“Somewhere over the Rainbow” by Judy Garland

Judy Garland sang "Somewhere over the Rainbow", or plain "Over the Rainbow", as Dorothy Gale in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz; Harold Arlen wrote the music and Yip Harburg the words. It comes about five minutes in, after Aunt Em, Uncle Henry and the farmhands all brush off Dorothy's story of Toto's run-in with the town spinster, Miss Gulch. Told to find somewhere she can't get into trouble, she wanders off with her dog and starts to sing.

It very nearly hit the cutting-room floor: the studio thought a slow ballad that early dragged the story, and only the film's producer and director kept it in. It took home the Oscar for Best Original Song, turned into Garland's signature, and in 2017 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.