“Unchained Melody”, Roy Hamilton, 1955, Alex North and Hy Zaret. #1 on the R&B Best Sellers chart.

This is a song that lots and lots of people have covered, and R&B singer Roy Hamilton was one such person, and he had a big hit with it, and it is the first song in our countdown. You may not know his version, but you probably know a version.

Anyway, if you’re only casually familiar with the song, by anybody, you may not know about the title. You might think that the songwriters considered their new composition and said, “What we’ve got here is a song that derives its grandeur from the possibility of love overcoming great distance and time, and that may inspire in its listeners a sense of freedom. We could just pick out one of the lyrics and call the song that, like, ‘My Love, My Darling,’ or similar. That would work. But I have an idea: for the title, we could dispense with the lyrics altogether and just refer to the song in terms of the emotional and musical liberation we’re trying to evoke. We can call it ‘Unchained Melody’.”

You might think that. That would be a better story. But no. It’s called that because it’s from a prison movie called Unchained. It’s not “Unchained Melody” so much as it’s ‘the Unchained melody’.

Oh well.