Queen Latifah and the Super Mario Bros just made history together
Queen Latifah and Mario
Queen Latifah and Super Mario Bros. now officially share a historic honor (besides the superlative for Most Impeccable Taste In Hats).
On April 12, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced the 25 new songs joining the National Recording Registry in 2023. Already home to 600 recordings (a small sliver of the national library’s recorded sound collection of nearly 4 million items), the registry collects “audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time based on their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage.”
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As of today, that includes Queen Latifah’s 1989 album All Hail The Queen—making her the first female rapper included in the registry—and composer Koji Kondo’s 1985 theme for Super Mario Bros, the first audio from a video game to earn inclusion.
An album that grapples with race, gender, and “social issues that were both contemporary and yet remain universal,” the Library of Congress credits All Hail The Queen with demonstrating unequivocally that “rap could be female, Afrocentric, and incorporate a fusion of musical genres.” Latifah’s debut album, All Hail The Queen capitalized on Latifah’s dexterity as both a contralto and an MC, setting her squarely on course to becoming the decorated multi-hyphenate she is today.
Meanwhile, the Super Mario Bros. theme—“perhaps the most recognizable video game theme in history,” per the Library of Congress—has always been integral to Mario’s larger-than-life world (which recently spawned the biggest opening for an animated film in history). Beyond serving as a cultural touchstone for countless gamers and an irrefutable earworm, the theme also proved “that the five-channel Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sound chip was capable of vast musical complexity and creativity” and “laid the groundwork for an entire generation of chiptune musicians.”
This year’s new registry additions also included a wide variety of seminal works hailing from 1908 to 2012. Mariah Carey’s inescapable carol “All I Want For Christmas Is You”—the best-selling holiday record ever recorded by a female artist—made the cut, along with Daddy Yankee’s “seismic-shifting” 2004 reggaeton hit “Gasolina” and Jimmy Buffett’s beloved ode to just hanging out, “Margaritaville.” Dive into the full list of this year’s new additions to the National Recording Registry below:
1. “The Very First Mariachi Recordings” — Cuarteto Coculense (1908-1909)
2. “St. Louis Blues” — Handy’s Memphis Blues Band (1922)
3. “Sugar Foot Stomp” — Fletcher Henderson (1926)
4. Dorothy Thompson: Commentary and Analysis of the European Situation for NBC Radio
(Aug. 23-Sept. 6, 1939)
5. “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around” — The Fairfield Four (1947)
6. “What the World Needs Now is Love” — Jackie DeShannon (1965)
7. “Wang Dang Doodle” — Koko Taylor (1966)
8. “Sherry” — The Four Seasons (1962)
9. “Ode to Billie Joe” — Bobbie Gentry (1967)
10. “Déjà Vu” — Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (1970)
11. “Imagine” — John Lennon (1971)
12. “Stairway to Heaven” — Led Zeppelin (1971)
13. “Take Me Home, Country Roads” — John Denver (1971)
14. “Margaritaville” — Jimmy Buffett (1977)
15. “Flashdance...What a Feeling” — Irene Cara (1983)
16. “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)“ — Eurythmics (1983)
17. “Synchronicity” — The Police (1983)
18. “Black Codes (From the Underground)“ — Wynton Marsalis (1985)
19. Super Mario Bros. theme — Koji Kondo, composer (1986)
20. “Like a Virgin” — Madonna (1984)
21. “All Hail the Queen” — Queen Latifah (1989)
22. “All I Want for Christmas is You” — Mariah Carey (1994)
23. “Pale Blue Dot” — Carl Sagan (1994)
24. “Gasolina” — Daddy Yankee (2004)
25. “Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra— Northwest Chamber Orchestra, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, composer (2012)
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