Unchained Melody

When the 1990 film Ghost featured the Righteous Brothers' recording of "Unchained Melody", the 1965 track found a new audience decades after its release. The song had already been a jukebox standard, with Bobby Hatfield singing a solo that many later covers were based on, since he had changed the melody in the final verse. In 2004 the recording placed at number 27 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.

The song itself began with Alex North, who in 1954 was contracted to compose the score for the prison film Unchained, released the following year. He had a melody written in the 1930s and, when asked to build a song from the movie's theme, he turned to Hy Zaret for lyrics. Zaret first refused, but the two eventually wrote "Unchained Melody" together. The title word never appears in the lyrics; Zaret declined the producer's request to include it and instead wrote about someone longing for a lover unseen for a "long, lonely time".

Todd Duncan sang the song in the film, performing it as one of the prisoners while another accompanied him on guitar. The song earned an Oscar nomination for 1955, though the award went to "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing". Over 1,500 recordings by more than 670 singers have since been made.