Speaker 1: This is Cason Grover and you're listening to the You
Can't Be Serious Podcast. I call it that because you
told me to stop calling you Shirley.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, welcome back to the Shirley you Can't
Be Serious Podcast. Today we're going to continue our study
of the summer of nineteen eighty four. We are working
our way track by track today through the Footloose album.
My name is Jason Colvin, and let's hear it from
my boy d Graves.
Speaker 3: My boy, my boy. Okay, listen, man, I realize this
is almost paradise, but I'm not holding out for a
hero here. Okay. I'm free. I'm footloose and fancy free.
Speaker 4: All Right.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go track by track today through one of
the biggest albums in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: Okay. So I just want to talk real quick about
nineteen eighty four and leading up to the summer of
nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: This album came out in January of that year. The
movie came out in February of that year. A couple
months later, Breaking comes out, and I was a breakdancing
fool in second grade. I had my own sheet of
cardboard I'd go dance in the streets, literally dancing the
streets doing the dolphin and the centipede and the wave,
and had my own move called the electric Shock, where
I laid down and shook like I was electrocuted. It
was a big crowd pleaser for the little second grader.
Speaker 2: You know you're serious when you have your own sheet
of cardboard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you got to do your heads. When I
went to watch this movie, I was in love. I'm like,
this is so up my alley. I wasn't super big
into the kind of I'm free dance that he was
doing in the warehouse. That was a little too ballet
and gymnastics for me. But some of those guys, the
dances that they were doing were rock on cool a breakdancing.
Speaker 2: You know the last scene where they're dancing at the prom. Yep,
they actually went I think we talked about this in
our previous episode. They went to LA clubs, found guys
that were really cool dancers, pulled them out, put them
in a corny tuxedo and said you're a high school kid,
now break dance.
Speaker 3: Loved it and it was a big craze back then.
I mean, like Parashue peas and bandanas and all that
good stuff. I had my boombox. My break dancing name
was doctor Fresh. I still use that, like when I've
got it when kids are like dad, when you want
your name to be on the xbox, and like doctor Fresh.
Speaker 2: Cool mood. Right, okay, go awesome.
Speaker 3: All right, So we got to jump into this album
because there's so many awesome songs, so many awesome artists
that we've got to talk about. But before we do that,
let's just talk about the name of the song, which
is the name of the movie, of course. Yeah, okay, okay.
So Footloose was, as we mentioned in our last episode,
written by Dean Pitchford, Right, Yeah, this was his first
screenplay and he had no idea what to call it.
He had, like you mentioned, he had called it cheek
to cheek, but that was not really anything he ever
intended to call it. And so he had a bunch
of names that he liked, but he was like, I'm
just gonna write down everything I can, and so he would.
He'd fill the pages with potential names of the movies.
Footloose came up on day two. Wow, And so he has,
you know, these pages and pages of names he looks
over them all and picks out four that are his favorites.
But at that point, Footloose was what he wanted to
call the movie. But he takes it and he puts
Footloose by Dean Pitchford, and then he takes three other
names and he takes those names to the producers and
he puts Footloose at the bottom of the stack. Okay,
And this is all deliberate, right yeah, And so they're
looking at it and they're like, okay, first name, second name, okay,
all right, third name okay, gets to Footloose by Dean Pitchford,
and they say, we love it. And he was so
excited because that was it. And there's something about the word.
I mean, it doesn't mean anything, but it's.
Speaker 2: Still well it comes from footloots and fancy free right now,
tell me exactly where did Elmore City prom fall in
the title options.
Speaker 3: I don't think that was sang it. I think he
just was excited about all of those o's. It looks great,
it does, it looks jumps out at you, it leaps
off the billboard or the album or whatever. So he
had the name of the movie before there was ever
a movie, and before there was ever a song.
Speaker 2: And it's actually interesting he's creating a movie around the
idea of great songs. Yeah, if you don't have great songs,
you don't have a movie.
