Songs that you have been hearing your entire life but have never known the name of ...until now!

Post here when you finally learn the name of a tune you've known since forever.

today for me it was this damn thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ALPzS0QfQ
Quincy Jones - Soul Bossa Nova

i learned that after buying a street sounds jazz dance record compiled by gilles peterson and it's kind of strange that it was considered hipster music in 1987, because it seems so corny now

Kind of hard not to think of Austin Powers when you hear that song now.

What hipsters were listening to that in 1987, or was that a typo?

i currently have a neighbor, in the building across the back courtyard, who loves to play Soul Bossa Nova. I like it fine until it gets stuck in my head at which time it transforms into the most irritable of earworms.

and by play it i mean on the saxophone, not the record.

What hipsters were listening to that in 1987, or was that a typo?

London soulboy rare-groove straight-no-chaser jazz-hat crew in the days before acid jazz became a thing

ian that sounds like pure torture tbh

I'm glad I'm able to find the humor and fun in it, because yeah, I can see it driving a person absolutely mad. It's not the only thing he plays, but it's one he plays a LOT. or she. might be a lady saxophonist.

here you go josefa, london beatnik latin jazz hipsters4u:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMH-__-QHck

Kind of hard not to think of Austin Powers when you hear that song now.

This was used as the theme song to a 70s Canadian game show named Definition:

The show's theme song was taken from "Soul Bossa Nova", an instrumental jazz piece by Quincy Jones. The program's use of "Soul Bossa Nova" led both to the Canadian hip hop band Dream Warriors sampling the song for their 1991 hit "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style", and to Mike Myers using the song as the theme music to the Austin Powers film series.

Yeah this is interesting. I was a teenage hipster in ‘87 but was unaware of this London thing which I guess evolved into acid jazz, which became a thing in the US only in the ‘90s afaik. Deee-Lite putting the Herbie Hancock sample into “Groove Is in the Heart” was maybe my first inkling of this trend.

Today, watching the credits to the Super Mario movie (thumbs down!), I learned that this familiar theme is called "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" (popularly known as “Habanera”):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M03cX2KcZsI

I went to the Dingwalls Sunday afternoon jazz thing in 87 or 88 a few times. Good fun, good grooves . Used to see Eddie Pillar down there a lot. He used to be a member of a local mod bunch in Woodford Green when I was a teen .

I didn’t know the title as a kid, but “Habanera” is immediately recognizable to anyone who grew up watching Gilligan’s Island.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JQ8yF04y9o

I remember years ago having a conversation with people I was working with about what this piece of music and finding out what it was. Since then I'd forgotten again so here's "The Devil's Galop" by Charles Williams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgbFzl3F-ts

A LOT of classical stuff allies here.

ah those are both good ones - think i knew habanera was from carmen, but would never have known what it was called. have never even heard of charles williams though, good shout!

Related thread - there are some playlists on there iirc
Instrumental Pieces that Everyone Knows but that Hardly Anyone Knows the Name/Composer Of

Instrumental Pieces that Everyone Knows but that Hardly Anyone Knows the Name/Composer Of

well, I now see that was a superfluous post

dammit

There's also this thread:

RFI: The origin of that stereotypical "oriental" song that plays in movies and is also featured in "China Girl"

... which mentions this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_riff

Kind of hard not to think of Austin Powers when you hear that song now.

― morrisp.fandom.com (morrisp), Sunday, April 16, 2023 5:08 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

For me it's Dream Warriors