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.
"You met your match when you met me I know that you will disagree, it's crazy But opposites attract, you'll see And I won't let you get away so easy
The love you save may be your own Can't fight this feeling, aren't you tired of being alone You won't admit it, but you know it's true It's not a secret how I feel when I stand next to you"
In August of 1987, Madonna crashed and burned onscreen in a little movie called Who's That Girl. And yet, somehow, the movie's soundtrack managed to come out of the whole mess smelling like a rose.
The movie was originally supposed to be called Slammer, and I can still remember the buildup all summer long. There was a certain inevitability to it: Madonna was everywhere, so naturally we were all going to see her new movie. Casting Madonna, however, wasn't quite enough to save Who's That Girl from becoming a critical and box-office disappointment.
But that soundtrack? Now we're talking.
The title track, Who's That Girl, arrived first and promptly went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was catchy, bright, and completely unavoidable that summer. Then came Causing a Commotion.
I remember that song almost feeling like it appeared out of nowhere. One minute you weren't thinking about it, and the next minute it was lodged permanently in your head. That beat, that attitude, that unmistakable Madonna energy—it was exactly the kind of song that made you want to own the soundtrack even if you had absolutely no intention of defending the movie. Because let's be honest: every soundtrack has that one song. The song that makes you think, Well, I guess I have to buy this now.
For me, Causing a Commotion was that song. It went all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the dance chart, becoming one of those quintessential late-'80s Madonna floor-fillers that still sounds ridiculously good decades later. And then there's the backstory.
The song was written during the final, increasingly turbulent period of Madonna's marriage to Sean Penn. Their relationship was already a regular fixture in the entertainment press, with stories about Penn's violent outbursts, battles with paparazzi and the general chaos surrounding the couple.
Remember, there was no internet to immediately fact-check everything we read. We had MTV, Rolling Stone, People, Entertainment Tonight and whatever magazine happened to be sitting at the supermarket checkout. So much of what we knew about celebrities came filtered through those sources.
And from that perspective, Madonna and Sean Penn's marriage seemed every bit as complicated and combustible as the title of this song suggested. Causing a Commotion may have been attached to a movie that didn't exactly set the world on fire, but the song had a life of its own.
It's gotta be a strange twist of fate Telling me that Heaven can wait Telling me to get it right this time Life doesn't mean a thing Without the love you bring Love is what we've found The second time around
Some movie pairings are so good you desperately want to see them happen again. Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta were one of them.
After Grease became a massive cultural phenomenon, putting the two of them back together seemed like a no-brainer. They had chemistry, they could sing, they looked fantastic together, and America was still completely obsessed with them.
So naturally, Hollywood decided to put them together again. And then Hollywood apparently decided to get really weird about it.
The result was Two of a Kind, which landed in theaters in late 1983. And if you don't remember it, there's a pretty good reason for that. It bombed.
Like, really bombed.
Because while Grease gave us leather jackets, poodle skirts, teenage romance and songs that we still know every word to, Two of a Kind gave us... Four angels trying to convince God not to destroy Earth and start over.
Yep. That's the movie.
Newton-John and Travolta play two people whose relationship becomes part of a plan to save humanity from divine annihilation. Because apparently, after Grease, somebody sat around a Hollywood conference table and thought, You know what these two need? Angels. And the possible destruction of the planet. Critics were not impressed. Audiences weren't exactly lining up around the block either.
And honestly, even the combined star power of Newton-John and Travolta couldn't overcome a plot that sounded like someone had mixed a romantic comedy with a leftover Twilight Zone script.
But here's where things get interesting. The movie may have been a dud, but the soundtrack gave us a winner.
"Twist of Fate" was released as the first single from the soundtrack, and Olivia Newton-John absolutely delivered. The song climbed into the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100, giving her another major hit and ultimately becoming far more memorable than the movie itself.
In fact, if you mention Two of a Kind to most people today, there's a pretty good chance they'll respond with, "Oh yeah...that Olivia Newton-John song!"
And "Twist of Fate" is also a pretty great snapshot of where Newton-John was in her career at the time.
The days of the sweet, innocent Sandy from Grease were rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Newton-John was clearly interested in pushing beyond the good-girl image that had followed her for years, and her music and style were becoming considerably more sophisticated—and, let's be honest, a whole lot sexier. She was reinventing herself. Again.
