10 Songs That Became More Famous Than Their Movies

3. New York, New York - New York, New York

An unofficial anthem for the Big Apple, the theme for the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade, played after midnight at New Year in Times Square and at masses of games for the city's sports teams, the Yankees, Rangers and Knicks, New York, New York feels like one of those old standards that has been around forever. Best known in the version recorded by Frank Sinatra, it's probably Ol' Blue Eyes' most familiar song but for My Way and, as a result, many people imagine it goes back to the big band era of the 50s and 60s. Actually, though, Sinatra's version didn't appear until his 1980 album Trilogy, making it a more recent hit than much of this list. New York, New York (or rather Theme From New York, New York to distinguish it from the Leonard Bernstein song of the same title that genuinely did belong to the big band golden age) was originally performed by Liza Minelli in the movie called, yes, New York, New York. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KJQNMqVIug Made in between their much more famed and successful collaborations Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, this Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro musical tribute to their home town flopped on release, making a box office loss, its retro stylings not finding the kind of on screen audience that the old school nature of the song found quite easily away from the movie. John Kander, who composed the music alongside lyricist Fred Ebb, would go on to say that for all that the film failed, De Niro was at least responsible for the song's success when he rejected Kander's original theme as "too weak".