When we think about some of our favorite songs, we may not realize that many of them were originally written specifically for a movie or television show and not necessarily a musician’s album. However, plenty of songs out there wouldn’t exist today unless it was for the big screen.

From a 1970s tune that didn’t get popular until Frank Sinatra covered it to a timeless ballad that is the theme song to a 1950s prison film, here are some of the best songs you forgot were made for movies and TV. Some may surprise you.

Written by Paul Simon, The Graduate’s director, Mike Nichols, accepted two shorter versions of this song for the film's soundtrack after Simon pitched the tune. The soundtrack also included a few additional pieces from the duo—"April Come She Will,” “The Sound of Silence,” and “Scarborough Fair/Canticle.”

Known as one of the Bee Gees’ biggest hits, “Stayin’ Alive” was written explicitly for Saturday Night Fever after the film’s executive producer and the band’s manager approached the trio. The Gibb brothers also contributed a handful of other songs to the movie’s soundtrack.

“Man in Motion,” the theme song for the 1985 film St. Elmo’s Fire, was impressively written, recorded, and edited in just 24 hours. As the story goes, David Foster and John Parr were hired to develop a song for the film but struggled with writer’s block. It was after Foster showed Parr a news clip about an athlete named Rick Hansen, who was raising awareness for spinal cord injuries by traveling the world in his wheelchair, that Parr became inspired.

This heart-tugging love song first appeared as the theme for the 1955 prison movie Unchained, which starred Barbara Hale and Chester Morris. American opera singer, Todd Duncan, sang the film version, and The Righteous Brothers covered the ballad a decade later.

In 1984, Prince wrote “Purple Rain,” a song that appeared in his film and album of the same name. The song was such a hit that it spent two weeks on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 list after its release.

Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks was initially supposed to sing a song for this 1980 movie, but she couldn't because of her contract with Modern Records. Instead, “Call Me” producer Giorgio Moroder enlisted Debbie Harry to write and record the vocals over an instrumental track titled "Man Machine" that he created for the film. The song, which took Debbie Harry just a few hours to write the lyrics for, remains a favorite decades later.

“Don’t You (Forget About Me),” a song written by producer Keith Forsey and guitarist/songwriter Steve Schiff, and performed by Simple Minds, was developed by Forsey and Schiff while the two were scoring the film. Inspired by a scene in the movie, the song became a number-one hit.

You may be familiar with Frank Sinatra’s version of this song about the Big Apple, but it was Liza Minelli who performed it first—“New York, New York” was the theme of Martin Scorsese’s 1977 film of the same name that the songstress starred in. Perhaps surprisingly, the song didn’t reach epic heights until Sinatra belted it during his Radio City Music Hall concert in 1978.

This song, written and recorded by Dolly Parton for the film 9 to 5, won the country star two Grammys.

You may associate Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” with Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky III, but this song was originally made for the hit 1980s film, The Karate Kid. However, The Karate Kid’s director, John G. Avildsen (who also directed the original Rocky), decided to go with another track. Audiences loved this song so much in Rocky III that it was nominated for Best Original Song during the 1982 Academy Awards.