8 November 1990
Ever wondered why this song is called ‘Unchained Melody’? It was written as the theme for a 1955 prison drama called Unchained, that’s why. Since 1990, though, we’ve known it from a different movie: the much-parodied romantic weepie Ghost. Movie soundtrack songs had been going to number one since God was a junior infant, of course, but the ’90s is when they grew from occasional nice-to-have chart-toppers to calculated marketing-collateral juggernauts: some of the biggest (and most reviled) number ones of the decade will be romantic film themes. Here in 1990s Ireland, the stage-culchie phenomenon of ‘I Useta Lover’ had just kept one such song off the top spot: honorary Dubliner Maria McKee’s ‘Show Me Heaven’ from Days Of Thunder, which made it to number one in the UK. (Next time you hear Maria McKee shout “Cover me!” in the chorus of that song, know that on a stud farm a stallion ‘covers’ a mare.) So, this is our first big movie theme number one of the ’90s instead.
Next question: why has ‘Unchained Melody’, a song that will go to number one again and again in different iterations, consistently enjoyed such massive popularity? Well, it’s an OTT slush-fest that was easily repurposed as a ’90s power ballad, and no one has ever lost money by making those kind of records. Singers probably like it because right from the opening line it’s one money note and showboat run after another: easy shorthand for ’emotion’. The sole Righteous Brother showcased here, Bobby Hatfield, covers the whole gamut from low crooning to high yodelling and back again: technically impressive as a performance but all a lot of blustery melodrama as a record. ‘Unchained Melody’ is a reminder that they made awful records in the ’50s and ’60s too, you know.
On top of movie marketing and popular thirst for schmaltz, ‘Unchained Melody’ also had the good timing to be re-released shortly after one of the most influential hit songs of the whole decade, Mariah Carey’s ‘Vision Of Love’, had swept to number one in the US and single-handledly set the market demand for solo vocalists in the ’90s to prioritise virtuosity and volume. The millions of people who take their music like this would be in for a bumper decade. The rest of us would find ourselves more and more giving the top of the charts a miss.
