How's THIS:

Had I had a piano that would light up like that when practicing classical pieces, though, I'd likely have stuck with it! LOL

My brother didn't NEED lights! (and he's still got the piano Dad bought for us 70? years ago!!!)

I love Sting and Mary Blige doing “whenever I say your name” which was taken from one of Bach’s harpsichord pieces

Here are two sites with lots of them.

Classical Music In Popular Songs: You Know More Classical Music Than You Think
https://www.vpr.org/programs/2016-02-01/classical-music-in-popular-songs-you-know-more-classical-music-than-you-think

17 pop songs you didn’t know were directly inspired by classical music
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/pop-songs-sample-based-on-classical-music/


Oh my! Why didn't I think of that one?

So, here's a treat, and one obscure one.
Treat: Bizet's music exactly, in a movie set in the 20th century (by Otto Preminger) and starring Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge in "Carmen Jones". Love the names. Escamillo the bull fighter is Husky Miller, the prize figher. So are the others.

Wikipedia says:

The majority of the actors performing the songs in the film Carmen Jones were dubbed. Even singer Harry Belafonte was dubbed (by LeVern Hutcherson), and Dorothy Dandridge was dubbed by Marilyn Horne (long before Horne became a well-known opera singer).

and there's

I limited my "search" to popular music (except for Carmen Jones) because classical music in movies is endless. I grew up listening to Boston Pops concerts with Arthur Fiedler, and the last third of each concert was all "popular" and movie music.

Leonard Bernstein was composing crossover classical/popular/Broadway music after Gershwin.

BTW. Eddie Duchin's theme song, from Chopin.

Great thread. Brings back memories.

so did Vincent Minelli!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kismet_(1955_film)

Played in it, in high school.

He's the only organic chemist to do so, AFAIK.

Lots of composers, and POETS, had other jobs.

have been a "thing."

The Pachelbel Canon in D-- you want to hear music directly inspired by that? Listen to the soundtrack from "Somewhere in Time," not Maroon 5.

And John Denver's "Annie's Song?" Yes, there is a bit that might have been inspired, but it is a pretty minimal bit from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. Really minimal, but I do hear it in the second movement with the horns.

I'll have to listen to some of the others.

Eric Carmen acknowledges incorporating. I really can't imagine John Denver knowingly did. The others? Possibly.