"LIFE IN A NORTHERN TOWN" THE DREAM ACADEMY (1985)

This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.

The Dream Academy is rarely mentioned among the great British synth-pop bands of the eighties. But they made more than just a splash via the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off soundtrack (“The Edge Of Forever” and their Smiths cover “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”) and this top ten hit, “Life In A Northern Town”. Their sound was bright, ethereal and dream-like. And there’s really no other band quite like them.

“Life In A Northern Town” was their U.S. breakthrough. This is most likely due to the catchy and unforgettable “hey ma ma ma ma” chant. It’s that radio-friendly hook that made the song a staple. It was just the sort of thing that was easily loved, but then reached a saturation point pretty quickly. It wasn’t until more than two decades after the single was released that I learned the song was an elegy for Nick Drake. This only increased my admiration for the song as 1985 was well before most of the world uncovered the great folk annals of Nick Drake’s music.

“A Salvation Army band played. And the children drank lemonade. And the morning lasted all day.”

"PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME GET WHAT I WANT" THE DREAM ACADEMY (1985)

This month, I’m looking back at movies and tv shows to rediscover songs that graced the screen. The scenes and the music are inseparable. They’re engrained in our heads and our hearts. And they’re proof that the best music we have doesn’t exist in isolation. It attaches itself to a moment or an experience. #SceneSongs

Movie: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

It takes guts to cover a Smiths song, because if you dare to you sure as hell better not f##k it up. Well, The Dream Academy succeeded. They produced a version that seemed to have its own identity and pay homage to the great Manchester act at the same time. The song appears in the museum scene of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Ferris, Sloane and Cameron are playing hooky and end up at the Art Institute of Chicago. In a twist, the scene doesn’t provide comic relief. Rather, it provides relief from the comedy. And there’s no song better to create the mood than “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”.

The Dream Academy version is less morose, more euphoric. I mentioned in a previous post on Mental Jukebox that The Dream Academy occupied a rare space in music during their time where their songs seemed to resemble dreamlike states. As the band name suggests, we go to The Dream Academy to learn how to dream and imagine again. Listening to their Smiths cover, it’s easy to get swept away and lost in the music, whereas in the original version it was easy to get self-absorbed. It’s like that Art Institute scene where Cameron is squinting intensely at the pointillism of a Seurat painting. He realizes there’s so much more when you look closer and deeper, beyond ourselves and into the art of life.

“SO, FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, LET ME GET WHAT I WANT. LORD KNOWS IT WOULD BE THE FIRST TIME.”

"PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME GET WHAT I WANT" THE DREAM ACADEMY (1985)

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: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

It takes guts to cover a Smiths song, because if you dare to you sure as hell better not f##k it up. Well, The Dream Academy succeeded. They produced a version that seemed to have its own identity and pay homage to the great Manchester act at the same time. The song appears in the museum scene of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Ferris, Sloane and Cameron are playing hooky and end up at the Art Institute of Chicago. In a twist, the scene doesn’t provide comic relief. Rather, it provides relief from the comedy. And there’s no song better to create the mood than “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”.

The Dream Academy version is less morose, more euphoric. I mentioned in a previous post on Mental Jukebox that The Dream Academy occupied a rare space in music during their time where their songs seemed to resemble dreamlike states. As the band name suggests, we go to The Dream Academy to learn how to dream and imagine again. Listening to their Smiths cover, it’s easy to get swept away and lost in the music, whereas in the original version it was easy to get self-absorbed. It’s like that Art Institute scene where Cameron is squinting intensely at a Seurat painting. He realizes there’s so much more when you look closer and deeper, beyond ourselves and into the art of life.

“So, for once in my life, let me get what I want. Lord knows it would be the first time.”

"THE EDGE OF FOREVER" THE DREAM ACADEMY (1985)

It’s time to get back to my favorite decade. For the month of March, I’ll be looking back at some of my favorite jams from the 80s. These songs often came to me via MTV or the radio. NYC-area stations WDRE, WPLJ, WNEW, K-ROCK and Z100 introduced me to everything from irresistible pop confections to under-the-radar post-punk anthems. I would not be who I am today if it weren’t for the 80s. It was the decade when I discovered music can be a truly powerful thing. #31DaysOf80sSongs

In the States, The Dream Academy was a band that made a brief, but significant splash with their unique interpretation of early dream pop. You could tell which songs were Dream Academy songs by their ethereal and accessible brand of synth pop. “Life In A Northern Town” transported us to a time and place that seemed surreal. “The Salvation Army band played. And the children drunk lemonade. And the morning lasted all day.” Their cover of The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” was a lighter, more buoyant version of the somber original. And then there was their minor hit: “The Edge Of Forever”.

The song may not have received an ounce of publicity if it weren’t for an unforgettable scene toward the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. While Ferris Bueller may have immortalized the track, there are a few things about “The Edge Of Forever” that marks it as a true relic of that generation on its own merits. Like “Life In A Northern Town”, the production helped the song to paint a picture. Co-produced by David Gilmour, this one was steeped in euphoric romanticism. It borrowed signature 80’s elements like a sax solo and synth-based instrumentation, but it did so in a way that wasn’t contrived or too familiar. Here, The Dream Academy created a dream state that you could easily get lost in.

“There's a million hearts beating in a row.”