Super Mario Bros theme to become first video game music in US Library of Congress
The original 1985 theme from Super Mario Bros, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You and Madonna’s 1984 album Like a Virgin are among “the defining sounds of the nation’s history and culture” to be given places in the US national recording registry, the Library of Congress has announced.
The Super Mario Bros music, officially known as the Ground Theme, written by the young Nintendo composer Koji Kondo, becomes the first music from a video game to enter the registry, which the library called “the most recognisable video game theme in history”. The tune has appeared in countless Mario-related incarnations.
In all, 25 albums, singles and other sound artefacts spanning more than a century are being inducted into the registry, from the first known recording of mariachi music in 1908 and 1909 by Cuarteto Coculense, to 2012’s Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra by the composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
Queen Latifah becomes the first female rapper with a recording in the registry with the inclusion of her 1989 album All Hail the Queen, whose songs include the feminist anthem Ladies First.
Individual songs making the list include a pair of 80s standards: Flashdance … What a Feeling by Irene Cara (1983) and Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics (1983), plus John Lennon’s Imagine (1971), Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven (1971), John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads (1971) and Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.
Full albums getting recognition include 1970’s Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, 1983’s Synchronicity by the Police, and 1985’s Black Codes (From the Underground) by the jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.
The inductees include two nonmusical entries, the astronomer Carl Sagan’s recording of his book about humanity’s place in the universe, Pale Blue Dot, and the NBC radio reporter Dorothy Thompson’s commentaries and analysis from Europe during the run-up to the second world war in 1939.