Thursday, December 13, 2007

Top Five Music Videos for 1980s movie theme songs

The movie theme song music video is a delicate art, and the 80s were a pioneering time in their development. There are many

5. Huey Lewis and the News, "The Power of Love," from Back to the Future. The video has a two minute intro featuring Doc Brown arriving at a Huey Lewis show in the Delorean. Enough said.



4. Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, "Time of My Life," from Dirty Dancing. What is awesome about this video is that I can watch it and never feel the need to ever see Dirty Dancing, ever.



3. Kenny Loggins, "(Highway to the) Danger Zone", from Top Gun. Kenny Loggins + Fighter Jets = Awesome. Also: Iceman and Goose.



2. Survivor, "Eye of the Tiger", from Rocky III. Sadly, I can't find the actual Survivor video on Youtube, but it is on google video (possibly from China). It features the members of Survivor walking in time down the street while singing the song, and is reasonably awesome. Even more awesome, however, is the opening montage from Rocky III, depicted below, in which Rocky, now the champion, goes soft doing American Express ads and appearing on the Muppet Show while Clubber Lang (Mr. T) does some serious ass-kicking. You see, it is Clubber Lang, and not Rocky, who has the eye of the tiger by the end of the montage.



1. John Parr, "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" from St. Elmo's Fire. The movie itself is a self-indulgent, taking-itself-way-too-seriously Joel Schumacher-directed tale of post-college life of a group of friends in 1980s Georgetown, which gave rise to the term "Brat Pack" for its cast (Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Mare Winningham). The song is a fairly standard 80s anthem, apparently originally written as the theme song for some guy in a wheel-chair who was at the time going around the world to spread awareness for spinal cord injuries. The video is particularly awesome, featuring the perfect blend of scenes from the movie and shots of the ridiculous John Parr. Be sure to watch to the end, which features John Parr chilling out with the characters.

2 comments:

Matt K said...

This is great stuff. I somehow ended up watching the whole "Dirty Dancing" video despite my avowed intention to skip it altogether. I'm not attracted to Jennifer Grey at all, so I think it has to be Swayze. He's hypnotic.

Unknown said...

C'mon...you missed the videos for Romancing the Stone and it's sequel Jewel of the Nile.

The first featured Eddy Grant walking through a shanty town incorporated with clips of the film http://youtube.com/watch?v=kex3Da-R_Tg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Grant.

The second contained the requisite film clips with Billy Ocean "performing" the song "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" featuring the movie's cast of Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny Devito as Ocean's backup singers. http://youtube.com/watch?v=35YivWEs3zw and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Ocean.

Good stuff, man!