Worst to Best: 32 Songs from Movies That Made the Pop Charts, 1970-1974

Back in October, I compiled a ranked list of songs from movies that made the pop charts between the years 1965 and 1969 with the intention of doing the same for other five-year spans. If you’ve been waiting on the sequel, well, wait no longer. The early 1970s sent many movie songs onto the charts, from blaxploitation classics to sappy, Oscar-winning themes written for disaster movies to novelty hits from genres that usually didn’t get pop radio airplay. I tried to include every soundtrack hit to make the Billboard Hot 100. That, unfortunately, meant some of the era’s best movie songs did not make the list, like tracks from The Harder They Come and Harold and Maude and some blaxploitation films that didn’t cross over to wider audiences. But I’ve thrown a few of these onto this piece’s accompanying playlist, which you can find on Apple Music and Spotify.

Kicking things off: a drippy song about peace sung by a bunch of Satanists.

32. Coven
“One Tin Soldier (The Legend of Billy Jack),” from Billy Jack (1971)
Hot 100 Peak: #25

Unpacking the history of this anti-war hit would need an article unto itself. “One Tin Soldier” appeared on the charts in various incarnations multiple times between 1969 and 1973. The most famous version comes from Tom Laughlin’s surprise exploitation hit Billy Jack, a film about promoting peace by defeating rednecks with martial arts, and it features vocals by Coven, a group otherwise best known for pro-Satan albums like Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls, which boasted of containing “the first Black Mass to be recorded, either in written words or in audio.” You wouldn’t suspect that from vocalist Jinx Dawson’s impassioned rendition of a tale of two warring tribes, a wispy hippie fantasia that simply would not go away for a few years, thanks in part to the hit film associated with it.

31. Andy Williams
"Speak Softly Love (Love Theme From The Godfather),” from The Godfather (1972)
Hot 100 Peak: #34

How popular was The Godfather? So popular that multiple versions of Nino Rota’s theme made runs at the pop chart during the film’s release. None proved more successful than Andy Williams’ rendition, which adds an English lyric to Rota’s music. It’s hard to call this addition an improvement, but it’s not like Rota’s theme was some sacrosanct piece of music that no one had altered before. In fact, the theme dates back to Rota’s score for the 1958 film Fortunella and had already been fitted with lyrics in several languages by 1972. (It’s for this reason that the film had its Best Original Score nomination pulled before the ceremony.) Williams was just the latest to attempt it. He might also be the sappiest, however, which might explain why you might never have heard this version, as popular as it was in its day.

30. Sammy Davis Jr.
“The Candy Man,” from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Hot 100 Peak: #1

Look, let me just state up top that apart from admiring Gene Wilder’s performance, my fondness for the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, a cloying exercise in kid-friendly psychedelia, falls well short of almost everyone else’s I’ve talked to about the film. I can’t say I care for the soundtrack either, including this song, which became Sammy Davis Jr.’s only chart-topping hit. Is this as bad as Johnny Cash and Chuck Berry having huge late-career hits with, respectively, “A Boy Named Sue” and “My  Ding-a-Ling”? No. Is it a lot better? Well… I don’t think so, but I’ve been “wrong” about this movie in seemingly everyone else’s eyes since I was a boy, so what do I know?

29. Maureen McGovern
“We May Never Love Like This Again” from The Towering Inferno (1974)
Hot 100 Peak: #83

Songwriters Al Kasha and Joel Hirschborn won an Oscar for “The Morning After,” their contribution to the soundtrack of The Poseidon Adventure, then had a big pop hit with the song after it was recorded by Maureen McGovern (see below, but not much further). So why not try another team-up? Though the song won another Oscar—beating out, among other songs, the theme to Blazing Saddles and another McGovern-recorded number, “Wherever Love Takes Me,” from Gold—the overblown results don’t make the reunion sound like a good idea.

28. Andy Williams
"(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story,” from Love Story (1970)
Hot 100 Peak: #9

What can you say about a song this sappy that reached the top 10? That at least it’s better than what Williams did to the Godfather theme? That it’s not as bad as Williams’ nearly 10-minutes long 1979 disco version?

27. Maureen McGovern
“The Morning After (Song from The Poseidon Adventure)” from The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Hot 100 Peak: #1

Though “The Morning After” can be heard in The Poseidon Adventure, this recording didn’t make an appearance until after the song won the Best Original Song Oscar, peaking on the charts nearly nine months after the film’s release. That’s a long run for a piece of melodic melodrama that works better when heard in the film than over and over in the real world.

26. Vincent Bell
“Airport Love Theme,” from Airport (1970)
Hot 100 Peak: #31

This cover of Alfred Newman’s grandiose theme to the trendsetting disaster movie wouldn’t be pure easy-listening cheese were it not led by Vincent Bell, a veteran studio musician-turned-electronic instrument pioneer whose innovations include the electric sitar. What’s an electric sitar, you ask? Well, you’ve probably heard it on the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby” and other hits of the period without knowing what it was. Here, Bell makes it sound like a cross between a guitar and a Moog, giving the track an unexpected otherworldly quality that doesn’t quite fit in with the fairly standard arrangement around it.

25. The Carpenters
“Bless the Beasts and Children,” from Bless the Beasts and Children (1971)
Hot 100 Peak: #67

Originally released as a b-side to “Superstar,” the Carpenters’ rendition of the theme to Stanley Kramer’s coming-of-age film ended up being a hit in its own right when DJs flipped the disc, presumably looking for something at least a little less depressing than the song on the other side.

24. Mike Oldfield
“Tubular Bells,” from The Exorcist (1973)
Hot 100 Peak: #7

In response to the success of The Exorcist, Virgin released a single containing excerpts from Mike Oldfield’s 1973 album Tubular Bells, which is memorably used in the film. Oldfield wasn’t thrilled about having his album—whose two tracks each fill a full LP side—cut up without his authorization, but that didn’t stop the single from becoming a hit. (Oldfield would later issue his own version, “Mike Oldfield’s Single (Theme from Tubular Bells).”) As memorable as the music is in the movie, it’s not hard to see Oldfield’s point of view. What sounds eerie in the context of the film and hypnotic at album length doesn’t work nearly as well when cut down to the size of a 7”.