Exec DEMANDED Icon Write Song Around COMPLEX MOVIE TITLE…How He SOLVED It & Hit #1-Professor of Rock

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Published on October 31, 2023 3:00:10 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-0JcXH_khU

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Coming up. IN 1984 a film starring SNL alumni Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd called Ghostbusters needed a theme song badly but scores of artists had tried or been approached but nothing was working. Ray Parker Jr. came in with just days to go before the song was due… but he had nothing and he had the challenge of fitting the strange and very long movie title into the chorus. But what rhymes with Ghostbusters??? Well one night at 3 in the morning Ray Parker was watching TV half awake when a pest control ad came and right there the song’s genesis came to him… the idea became one of the most recognizable songs ever.. this artist tells the story next on professor of rock

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WITH HALLOWEEN COMING UP, I wanted to share this fascinating interview about a song that is always played this time of year. In 1984 the producers behind a new movie starring SNL alumni Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd along with Harold Ramis were getting ready for release but the movie needed a big theme song. The powers that be behind the film wanted something monumental. They had an exact sound they wanted and they wanted the title of the movie in the chorus GHOSTBUSTERS and what rhymes with that?

And they wanted it fast. They had already rejected 50-plus songs for the film and approached many different artists. According to an article from Medium titled The Freaky Legacy of the Ghostbusters theme song from 2016. Huey Lewis was one of the artists approached. He allegedly turned it down. In the medium article, it states: "In 1984, Huey Lewis famously sued Ray Parker Jr., suggesting that “Ghostbusters” ripped off his 1983 hit “I Want a New Drug.” The two parties settled out of court and agreed to keep the details of the suit confidential.

Also noted in the Medium article which is a fascinating read, I’ll link to it below, Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman admitted to Esquire in 2014 that scenes in the 1984 film were originally cut to Lewis’ song. He said and I quote: “We kept looking for a song for the montage in the middle of the movie. I was a big Huey Lewis fan, and I put in ‘I Want a New Drug,’ as a temp score for screenings. And it seemed to be a perfect tempo, and we cut the montage to that tempo. When it was time to mix the movie, someone introduced me to Ray Parker Jr., and he came back with a song called ‘Ghostbusters’ that has basically the same kind of riff in it. But it was a totally original song, original lyrics, original everything.”

In the same article Ray Parker Jr. would say: “To me, that was an impossible song to write. The first thing they said was ‘I want it up-tempo, I want this, I want that.’ And I said, ‘Oh that’s easy, I’m a musician, I can cut it.’ Then he says I want the word ‘Ghostbusters’ in it… I’m like ‘How am I going to sing Ghostbusters in a song? I’m ruined here, it’s never going to happen! To me, I had to almost make it into a commercial.”