Speaker 3: Should we jump in now?
Speaker 2: Well, the one thing I wanted to cover before we
get into track by track, Yeah, Footloose was one of
the only five albums of nineteen eighty four to hit
number one. So you had Thriller, you had Footloose, yep,
you had Huey Lewis's Sports Yep, you had Bruce Bringsteen's
Born in the USA. And then you had Purple Rain,
of course.
Speaker 3: Which we're going to be covered next week.
Speaker 2: Come back next week. As we go track by track
through Purple Rain.
Speaker 3: And everybody knows how iconic Purple Rain is. Keep in
mind this album held the number one spot for ten
weeks in that year of those big hitters.
Speaker 2: If you were to tell me that this was one
of the best soundtracks of the nineteen eighties or maybe ever,
I wouldn't argue with you.
Speaker 3: No song after song after song, this is an incredible album.
Speaker 2: It's pop gold, all right. Were ready to dive in?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Dive in. First track, kick off your sund issues.
Speaker 3: This is footlos.
Speaker 2: Dude. That is a slamming hit right out of the gates.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the first drum beat, I gotta say this
totally reminds me of Hey, Mickey, you'r's the fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I can see that.
Speaker 3: And it was I mean that came out eighty two,
that was right, I mean it was big on the
charts right around the time that this song was getting written.
Which let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 3: Okay. So we know that this song is by Dean Pitchford, right,
we know that he's this is the key ingredient to
the movie that he's written that he's you know, this
is my this is my first venture into screenwriting, and
it almost didn't happen. Right. So Kenny Logins is big
at this point. He's done Caddyshack. But in January January twentieth,
nineteen eighty three, Kenny Logins is at a concert in Provo, Utah,
and the lights get dimmed so that he can come
out on the stage and he doesn't see where he's going,
and he steps off the stage onto the floor and
breaks ribs. He rescheduled the concert, but he's in the
hospital and he's about to leave the US and go
to Asia, and Dean Pitchford's like freaking out. It's like,
what am I going to do? And so the guys
are like, you should fly to him in Tahoe and
you guys write the songs over there. He's like great,
And he wakes up the morning he'supposed to fly out
and he's run one hundred and one degree temperature. He's
got strep throat, and he's like, there's no way he's
gonna let me in his room with his wife and
his kids and his injured body when I've got this
strep throat. I mean, the guy's about to go perform
concerts in China. This is you know what do?
Speaker 2: He just lives? I feeling fine. That's hard. We should
mention that he had previously worked with Kenny Loggins and
Steve Perry when he wrote that song Don't Fight It Yep,
which was kind of a modest hit number seventeen.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's good. No, that's a great song. So let's
talk real quick. We don't get to do a full
history I think on Kenny Loggins in any other episode.
So I'm going to do a quick brief one right. Okay,
So Kenny learned to play guitar by stealing his brother
Dan Danny's song, stealing his guitar while he was the
way at work, he'd go practice his guitar, and that's
how he learned to play. Decided that he would become
a songwriter when he saw his two brothers writing songs,
and ultimately ended up doing pretty well well. Wrote for
Barbar streisand and a Star Is Born, which is how he.
Speaker 2: Met the producer of Caddyshack, Peters, John Peters, and that's
how he got involved with caddy Shack, And that's how
he came up with the hit I'm all Right, which
got him started down the road of movie making magic.
Speaker 3: Yes, but before he got there, he had been a
good songwriter for a lot of other folks. So the
first song that he wrote was a song called House
at Pooh Corner. Okay, back then, songwriters would get together
that hang out. He hung out with some guys from
the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band who weren't really even very
big at that point either, and they liked his song.
They had a record deal. They're going it looks like
this thing is gonna happen. He's like, super excited. Song
I wrote when I was seventeen is going to become
my first recorded song until they get a call and
like the Disney lawyers are not gonna let this happen.
