Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters (PatC's Spooky Mixes)

"Ghostbusters" is a 1984 song recorded by Ray Parker, Jr. as the theme to the film of the same name starring Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 11th in 1984, and stayed there for three weeks. It also peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart on September 16th 1984, where it stayed for three weeks. The song is performed in the key of B major.

It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song, but lost to Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You".

According to Parker, he was approached by the film's producers to create a theme song for the film. Unfortunately, he only had a few days to do so and the film's title seemed impossible to include in any lyrics. However, when watching television late at night, Parker saw a cheap commercial for a local service that reminded him that the film had a similar commercial featured for the fictional business. This inspired him to write the song as a pseudo-advertising jingle that the business could have commissioned as a promotion.

Parker was later the defendant in a copyright infringement lawsuit which claimed "Ghostbusters" was too similar in musical structure to "I Want a New Drug", written and performed by Huey Lewis and the News (more specifically, the guitar riff which runs through the song). "I Want a New Drug" was a U.S. top-ten hit earlier the same year. The two parties settled out of court. Details of the settlement (specifically, that Parker paid Lewis a settlement) were confidential until 2001, when Lewis commented on the payment in an episode of VH1's Behind the Music. Parker subsequently sued Lewis for breaching confidentiality. Coincidentally, Lewis had at one point been asked to record a theme song for the movie, but turned it down because he was writing songs for the Back To The Future soundtrack