suburban community of Massapequa, New York, in the year 1956. The characters are attending a Fourth of July parade, and from one of the floats Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around The Clock" can be clearly heard. [[TheNewRockAndRoll Surprisingly]], no one among the families (with many children) lining the street seems to find this at all offensive (which is especially striking because [[ZigZaggingTrope Stone later goes out of his way to show that these working-class suburbanites are extremely socially repressed]]).

This is likely to occur in a MisterSandmanSequence, though in that case the song would likely be playing on the film's soundtrack rather than within the scene itself. A sub-trope of SmallReferencePools. Related to NostalgiaFilter and PopularHistory.

* In ''{{Apollo 13}}'' the teenage daughter's radio was playing during almost every scene they showed Lovell's family, clearly to sell yet another late 60s/early 70s classic rock movie soundtrack.
* Many movies set in the very early 90's will include ''Fight The Power'' by PublicEnemy. ''DoTheRightThing'', ''BuffaloSoldiers'', ''{{Jarhead}}'' and ''ThreeKings'' all used it.

* Semi-averted in ''AmericanGraffiti''; while there are plenty of familiar hits like "Rock Around the Clock" and "Johnny B. Goode", you also get such relatively (now) obscure rock and R&B singles as the Five Satins' "To the Aisle" and the Heartbeats' "A Thousand Miles Away". (Granted, that film ''was'' only a decade removed from the period it depicted...)

* ''DazedAndConfused'' both plays it straight and averts it. Most of the tracks featured in the music-heavy film are fairly iconic of 70s rock and well-known today, but several were fairly obscure genre or regional (Southern American) hits.

* Played straight in an ironic sort of way in ''{{Pleasantville}}'', where we hear Buddy' Holly's "Rave On" on a jukebox at exactly the time (April 1958) and place (a teen hang-out) that song would have been heard in real life - but probably NOT in Pleasantville, where anything the least bit unorthodox or controversial (which rock and roll certainly was back then) literally didn't exist.
* In ''{{Precious}}'', which takes place in 1987-'88, Precious' mother is shown watching ''227'' and ''[[{{Pyramid}} The $100,000 Pyramid]]'', both of which are not things that people think of when they think of the 80's.
* Thankfully averted in ''WhenHarryMetSally'', which is set between 1977 and 1989. Instead of contemporary music, the movie uses much older classics by the likes of Sinatra and Bing Crosby.

* Mostly averted in ''Film/{{Adventureland}}'', where the soundtrack is more obscurish songs and music from the underground of the era, rather than a standard "Greatest Hits of the 80s" type deal, though there are a few big hits like Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law" and Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again".

* ''TheWackness'', set in 1994, largely averts this with a soundtrack of mostly obscure hip-hop songs, rather than a pure {{grunge}} soundtrack one would associate with the era. However, it is ''somewhat'' anachronistic, as some of the tracks were not released until after the time period the film is set in.
* A somewhat odd example happens in ''TheWackness'' and ''Hardball'' (that Keanu Reeves baseball flick) Where The NotoriousBIG is constantly played. Averted in both as the main character in ''TheWackness'' constantly carries a walkman with him. And in Reeves in ''Hardball'' requests it at a bar.

* ''TheWood'' has 80's rap and R&B hits during the flashbacks to 1986.

* ''TakeMeHomeTonight'' runs on this trope as you can guess from the title(it was also titled "Kids In America" at one point).
* ''IronMan3'' opens with "Blue (Da Ba Dee)", heralding a flashback to New Year's Eve, 1999.

* The repeats of TopOfThePops from TheSeventies on BBC Four provide an excellent RealLife deconstruction of this trope. The entire show's premise being ''literally'' NothingButHits- whatever was trending upwards in the singles chart- but that means everything, including the now-obscure ones and embarrassing novelty records like Disco Duck...

* JohnWaters averts the trope in the soundtracks to his historical epics ''{{Hairspray}}'' and ''Film/{{Cry-Baby}}''. John Waters' passion is trolling record stores, collecting obscure regional hits from that time period. Those were from the days when a start-up band could drop a recording to the local radio deejay and make it big. Waters actually released a multi-disc CD collection of some of his favorites he found on his record store journeys. He even mentions in interviews most of his 50s-60s era movies were a love letter to that period in the music industry's history.

* The movies ''ForrestGump'' and ''RememberTheTitans'' used only well-known songs in their soundtracks, and a ''hell'' of a lot of them; there are enough songs included that roughly 90% of each movie contains a hit song, and no two scenes in either flick re-use the same tune.

* CallTheMidwife averts this. There is TONS of music in the show, but the soundtrack (which has 100 songs!) has fairly obscure 50s hits as well as the standards.

** ''AmericanDreams'' was notorious for its musical anachronisms. The very first scene in the entire series features Stevie Wonder's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" playing while the caption reads, "Philadelphia, 1963"...not only three years before the song we're hearing was recorded, but arguably the biggest three-year gap of the rock era in terms of how music changed.