It's like ah. And so he goes out on a
date that night with his girlfriend and she's like, what's wrong.
And she's like, man, I thought my first big song
was gonna get recorded, but it's got Winnie the Pooh
and I guess, like somebody said something about copyright and
Disney and I don't. I guess it's not going to happen.
And she's like, oh, well, let me give daddy a call.
Her dad was the CEO of the Walt Disney Company.
The green light of the.
Speaker 2: Song Wow Wow, how about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It ends up on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Bands
album Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy, which was the
album that had Mister bo Jangles and of course house
It through corner and suddenly he's meeting all kinds of people,
including this guy who used to play for Buffalo Springsfield
named Jim Messina. Okay, so loggins and gets together with Messina.
Messina has been around for a year or two longer,
so he knows the ropes and he's going to produce
Kenny's first album. But they sound so good together and
Messina does so much work on it. They call the
album Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina sitting in Clive Davis,
who we've mentioned before Aerosmith episode and a couple of others.
He listens to this and he says, listen, you guys
are too good to do this. Only once he goes,
I want to sign you to a six year many
songs as you'll give me deal, and I really think
and they're both like hesitant, especially Messina who is wanting
to do different stuff. He's like, just sleep on it. Well,
he slept on it. They did it, and they produced
gobs of good hits through the seventies, but ultimately, as
with many young artists, they started hating each other to
the point that they're doing a live recording, you know,
they're doing their kind of setup, and Kenny gets so
mad he chunks his microphone into the stands, no audience
members there, but chunks into the stands, walks out. Jim
comes over to him. He says, listen, I've been through
this before and I want to end this before we
hate each other. And it was the best thing he
could have said, because they ended it then remained friends ultimately,
both of them obviously super successful guys. But that's what
leads into the soundtrack with Caddyshack, and that's what leads
into the soundtrack with What Loose.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the song Footloose is the biggest and only
number one hit for Kenny Loggins. So when he hooks
up with Kenny Loggins, you know, strep throat, broken rib,
He's got to get this in before he flies to Asia.
They knock out a few things. He wants to be
able to go back to them and say, Okay, we're
on it, We've got it, and they did. They had
the gist of it. They finished it up later with
the whole Milo and Ooie Murray.
Speaker 3: Dean Pitchford's Mom's name.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? They threw that in Kenny Loggins like the way
that Milo sounded. And so that's how we got Jack
get back. We've got that list of names.
Speaker 2: Because it's pretty cool. Yeah, there's one part in the
song that I want to talk about. I don't know
what to call it, but they it rises in like tension.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll play it right here. What's so that beetles
all over the place. Think you think about the end
of Ferris Buehler's Day Off when he's singing twists and shout.
That's that that same exact build up the scale and
everybody's the tensions rising. That's straight on beetles love it.
Speaker 2: And then you get this great yell I'm turning it loose,
and then right back into the the chorus, it's it's
super good love this one. This one was released January eleventh,
nineteen eighty four, reached number one March thirty first, nineteen
eighty four, spent three weeks at number one, and this
is definitely one of the songs that helped knock Thriller
out of its number one spot for ever. Well, you
need to talk about the video real quick, Okay, Okay.
The video pulls straight out of the middle of the
movie and it's the Rage Dance.
Speaker 3: Right, and it's the same it's just the same thing
the Purple Ran did, right. I mean, it's all kinds
it's like a extended preview of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it gives you a taste. So hey, this
movie's coming out, and this looks like a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Here's the weird thing. Flulus has played three times in
the movie. Okay, the opening credits, yes, where we have
the feet. All it is is the feet moving around,
by the way, the gold sneakers. That's Kenny Loggins's feet, right, Okay.
They play it in the middle when they're at the
country bar at the country Bar.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Then they play it at the end for the prom
and let's dance at the party, and that whole thing
is awesome. The problem is they don't play it during
the rage dance scene.