And while Two of a Kind didn't exactly give her the comeback sequel to Grease that Hollywood was hoping for, it did give us a damn good pop song. So let's forget the angels and the questionable plot.
Just turn up "Twist of Fate" and enjoy Olivia Newton-John doing what she did best.
Because sometimes the best thing to come out of a terrible movie is the song you still can't get out of your head 40+ years later.
You've brought my world to an end Love takes its victim and leaves its remains My broken heart has died in vain Tell me why have we forsaken the dreams we had The pain makes it so hard to understand You're a lifetime ago but a memory away And I'll love you till my resurrection day Love kills the fire's gone Dying embers still remain Love kills and now you're gone Girl, I'll never be the same again
I'm going to be honest here, saying I don't remember Vinnie Vincent Invasion's "Love Kills" would be an understatement. Somehow, this one completely slipped past me back in the day.
Released in 1988 for the A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master soundtrack, the song unexpectedly popped up during an episode of MTV Classic's Metal Mayhem this morning, and I'm glad it did.
Vinnie Vincent formed the band in 1984 after leaving KISS, where he had made a name for himself as the band's lead guitarist. Two years later, he recruited a then-22-year-old Mark Slaughter as lead vocalist, and the chemistry was undeniable. While the band never reached the commercial heights of some of their glam metal peers, they produced some seriously underrated material.
Watching the "Love Kills" video today, what struck me most was just how incredible Mark Slaughter sounded. Even at only 22 years old, his powerful, soaring vocals were impossible to ignore. Looking back now, it's easy to hear why he would go on to front Slaughter, one of the more successful hard rock bands of the late '80s and early '90s with hits like "Up All Night" and "Fly to the Angels."
The song itself is exactly what you'd want from a late-'80s horror movie soundtrack: big guitars, melodic hooks, dramatic vocals, and enough attitude to fit perfectly alongside Freddy Krueger's latest reign of terror. It's a reminder of just how many great rock songs were tucked away on movie soundtracks during that era.
Of course, Vinnie Vincent Invasion eventually called it quits, and the members went their separate ways. Mark Slaughter found mainstream success with his new band, while Vinnie Vincent's career continued to take some interesting twists over the years. Even so, "Love Kills" remains a fun snapshot of a moment when everything seemed poised to break even bigger.
Sometimes all it takes is an old episode of Metal Mayhem to remind you of a song you either forgot or never really discovered in the first place.
"I always love a little mystery But now the tensions killing me No place left for words to hide I never thought it could be quite so tough Lips once sealed are splitting up There ain't no secrets to outshine, father time."
I can remember walking into a Listening Booth store in the middle of my local mall and flipping through their one rack of 12" dance mixes of freestyle/house music and finding a copy of A'Me Lorain's "Whole Wide World". I bought that and a copy of Lisette Melendez's "Together Forever" and felt like I hit the music lottery. Back in 1990, in the middle of suburban Pennsylvania, club music was a novelty rather than a standard. I was 90 minutes from Philly, two hours from NYC and basically just far enough out for stores not to carry a whole lot of dance stuff.
I was still glued to Dance Party USA and my friends from the series so I knew what was popping in the clubs. I found a way to get my hands on Judy Torres and Coro even if I had to order it. But A'Me Lorain was an unexpected find and I played this record into the ground. She is still around, in case you were wondering. She dropped a dance track last spring that didn't do much chart-wise, in spite of getting a bit of club play. You can check it out here.
Bananarama is easily one of the most popular girl groups of the 80's. Songs like "Cruel Summer", "Venus" and "I Heard A Rumor" kept them near the top of Billboard's Hot 100 charts for a few years in the mid-80's. Their True Confessions album from 1986 is probably one of my all-time favorite pop efforts from that era, with "ATrick of the Night" arguably being one of Bananarama's best songs ever. The album version is basically a ballad but when it was released in December of 1986 as a single extra synthesizers and vocals were added in to give it a dance feel.
"A Trick of the Night" was also included on the Jumpin' Jack Flash movie soundtrack. While the song kind of stalled out on the charts it is still considered by many to be one of the ladies best songs, especially in retrospect. Do you guys remember this one?