** Except for the times when it's in-universe in ''Remember The Titans'', such as when the team sings Ain't No Mountain or "Na Na Na Goodbye"

* Many movies set in the very early 90's will include ''Fight The Power'' by PublicEnemy. ''BuffaloSoldiers'', ''{{Jarhead}}'' and ''ThreeKings'' all used it.

* Used as a plot point in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid Peace Walker''; Big Boss obtains a recording of his mentor's voice talking to an Englishwoman he doesn't recognize. The only problem is that in the background of the recording, the Live In Japan of the song "Sing" by The Carpenters is playing, a song that was a hit ([[CreatorProvincialism in Japan]]) in 1974, and [[BackFromTheDead his mentor died in 1964]].

* Played straight in an ironic sort of way in ''[[Film/Pleasantville]]'', where we hear Buddy' Holly's "Rave On" on a jukebox at exactly the time (April 1958) and place (a teen hang-out) that song would have been heard in real life - but probably NOT in Pleasantville, where anything the least bit unorthodox or controversial (which rock and roll certainly was back then) literally didn't exist.

* Played straight in an ironic sort of way in ''Film/Pleasantville'', where we hear Buddy' Holly's "Rave On" on a jukebox at exactly the time (April 1958) and place (a teen hang-out) that song would have been heard in real life - but probably NOT in Pleasantville, where anything the least bit unorthodox or controversial (which rock and roll certainly was back then) literally didn't exist.

* Played straight in an ironic sort of way in ''Pleasantville'', where we hear Buddy' Holly's "Rave On" on a jukebox at exactly the time (April 1958) and place (a teen hang-out) that song would have been heard in real life - but probably NOT in Pleasantville, where anything the least bit unorthodox or controversial (which rock and roll certainly was back then) literally didn't exist.

** Except for the times when it's in-universe in "RemembertheTitans", such as when the team sings Ain't No Mountain or "Na Na Na Goodbye"

In addition to giving a clear indication as to the time period of a scene, this allows the audience to only be exposed to elements of pop culture that have aged relatively well. If even the most iconic songs of a decade often seem rather dated and silly nowadays, the big hits of the summer that were promptly forgotten would be rather painful for the modern audience to experience, what with the evolving aesthetic sensibilities. Unless they are [[StylisticSuck deliberately picked]] from the worst of the worst. Oldies radio stations in the real world do the same thing: What you loved when you were 15 is different from what you want to hear on an oldies station when you are forty. To use an example: a "love" song from before TheNineties about teenage girls now comes across as stalker-ish, if not outright sexist or misogynistic to a modern adult.

If your show is set after 1930, then at some point a radio will be heard. It will only be playing well-known songs that, with hindsight, are seen as the coolest or most iconic of their era. Never any of the novelty singles, one-hit wonders or any form of teen pop that would have been on genuine radio stations of the period. If a movie marquee is seen, it will be showing a well-known classic of the period. Newspaper headlines will be the stories that everyone remembers, and televisions will always be showing either a famous opening sequence (''{{MASH}}'', ''TheMaryTylerMooreShow'', etc.) or a famous scene (such as the chocolate factory scene from ''ILoveLucy'').

* Semi-averted in ''AmericanGraffiti''; while there are plenty of familiar hits like "Rock Around the Clock" or "Johnny B. Goode", you also get such relatively obscure rock and R&B singles as the Five Satins' "To the Aisle" or the Heartbeats' "A Thousand Miles Away". (Granted, that film ''was'' only a decade removed from the period it depicted...)

* Averted somewhat in ''AmericanGraffiti''; while there are plenty of familiar hits like "Rock Around the Clock" or "Johnny B. Goode", you also get such relatively obscure rock and R&B singles as the Five Satins' "To the Aisle" or the Heartbeats' "A Thousand Miles Away". (Granted, that film ''was'' only a decade removed from the period it depicted...)

* ''Film/{{Watchmen}}'' uses some famous period pieces to date its flashbacks; the way the music combines with the visuals ranges from acceptable to horribly Narmy. The use of ''Ride of the Valkyries,'' in particular, is cited as [[Film/ApocalypseNow an awkward period film reference]]. On the other hand, the opening credits, a photo-montage of the in-universe history of superheroes, is set to "[[BobDylan The Times They Are A-Changin']]", and is nothing short of ''brilliant''. As it is, one song, "All Along the Watchtower" (which is used in a scene set in 1985, by the way), certainly belongs in the film as it is the one song in the film that was used a end of chapter quote in the original LimitedSeries.

This is likely to occur in a MisterSandmanSequence, though in that case the song would likely be playing on the film's soundtrack rather than within the scene itself. A sub-trope of SmallReferencePools. Related to NostalgiaFilter.

** In fact, it's so rare that when ''MadMen'' used Tomorrow Never Knows from Revolver at the end of an episode, [[http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/how-mad-men-landed-the-beatles-all-you-need-is-love-and-250000/ it made the New York Times]].

* Mostly averted in ''Film/{{Adventureland}}'', where the soundtrack is more obscurish songs and music from the underground of the era, rather than a standard "Greatest Hits of the 80s" type deal, though there are a few big hits like Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law" and Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again.