Speaker 3: Right right, right right. What you saw in the video
on MTV was not what you were seeing whenever the
song was playing there. So it's a complete yeah.
Speaker 2: As a kid, I was like, wait, wait a minute,
this wrong song. They got the wrong reel up top
or something's messed up the wrong song. But they do
save it for the end and it works out awesome.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: All right, So we want to point out this soundtrack
contained six Billboard top forty hits. Yes, okay, three reached
the top ten.
Speaker 3: Yes to reach number one.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is one of those.
Speaker 3: This is one of those. Next song, Let's hear it
for the boy.
Speaker 5: Baby she dog Tom Sween, she ain't that much to
save los anyway.
Speaker 3: So this is the other number one song.
Speaker 2: Yes, This was released February fourteenth, nineteen eighty four, reached
number one May twenty sixth, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: So this song again was written by Dean Pitchford along
with Tom Snow, who had written a slew of big hits.
Tell Me She Laid on Me, She's so shy by
the Pointer Sisters.
Speaker 2: She's so shy, going Getting Ready for Love by Bonnie Ray,
Loves Sneaking up on You by Leo Sayer, and I
don't know but I love you, Oh Your Rodstad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, little Aaron Neville. So they work together to write
the song, and then of course Denise Williams is the
one that sang the.
Speaker 5: Song every time he pulls me launch.
Speaker 2: Here's what I know about Denise Williams. She was a
gospel singer, she's a soul singer. So she was the
backup singer for Stevie Wonder on the song Wonderlove Yep.
Speaker 3: Also sang back up for ROBERTA. Flax nineteen seventy five
album I Feel Like Making Love?
Speaker 2: Do You Like Making.
Speaker 3: That one. I think that was a different version.
Speaker 2: That's a vacans Okay. So the Day I Die baby, Okay.
One of the things I forgot to mention to you,
Denise Williams actually sang on a song that is kind
of close to your in my Heart. You may recognize
her from this song right here, What would we Do?
What would we Do?
Speaker 3: Yes? So Family Ties, it's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Denise Williams sang that song with Johnny Mathis. It's
the theme song for Family Ties. The backup singers for
Denise Williams on this song are a guy named George
Merrill and a woman named Shannon Rubicin, and they had
one giant hit in the late eighties called Waiting for a.
Speaker 3: Strong So Dean Pitchford and Tom snow So. For the
scene that Let's hear it for the boy comes Up,
they had written a song but it was called Somebody's
Eyes and when Herber Ross heard it, he was like,
this is not the right song for this scene.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about that song here in.
Speaker 3: Just a minute. Yes, it's still in the soundtrack, but
it's not. It was not the song that was supposed
to be in that scene. And so they said, okay, well,
let's get back together. Let's try to write something, and
they came up with the line, first, let's hear it
for the boy. They write this upbeat song around that title,
and that's how we get this song.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. That's why this song and Somebody's Eyes the
drum beat is exactly the same because every time they
did the dance montage at the end of the day
with Kevin Bacon and Chris Penn, it was set to
Somebody's Eyes. But when they realized that that tone didn't fit,
they just swapped him out. And this was the last
song added to the album. And in fact, they were like, crap,
we need to write another song really quick because we're
ready to go. We need to plug and play here.
And so it was like pressure, pressure, pressure, Ray Parker
Junior's Ghostbusters type.
Speaker 3: Of thing, right and or or some sugar on me right,
or we need another song hurry. It looks like a
Lady or a hundred other songs. But that's awesome that
I didn't realize that they had been using one song
and had to change it out, but they kept the
beat the same. That's brilliant. My mind is blown. Great awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2: How about this? Let me blow your mind some more. Okay,
we talked earlier in our previous episodes about how Madonna
auditioned for this role. Yeah, okay, she didn't get it.
Speaker 3: Uh huh?