Hang on to your hopes, my friend That's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away Simply pretend That you can build them again Look around, the grass is high The fields are ripe, it's the springtime of my life Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery Weaving time in a tapestry Won't you stop and remember me
Not every cover of an already popular hit works even if it's performed by a big name. Just ask Taylor Swift about that recent Earth, Wind & Fire cover. But when it does work, it usually helps to spin the song in a completely different direction, one that introduces it to a new audience.The Bangles version of "Hazy Shade of Winter" did exactly that. It was released in 1987 as part of the Less Than Zero soundtrack, but if you were a longtime Bangles fan, then you knew that they had been playing the song live since the early 80's.
The song, originally done by Simon and Garfunkel back in 1966, has a great arrangement that allows each of the ladies to shine- something that was important to them at the time. They also filmed a slick futuristic video to go along with it and that gave the song an even sharper edge. The Bangles spent the mid-80's fighting for the same band credibility that the men were being given because they could rock out just as much as the guys. "Hazy Shade of Winter" seemed to really be a breakthrough for them.
For the record, I'm not so old that I remember the cult classic hit when it first rolled into a limited number of theaters. No. But it does take me back to my freshman year of high school.
Up until then my knowledge of Rocky Horror was limited to the fact that our local shopping mall movie theater showed it every Saturday night and honestly, I only knew that because it was listed on the big sign out front. It was the very last thing listed and it seemed like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" always seemed to be missing a letter.
In ninth grade, my homeroom was in one of the main freshmen art rooms and it was like nothing I had ever seen before. While I've mentioned my dad's love/obsession with music and how that influenced me, my mom's creativity also rubbed off. She was always an artist of some sort. I actually remember her being in art school when I was in preschool and going to the library with her every week. She would check out books on commercial art while I got... whatever and then we would go for lunch at a little drugstore luncheonette nearby. I still remember looking at copies of our daily newspaper to find my mom's drawings. Way back in the 70s and early 80s store advertisements were drawn and she used to do the ads for women's wear. She also had a perfume ad that was used for a major campaign and I remember her working on a greeting card line that featured a little girl with a magical purse.
So anyway, back to me. I was raised surrounded by art supplies and creativity so walking into this classroom was surreal. Real talk, it was probably pretty shitty if you weren't into art. It was the size of about three classrooms put together and we sat at huge wooden tables that seated 8 people. The tables were coated in paint, pastel, and every other medium available. There was artwork from floor to ceiling, no lie. Mr. Kingsley put things up really high to dry and while it looked like a disaster I don't think he ever actually lost anything. I ended up having him for art, which I chose as an elective so that meant I spent 90 minutes in his class twice a week.
It was in his class that I got to know a girl named Kim. I had known her for a few years but never spent any real time with her until 9th grade. She and I were the only girls at our table and as luck would have it, all eight of us really were into art, so it was cool right from the start. It was early 1986 and after a few months together we had all really bonded. Mr. Kingsley, well he was a trip. Super quiet and always wore a layer of guyliner. He smoked in his closet and let the guys chew (remember when THAT was popular???) as long as they hid their spitters if the principal walked in. As long as we did our work he left us alone and encouraged us to talk from bell to bell.
Talk we did. Kim's obsession was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She talked about it nonstop and was super excited because her mother was allowing her to go to the midnight showings at the mall each week. Since she was able to go Kim decided to dress up as her favorite character, Columbia. Back in the 80's not only did people go to the movie every week but they also dressed up and reenacted it in front of the screen and Kim was picked to be our theater's unofficial official Columbia.
She would take pictures every weekend and bring them into art class on Monday to show us. I have to wonder if she still has a stack of those photos and if so does she crack them out to show her kids now? Anyway, after months of hearing about Columbia and Magenta and Riff Raff, a few of us decided to go to the show with Kim. That was a one-time thing because none of us really saw what it was that kept Kim running back for more, but Rocky Horror gave this girl life all the way through high school.
I shared a lot with my table mates in that art class. On the good days we won the coin toss and controlled the radio, dissected Heather Locklear's marriage to Tommy Lee, and counted down until we weren't freshmen anymore. On the bad days, we cried over a classmate's death in a car accident, fought over art supplies, and vented about real-life problems at home. On one particularly bad day in January of 1986 we, like the rest of the school, had our classroom television tuned to the live launch of the Challenger Space Shuttle. It was the first time that a teacher was chosen to go into space, making it a groundbreaking mission. When the Challenger broke apart a little over a minute into its launch our whole class screeched, a sound that seemed to echo through the entire school.
