Actors lip-synching to a singer’s voice in a film is hardly a rare occurrence in the film industry, but it is somewhat more extraordinary to have that lip-synched song become one of the singer’s biggest hits, despite them not being the face most people saw singing the track for the first time. LeAnn Rimes’ 2000 pop hit, “Can’t Fight the Moonlight”, is a notable exception. Most millennial women will, of course, recognize this song as the theme to Coyote Ugly.
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The cult classic centers around Violent Sanford, an aspiring songwriter who moves to New York City and begins working at a trendy, bartop-dancing joint called Coyote Ugly. In true Y2K movie fashion, this rough-around-the-edges main character eventually realizes her dreams by landing a record deal after LeAnn Rimes, playing herself in the movie, cuts a version of a song that Sanford wrote. Rimes really did cut the track (and she’s the one singing Sanford’s parts, with a few post-production modifications to make it more realistic), but it was Diane Warren who wrote it.
At only 17 years old, Rimes told Entertainment Tonight that the on-set experience was “quite a shock to the system. I was trying to be this sexy singer performing on a bar, and that was so opposite of me. I was really acting at the time ‘cause I was still figuring all that out about myself.”
Feelings of teenage awkwardness aside, the film soundtrack garnered Rimes her first hit in the U.K.
Leann Rimes Scored Her First No. 1 U.K. Hit at 18 Years Old
The catchiness of Diane Warren’s key-changing pop tune, “Can’t Fight the Moonlight”, and the emotional impact of the song’s inclusion in the film Coyote Ugly combined to make this song one of the top hits of the early 2000s. It topped the charts worldwide, including the U.K., the Netherlands, Sweden, and Australia, among others. “Can’t Fight the Moonlight” was also a Top 20 hit in Canada and the U.S. Considering singer LeAnn Rimes was only 18 years old at the time, the international feat is even more impressive (and, for Rimes, utterly life-changing).
“Can’t Fight the Moonlight” continues to bring joy both to Rimes and the people for whom she performs it, telling Entertainment Tonight, “People really do feel so nostalgic about the music and about the film in general. But the music really has seemed to stick with people for all this time, and they passed it down to their daughters. There’s just something about it.”
The Coyote Ugly track was also the impetus for Rimes’ remixing nearly all of her songs into dance versions, cementing her status as a country-pop crossover star. “When I make a record, as we’re making the album, we are talking about who we can work with for the dance mixes of all the tracks. It’s something that goes parallel with the regular record these days,” Rimes told Outsmart in 2017. “To be embraced like that is fantastic.”
As the song itself says, “You can’t fight it. It’s gonna get to your heart.” And indeed, “Can’t Fight the Moonlight” does exactly that.
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