After spending an entire month looking back at the 80’s, I realized one thing. I need more. Luckily, a couple of fellow music fans on Twitter came up with the brilliant idea to highlight #30DaysOf80sMovieSongs during the month of April. I couldn’t resist at the opportunity to keep going, to keep listening, and to keep celebrating the decade that has meant more to me than any other from a musical standpoint. Each day I’m playing a different soundtrack favorite on the Mental Jukebox.
Movie: St. Elmo’s Fire
There’s a certain crop of 80’s songs that I simply can’t resist despite the fact that they err heavily on the side of cheesy and awful. REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling”. Europe’s “The Final Countdown”. The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”. And then there’s John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)”. They might be awful in many respects. There’s no use in hiding that fact. But their awfulness is their awesomeness. These songs are nostalgic, feel-good, karaoke anthems. With the St. Elmo’s Fire theme song, I salute the memories attached to it, not the musicality.
“St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)” was a song born out of a tough bout with writer’s block. John Parr and David Foster were tasked with writing a song for the movie, but Parr was coming up empty. Foster told him a story of a Canadian athlete, Rick Hansen, who went around the world in a wheelchair to raise awareness for spinal cord injuries. This story became the inspiration behind the man in motion, which received heavy airplay on MTV and Top 40 format radio stations. You couldn’t escape it even if you tried, just like it was impossible to avoid The Brat Pack in the mid-80’s. “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)” brings me back, lifts me up, and pushes me forward in all its cheesy spendour.
“Growin' up, you don't see the writing on the wall. Passin' by, movin' straight ahead, you knew it all.”