That old art classroom may have been the messiest in the school, but looking back it kind of feels like one of the most valuable spaces in the building. Those walls, to this day, hold an awful lot of personal history for thousands of kids that have passed through over the years. Make-ups and break-ups, secret revelations, historical moments in American history, oh and of course, tons of creativity and the birth of a few very successful artists as well. I used to think that Mr. Kingsley was just flying by his ass and doing the bare minimum to keep his job. Now I get what he probably did decades ago. The very best thing that he could do was to create a space for kids to come and just "be" for a while. Rocky Horror Picture Show and all.
I still can't believe it's more than 40 years old. I'm thinking it's time to take another look at the flick to see if my impression has changed. God only knows what seeing the real Columbia in action will remind me of!
"Cause you belong to the city You belong to the night Living in a river of darkness, beneath the neon light You were born in the city Concrete under your feet It's in your moves, it's in your blood You're a man of the street."
Miami Vice was an American television crime drama series that starred Don Johnson as James "Sonny" Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs, two Metro-Dade Police Department detectives working undercover in Miami. The series ran for five seasons on NBC from 1984 to 1989 and then lived on in syndication. This was the first drama to rely heavily on music, fashion and whatever else was hot and trending. Miami Vice was on the cutting edge of everything. They debuted music that helped artists to find their way onto Billboard's charts and they made both Johnson and Thomas household names. Anything even potentially hot was featured in an episode and everyone seemed to be hooked on this show.
I wasn't as obsessed with Crockett and Tubbs as a lot of my friends. I was there for the music each and every week and there was always something new to discover. I found a playlist that features a lot of the music that was featured on Miami Vice. Check it out below.
"You're out of your room And down on the street Moving through the crowd In the midnight heat The traffic roars And the sirens scream You look at the faces It's just like a dream"
Miami Vice was never my thing. In fact, I'm not sure that I've ever watched an entire episode of the 80's classic show (maybe I should), but the soundtrack? Well, that was fantastic. There was a time in the middle of the decade when every artist either wanted a cameo on the show or at the very least to have one of their songs featured. I think my very favorite song used was Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City".
Sure it worked great with the Miami vibe on the show, but it also worked great for the rest of America. It went to number 2 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1985 and the video was in heavy rotation on MTV. I know because I actually remember doing the math so that I could anticipate when it would show next so that I could watch it.
It's another great 80's song with a fantastic sax solo- which can totally make a song, in case you haven't already noticed. "You Belong to the City" has just enough wail in there to make it fantastic. Check it out below!
You have to believe we are magic Nothing can stand in our way You have to believe we are magic Don't let your aim ever stray And if all your hopes survive Destiny will arrive I'll bring all your dreams alive
It has been a really long time since I've watched Xanadu. I was almost ten when it was first released in theaters back in 1980 and at the time I was kind of obsessed with Olivia Newton John. I loved Grease, had several of her albums and even begged my mom to buy an issue of TV Guide because she was on the cover. While Xanadu, with its pretty far out magical concept wasn't exactly a hit in theaters, the soundtrack was golden.
If Olivia wasn't singing on a track then it was meticulously handled by ELO and the result was fantastic. So many good songs came out of this film that it made a whole new generation take a look at Xanadu, this time on Broadway. While it was once a little embarrassing to admit that you loved Xanadu, it is now considered a cult classic. I know I was thrilled to find a pretty clean copy of the soundtrack while hunting for albums at a recent record fair. Check out the full album below. Pretty cool, isn't it?
"You're out of your room And down on the street Moving through the crowd In the midnight heat The traffic roars And the sirens scream You look at the faces It's just like a dream"
Miami Vice was never my thing. In fact, I'm not sure that I've ever watched an entire episode of the 80's classic show (maybe I should), but the soundtrack? Well, that was fantastic. There was a time in the middle of the decade when every artist either wanted a cameo on the show or at the very least to have one of their songs featured. I think my very favorite song used was Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City".
Sure it worked great with the Miami vibe on the show, but it also worked great for the rest of America. It went to number 2 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1985 and the video was in heavy rotation on MTV. I know because I actually remember doing the math so that I could anticipate when it would show next so that I could watch it.
It's another great 80's song with a fantastic sax solo- which can totally make a song, in case you haven't already noticed. "You Belong to the City" has just enough wail in there to make it fantastic. Check it out below!