Speaker 2: Which man, that's right before she blew up. I mean,
if she's in this movie as Ariel, could you see
her singing this song?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: I was talking to our buddy James Buckley and we
were going back and forth about the eighties possibility of
Tom Cruise and Madonna being in these roles, and then
maybe Madonna singing a song like this. It's that fun
alternate universe we like. I like how this movie or
this song is about. This guy is a total schlub,
but I love him anyway. You can't dance, he can't sing,
he's poor, but I still like him. Yeah, okay, I
got one more thing for you. You're ready for this, Okay.
In the video, Denise Williams is singing with a little boy.
He was in the corner. He had a dunce cap on.
She removes the dunce cap and she's like, oh, you
come with me and let's hear it from my baby, right,
and he is in a tux. This little kid, was
he five or six.
Speaker 3: Or seven something like that?
Speaker 2: He's dancing around. He's got a top hat on. That
little boy. His name is Aaron Lore. He grows up
to Mary Idina Menzel.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, from Wicked and Glee and she sing let
It Go yea and Frozen and Frozen.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 3: Now that's some deep cuts right there.
Speaker 2: How about that that you're not gonna hear anywhere else?
Speaker 3: Wow? Nice job?
Speaker 2: Yes, or, as John Ravilta calls her, the wickedly talented
one and only a death.
Speaker 3: She said that when she went to see this movie
had that scene. Had she been picking the scenes that
her song would appear in, she would have picked the
scene because it's so perfect and it is. It is
spot on the best song to put with that montage
scene of Chris Pandler and How to Dance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eighties were great for music montages.
Speaker 3: Yes, Straight out of Rock okay, track number three almost Paradise.
Speaker 4: About that dreams Belong to other men? Cluse each time
I got clues.
Speaker 1: Beats?
Speaker 3: Okay, So why don't we get the lead singer for
lover Boy and the lead singer for Heart together and
see how they sound. Holy crap, their voices blend so
amazingly well.
Speaker 6: Done.
Speaker 2: There. Really, that was a home run of getting those
two singers at that time in the eighties, Mike Reno
lover Boy. That was the peak of their powers.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, And this was kind of the beginning of
his soundtrack career as well. I mean he also had
a I mean talk about going along with Kenny Loggins.
He had Heaven in Your Eyes from Top of the Gun. Yeah,
he had Chasing the Angels on Iron Eagle two. He
had Whenever There's a Night from Dream a Little Dream.
I mean, he was rocking up the charts for all
of the eighties.
Speaker 2: This is right before Heart's revitalization.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean they were kind of rock stations
came along and we were hearing all kinds of heart
on Class Girl.
Speaker 2: You've got seventies Heart like Barracuda and Magic Man and
all that, and then you've got eighties Heart, which is
These Dreams and Never and Alone and all those songs.
This was the bridge between those two.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and Wilson.
Speaker 2: May have the greatest female rock voice of all time.
Speaker 3: She is phenomenal. She's absolutely phenomenal. So this one Dean
Pitchford wrote with Eric Carmon, who is another icon in
the songwriting world, wrote a song on dirty Dance Dancy right,
that the flip of this movie right.
Speaker 2: In your eyes.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The song was written in one day, in one twelve
hour sitting. So they went to visit herb Ross in
his studio. They had a piano setup in his office
and when they showed up this, well, we've got a song.
We think it might be good for the love theme.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So they sat down and Eric Carmon sang the male part,
She sang the female part, the Ann Wilson part, and
when they were done, herb Ross took a deep breath
and he said, I think you've written a classic. In
nineteen eighty four, this was the song that got couples
to the middle of the skate floor skating backwards.
Speaker 3: With your girlfriend. Yeah, I can't skate backwards. I would
just dance in a circle at the gymnasium.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting things I thought is they were
working with the idea of religion and freedom and sort
of the wrestling of the two that's in the story Footloose, right,
And so they thought about making a song about salvation
or redemption you know, they're kind of working with these
spiritual words, and that's how they landed on Almost Paradise.
