According to a fascinating blog post on Spinditty, ‘Unchained Melody’ was written for a 1955 little-known film called Unchained, which is how the song got it’s title. This song became one of the most popular songs for artists to record in the 20th century -over 1,500 recordings of “Unchained Melody” have been made by more than 670 artists, in multiple languages.

The most popular version is this one by The Righteous Brothers, recorded in 1965. Critics described it as “a record designed to reduce anyone separated from the one they loved to a “pile of mush”.