If you grew up in the early '80s, Christopher Cross' “Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)” is one of those songs you know well.
You didn't even have to see Arthur to know the song. It was everywhere. On the radio. In the supermarket. Coming through the speakers at the mall. Playing in the background while somebody's mom was driving you somewhere in the family station wagon.
And that opening? “Once in your life you find her…” Yep. There it is. Instant time machine.
Released in 1981, “Arthur's Theme” was written by Christopher Cross along with Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager and Peter Allen for the Dudley Moore movie Arthur. It became Cross' second No. 1 hit and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
But honestly, none of that explains why the song still works. It's the feeling.
“Arthur's Theme” has that very particular early-'80s magic where everything sounds expensive, romantic, and just a little bit melancholy. The keyboards shimmer and the vocals are impossibly smooth. The whole thing feels like it's floating three feet above the ground.
And then there's that line:
“When you get caught between the Moon and New York City…”
I mean, COME ON. Who writes a lyric like that anymore?
It sounds like a postcard from a New York that existed mostly in our imagination, glamorous, slightly lonely, romantic and filled with people who apparently had nowhere to be until midnight.
Christopher Cross was having quite a moment around this time. His self-titled debut had already given us “Sailing,” “Ride Like the Wind” and “Never Be the Same.” He was suddenly everywhere, with that distinctive voice that sounded like it had been dipped in silk.
But “Arthur's Theme” was different. It had a little more personality. A little more humor. A little more movie magic. And that was fitting because Arthur itself was such a strange little cultural phenomenon. Dudley Moore played a wealthy, perpetually drunk man-child who has to choose between the life he's expected to live and the woman he actually loves.
Somehow, Christopher Cross managed to put all of that into four minutes. You could hear it without thinking about Dudley Moore at all. It belonged to anyone who had ever been young and hopelessly romantic. Anyone who had stared out a car window at night imagining that somewhere, somehow, life was about to become much more interesting. That's what I love about these old songs, they weren't trying to be nostalgic.
Back then, it was simply a new Christopher Cross song on the radio. Now? It's 1981 all over again, and we're all just trying to do the best we can.