Were knocking on Heaven's door. Love It Okay. This song
was released May of nineteen eighty four reached number seven.
This is the third top ten hit. Third by the way,
When they were filming the movie, the song that they
had originally intended to plug in where Almost Paradise was
was the foreigner song I've been Waiting for a Girl
like You.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 3: I love that song. I love that song. But the
song's the right thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: Pitcher says he remembers there sitting there with Carmen and
tossing out lines and coming up with I thought that
dreams belong to other men, because each time I get close,
they'd fall apart again. And he was like, that's great.
I was really really good. And he's sitting there and
he says, oh, how about this. I feared my heart
would beat in secrecy, And Carmen jumps up from the keyboard,
runs over, hugs him and says, that's great. That's one
of the most brilliant lines I've ever heard. And he says,
We've got a lot to do more We've got to
do a lot more of this writing. And it was
that line I feared my heart would beat in secrecy.
That was sort of the thing that joined them at
the hip after that point.
Speaker 2: All right, done with almost Paradise.
Speaker 3: Well, couple's move back. All right?
Speaker 2: Doing you ready for the next song?
Speaker 3: I've been holding out for it? No serious, I have.
This is my favorite song, I mean an entire album.
Let's play, all.
Speaker 2: Right, this song is breaking awesome.
Speaker 3: Okay, listen to the bild, Listen to the bill, Listen
to the build, Listen to the harmonies coming in, build harmony,
build harmony, and then the drums. Oh my gosh, now
this song. I remember talking to you and you were like,
I don't know how many of these songs hold up,
you know, hold up for I'm like holding out for
a hero. If you turn this on in my house,
every member of my household from nine years old up
to me at forty five will be on the floor
singing and dancing along with the song and losing our minds.
It is so good.
Speaker 2: This song's amazing. It's on the tight roll to being
over the top. It's wonderful, and it plays so well
in the movie. Yes, it's during the tractor scene right
where they're playing chicken with the tractors and Wren his
shoelaces caught. He can't get his foot loose, but I
love it. This song was written by Jim Steinman and
the Patrick.
Speaker 7: Right, who we've talked about before in the def Leffard episode.
Jim Steinman was the guy that they hired when Mutt
Lang couldn't do it, and he was the one that there.
He was like, all right, that sounds good, and they're like, wait,
we haven't even warmed up yet. He had done Bad
out of Hell, which we talked about back then, and
he had done a lot of stuff with Bonnie Tyler
faster than the Speed of Night.
Speaker 3: I mean that's huge, absolutely. I mean she was an
icon of the eighties as well, who I love. I
love her her voices killer. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's something you may not know. When they brought
in Jim Steinman and they were writing the song, he
started saying, Hey, I got something to show you. On
the keyboard, he's pounding it out right and he literally
was playing so hard that his fingers started to bleed.
Oh wow, And so he's just Dean Pitcher say he's
just pounding the crap out of the keyboard and there's
blood all over the keyboard and Dean pictures like this
guy's freaking awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I mean, I can see it. I mean
with this song is so intense. It's like the galloping
of a horse, right. It's it's the White Night riding
up to save the day. It's the Superman too good.
Speaker 2: It's good good.
Speaker 3: This song is well. The lyrics are awesome, the music
is awesome, and it lasts. I mean, you put this
song out right now, Well, I don't listen.
Speaker 2: They showed her of the movie because they wanted her
to sing it with a sense of urgency, and I
think that comes across.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, totally. The immediacy of the song is perfect
in everything.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've got to play you something. This blew me
away in the same way that we talked about during
our bon Jovie episode, when Desmond Child had written parts
of Living on a Prayer, but he plucked them from
other songs that he had done previously. So Jim Steinman
had a solo album called Bad for Good, and there's
a song on there called Stark Raving Love. Ready for This, Yes,
all right, here's the beginning.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, identical, identical, identical, until you get to the voice,
until you.
