Don’t know who this kid is, or how he came up with this pretty cool arrangement of Michael Jackson classics, but he did a couple cool camera tricks and overlayed a half dozen a capella vocal tracks to produce a pretty kick-ass product and tribute to the King of Pop.
One of the most popular and iconic pop acts of the 1980s was Frankie Goes to Hollywood, a band that hailed from Liverpool, England.
Though remembered primarily for their controversial and banned debut #1 hit Relax, their follow-up single, which also reached #1, has stood the test of time as one of the finest ballads of the 1980s. From Welcome to the Pleasuredome, here is The Power of Love.
The band’s successful singles also included the #1 hit Two Tribes, making FGH only the second act in British history to reach #1 with each of its first three singles.
Unfortunately, the light that burned twice as bright burned only have as long, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood released only two studio albums. The 1986 album Bang! was their second and last. But enjoy…The Power of Love.
From his 1987 album Third World Child came arguably the greatest hit of Johnny Clegg, the multicultural white South African pop icon whose Zulu street music influences made him an international star.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, his music was popular with Hollywood soundtrack producers and such was the case when Rain Man (scored by the legendary Hans Zimmer) was released in 1988.
The film, starring Tom Cruise (whose films of this era were typically soundtrack gold) and Dustin Hoffman, became a box office hit and a critical success, earning Hoffman the Oscar for Best Actor due to his endearing and authentic performance as an autistic savant.
Included in the film’s multicultural-themed score was Johnny Clegg’s Scatterlings of Africa, one of his most widely recognized and revered pieces. Another of his hits, Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World was also featured in multiple films including Opportunity Knocks and Career Opportunities.
The Back to the Future soundtrack will be forever associated with Huey Lewis and the News, with their signature hits The Power of Love and Back in Time that accompanied the film and its marketing.
But an often-overlooked and little-known song was penned for the movie by timeless rock legend Eric Clapton, whose career has spanned many decades and many genres. In this case, he produced one of his quintessentially 1980s works that fit in seamlessly with albums like August.
In his recording of Heaven is One Step Away, Clapton not only produced one of his catchiest songs from this era, but left his imprint on a film that itself left an enormous imprint on a generation of moviegoers and made a cultural icon out of Michael J. Fox.
The film also featured a strong supporting cast that included Christopher Lloyd (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), James Tolkan (Top Gun), Lea Thompson (Red Dawn), Crispin Glover (The Doors), Casey Siemaszko (Young Guns) and Thomas F. Wilson (not much else but he was great as Biff).
This is not the first time we’ve referred to The Heavenly Kid as one of the great examples of an 80s soundtrack set to a quintessentially 80s storyline. The teen ghost comedy starring Jason Gedrick and Lewis Smith was one of the sleeper hits of the middle of the decade, and the music was a key factor in the film’s appeal.
In this case, we have Howard Hewett’s Obsession, which could be construed as the “bad love” theme between geek-turned-stud Jason Gedrick and the formerly unattainable hallway bombshell.
Howard Hewett’s greatest success came with the band Shalamar, which was also a notable soundtrack contributor in the 1980s (Footloose). The band was also a launching point for future superstar Jody Watley.
The Heavenly Kid also featured Nancy Valen and future sitcom stars Richard Mulligan (Empty Nest) and Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm in the Middle).
In a classic film where the musical score was an enormous part of the movie’s appeal and effectiveness, Tryanglz contributed multiple songs. The Tahnee Cain-led band provided much of the contemporary 80s metal appeal to the pre-futuristic-trauma Sarah Connor character (Linda Hamilton). Before the future of humanity rested on her shoulders, it was all acid wash and hairspray.
Such was the world represented by Tryanglz. Indeed, that music proliferated in the early going of the film, where the primary characters were portrayed by Hamilton, 1980s aerobics queen Bess Motta, and go-to-dumb-stud Rick Rossovich (Roxanne).
With the disappearance of the latter two characters, and Sarah Connor’s tangible ties to 1984, so disappeared the music of Tryanglz and we saw the rise of Brad Fiedel’s ominous and futuristic synth score.
But enjoy this taste of 1984…
One of the more notable soundtracks of the 1980s was The Terminator, not only for the strong instrumental score by Brad Fiedel, but also for the hardcore chick rock provided by Tryanglz.
The band, fronted by Tahnee Cain, provided the key music for the nightclub scene in Tech Noir, where Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) and The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) all cross paths for the first time.
Tryanglz helped provide the film with the pop culture flavor of the 1980s. This contrasted against the ominous futuristic music and imagery that accompanied the characters and footage from a future so bleak as to produce machinery as chilling as The Terminator.
The film was also a launching pad for several other actors who used smaller roles in The Terminator to display their talents and achieve notable success. Included were Rick Rossovich (Top Gun), Bill Paxton (Twister), Lance Henriksen (Aliens) and Brian Thompson (The X-Files).
You could almost always count on some good 80s music to play over the end credits of any Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick, and 1987’s The Running Man was no exception. The instrumental score throughout the film was composed by the legendary Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop) and John Parr (St. Elmo’s Fire) provided the coup de grace: Running Away with You.
Adapted from a Stephen King story, The Running Man was one of the highlights of Schwarzenegger’s one-liner action era. The film also featured a strong array of supporting players, from respected character actors to TV personalities to legendary musicians and more: future fellow governor Jesse “the Body” Ventura (Predator), game show host Richard Dawson, Maria Conchita Alonso (Predator 2), fellow bodybuilding legend Sven Thorsen (Gladiator), Yaphet Kotto (Alien), Professor Toru Tanaka (Black Rain), NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown (The Dirty Dozen) and the founder of Fleetwood Mac himself, Mick Fleetwood. Plus Frank Zappa’s kid Dweezil.
Perhaps more than any band of its era, The Human League is able to conjure up images of neon colors, pinstriped fashion and the excessive and pretentious lifestyles of young 1980s professionals a la Wall Street, American Psycho or Bright Lights, Big City. And yes, that’s a compliment.
One of the premier new wave acts of the 1980s, The Human League was formed in Britain in the late 1970s and burst onto the synth pop scene with a wave of hits including (Keep Feeling) Fascination, Human, The Lebanon and the subject of this article, Don’t You Want Me Baby.
It is this final song that has enjoyed the greatest longevity as an ageless dance track and the subject of countless samples and remixes. And for good reason; it remains one of the catchiest and moodiest dance pieces of its era.
And as a follow-up to the post on Mind Over Matter as a single by Elizabeth Daily, we have this version of the song, originally performed by Debbie Harry (the lead singer of Blondie).
Harry’s version remained unreleased, despite its hit potential, and was dusted off for Daily to be used on the Summer School soundtrack.
Following her work with Blondie, Debbie Harry went on to a successful solo recording career, and also put together an admirable resume as an actor.
Without further ado, Deborah Harry’s version of the song, one that is considered by some to be her “lost hit.”