An estimated 98% of us experience earworms. Despite the annoying times that we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things ever.

We here at Nerdist are dead-set on bringing you those types of songs, if only for the weekend. We’ll be scouring the internet for the best earworms we can shove into your meaty brains!

Have you seen the amazing music video for “The Bumps Gonna Goose Ya” by our very own Ben Mekler and Malik Forté? The video is an homage to the odd habit of some movies – especially scary blockbusters – to have a tie-in song with a popular artist of that time. It’s clearly smart marketing because as much as we can scoff at them now, I would wager there isn’t a person out there that doesn’t know every word to Will Smith’s “Men In Black” or “Wild Wild West” (to a lesser extent). These songs were very good cross-promotional moves and will be in our heads for Will-leniums to come.

I absolutely love “The Bumps Gonna Goose Ya” and truly believe it can stand proudly in the genre it’s actually lampooning. So much so that it’s been in my head all week and got me thinking about other songs that were woven into the fabric of movies. Let’s begin.

MC Hammer – Addams Groove

Most likely serving as the main inspiration for “The Bumps Gonna Goose Ya” was the MC Hammer’s 1991 movie tie-in song, “Addams Groove.” Despite actually winning awards for being a terrible song, it did surprisingly well on US and international charts. This video serves as a perfect example for what music videos could accomplish. Showing quick scenes from the movie it was featured in got fans excited prior to its release. Oh the golden age of videos like this might only be topped by one that appears to have been made with no input from what the movie actually was about.

Ray Park Jr. – Ghostbusters

Bustin’ makes us ALL feel good, Ray Parker Jr., but what makes us feel uneasy is seeing you terrorize this poor woman with ’80s pop. She’s clearly tired and needs to get to sleep in her entirely neon house and you pop out from under her bed? Do you know how much it takes to power a house made entirely of neon lights? She has to work hard for that electric bill and probably has work in the morning. Take your three random backup singer kids and leave her be! Also, why are Chevy Chase, John Candy, Jeffrey Tambor, George Wendt, Al Franken, Danny DeVito, Carly Simon, Peter Falk, and Teri Garr there too? Yes, all of them. Explain yourself, Ray Parker Jr.!

I haven’t timed it, but there might be more movie footage than actual “music video” in this one but hey, it worked and we all loved it. In fact, we loved it so much that “We need another hip hop rap song for the next one” is probably a sentence Dan Aykroyd said at some point and people actually listened to him…

Run-DMC – Ghostbusters

Technically a remixed version of the original, this might be the version I favor just a bit more but that’s mostly due to Run-DMC being so much better than Ray Parker Jr. in pretty much every conceivable way. Also, no weird under-bed surprises in this one.

As with most of these earworm articles, my brain hits a point where it just needs to ruin everything, so I apologize for the next video. Not because of the group or even the song but for the movie it was a part of.

Digital Underground – All Around the World (from Nothing But Trouble)

Oh boy, what can I say? So, it’s not a song that was worked into the promotion of the movie, but man was it shoe-horned into the plot. This movie doles out equal parts nightmare fuel and WTF moments. It stands as a reminder Dan Aykroyd should not be given too much say in any movie project ever but I have to hand it to him if he had any say in getting Digital Underground to make a cameo. Nothing But Trouble came out the same year as Addams Family Values did but clearly to none of the acclaim. This scene, as weird as it is, might be the only saving grace to it other than watching it for sheer “so bad it’s good” qualities.

I’ve gotten off track. This article is about how much I love to hate Nothing But Trouble, right? How I’ve seen it more times than I’d like to admit and am scarred for life watching Aykroyd remove parts of his face. Or how the hot dog train scene turns my stomach to this day!? Or how I love the fact 2-pac sings the falsetto in the musical number? Oh. It’s not about that. Right. Apologies. Those repressed feelings are for another article someday.

What are your favorite movie tie-in songs? Let me know in the comments below!

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Featured Image: Arista/Wikimedia/Warner Bros.

Blake Rodgers writes for Nerdist from Chicago IL where he lives happily with his Guinness World Record for High Fives. You can be his pal by following him on Twitter (@TheBlakeRodgers)