Speaker 2: Get meet loafing. You can take a right turn right there.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Wow. Yeah, that's fun. And that came
out in eighty one, so just I mean, they're recording
the songs to this in eighty three, so that was
just two years before that he had put that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we talked about how you know, you think
you've got a good idea and maybe it doesn't hit
for whatever reason, and you think, I don't care. This
is still good, like this is better than it received,
and so he pulls it out again, dusts it off
and says, I'm gonna try this again with Bonnie Tyler.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they tried the song again only four years
later in the movie Short Circuit Too. No, right, I
everybody remember that, right, I mean, the movie is so
bad that Steve Gutenberg wouldn't even do it.
Speaker 2: It was also in Shrek too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right now. That one actually was pretty good.
I liked that they had a different singer. It was
Jennifer Sonders. But you know, having kids in the early
two thousands, I was very familiar with that and yeah,
she did a good.
Speaker 6: Job with that one.
Speaker 2: This Yeah, that was good, very good. This song was
released April thirteenth, nineteen eighty four. This only reached number
thirty four in the US. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: That's nuts? Okay, that is nuts. I am just spiking
the football, as you say, best song, Shorter Footloo's best
song in a while.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, Hey, I've got deep cuts for you.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 2: There's a cover version of this song that was made
for the TV series Cover Up in nineteen eighty four.
It was sung by Miss eg Daily, she played Dottie
in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Oh okay, okay, we done.
Speaker 3: With this one. Yep, all right everyone.
Speaker 2: That's it for holding down for a hero. Hit stop
on your tape player, kick it out, flip it over,
first song on side two, dancing in the sheets.
Speaker 3: Okay. So it's interesting that, I mean, you've said this
on almost every episode that we've had. It's musical, but
I can remember hitting stop on my tape player and
flipping it over to hear this song. And I love
dancing doing my break dancing to this song right here,
which is why it's the perfect song for the prohibited
dancing that's going on at the local drive in. That's
the scene from the movie where Ariel puts the tape
in and everybody starts dancing a long while they're playing
video games or eating French fries or whatever to this
incredibly good song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she pulls out the boom box in the movie,
hits play under tape player on the boom box, and
the whole place, including the girls in the bathroom or
jamming out to this song. And it's a little bit naughty.
You've got the dancing in the sheets that implies not
just dancing's going on. This is exactly why dance song
about fornication. And then and that scene is great because
John Litzko's character, Reverend Shawn Moore, shows up and he
hits stop on the tape player. He doesn't say anything.
She's just odd and shocked. Oh my dad is here.
I'm gonna be in big trouble. And he says, your
mom thought you'd run out of money, so here's some
cash for you. And it's almost like.
Speaker 3: It's more. It doesn't yell at her, he doesn't say
any condemnation of her, but you see it in his face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a heart ranging scene. Yeah, it's always all right.
Here's what I know about Shalamar. Okay, I've got I've
got a little bit some just very few facts on Shalamar.
Speaker 3: Well, there aren't very many facts that I have.
Speaker 2: Here's the one thing that I found interesting about Shalamar,
all right. Jody Wattley used to be in Shallamar.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: She had a bunch of big hits in the late eighties,
including looking for a New Love and Don't You Want Me?
And some kind of Lover. I mean, she was a
bit big player, but she left Shalamar right before they
recorded the song. Do you know who Shallamar's number one
fan was, no, the thriller himself, mister Michael Jackson. Wow,
he was a big fan of Shallamar.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, So the producer Dean Pitchford, you know, wrote
the song with Bill Wolfer. Bill Wolfer is the guy
who played the keyboard and synthesizer on Billy Jean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some connection there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Shalamar was one of those executive creations, not
quite a boy band, but in that kind of same vein.
There was a concert promoter named Dick Griffy and he
decided to put together some studio musicians who are really good,
and then he got together with a guy named Don
Cornelius who had created Soul Training, and they had some
good dancers. And you put these dancers who are really
good with these musicians who are really good, and that's
how you get Shallamar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's danger close to Millie Vanilli, although these guys
do sing their own stuff. One of the guys I
mentioned that Michael Jackson was a big fan of Shallamar.
One of the original members of Shalamar. His name is
Jeffrey Daniel. They got to be on the British Top
of the Pop show and that's when Michael Jackson saw him, like, man,
this guy's awesome. I need to get him as my choreographer.
And that's how he got the job as the choreographer
for Michael Jackson's Bad video.
Speaker 6: Oh wow, all right, let's move on to the next song,
the second by Kenny Loggins.
Speaker 2: It's a song called I'm Free Heaven Helped the Man.
Speaker 3: It's a good beginning.
Speaker 2: Dude, I'm spiking the football on this one. You're saying
this is my favorite song on the entire album.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's solid, bro.
Speaker 2: Man, I love all the songs, but this one just
has that energy and that great chorus and the children
chorus singing I'm free. I love it.
Speaker 3: And it'd be interesting.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 3: You pointed out last episode that in Purple Rain, you
don't go more than ten minutes without a song coming in.
It'd be interesting to check that out as far as
Footloot goes. Yeah, because you've got a couple of different
montage scenes of things happening and there's always music behind it,
and we know the song was built on the soundtrack,
so it'd be interesting to see how long you go
in the movie without here in music. I bet it's
not very long.
Speaker 2: I bet it's kind of the same thing. Yeah, Yeah,
And this song is actually used as that swell of
emotion when when Wren wins the argument at the town council.
So anyway, yes, this song was released February fourteenth, nineteen
eighty four. Yeah, Reach number twenty two one, I mean
another hit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another hit, and this one's this one is seems
to kind of encapsulate what's going on with the movie,
like the fact that you're the character is beaten down
by this kind of ridiculous restrictive idea, and he breaks free, right,
he conquers it. He conquers his fear, which leads him
to conquer the opposition, and they get their wish and
finally I'm free.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the music video this one for just
a second, okay. And so this one's about Kenny Loggin's
breaking out of prison and then he meets a gang,
like a street gang, and he has a picture of
his girlfriend. He's looking for his girlfriend. His girlfriend in
the video of Virginia Madison.
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: She looks great. You know, she's young and major babe
in the eighties.
Speaker 3: What movie was she in that we talked about.
Speaker 2: She was in Highlander two.
Speaker 3: Highlander two.
Speaker 2: That Islander two.
Speaker 3: You said that was the best part of the movie.
That's it, Virginia Madden, that's it.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: So here's an interesting thing like this. Okay. So this
movie came out in eighty four. Yes, Dean Pitchford in
eighty six or so is going to speak at this
film festival. He gets picked up at the airport by
this kid who obviously you know, he's trying to work
in the industry. So he's done his research and talking
to him about footloose, and he's like, you know, and
I love how it's kind of autobiographical. And Dean Pitcher's like,
what do you mean. He goes, well, like, you know,
you were from Honolulu and then you know, you had
to move out to Kansas City, Missouri. And Dean Picture's like, wow,
it was kind of autobiographical. Didn't even realize that's you
moved from, you know, I mean, imagine the difference between
Honolulu and Kansas City, Missouri back in the sixties.
Speaker 2: Awesome, all right, Moving on song number seven on the album.
This song is called Somebody's Eyes.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait before you push play, let's listen to the
first beat of the song, the first measure of the song. Okay,
thinking about let's hear it for the boy and the
fact that it's the exact same beat, and go there
it is. That's it, that's it. That's crazy. I believe
I never realized that before. Identical beat.
Speaker 2: But the songs are so different, they have totally different tone.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this is this is a sad song. This
is not this is not what you want for the
guys learning how to dance. This is you know, she's
depressed and she's wandering the streets and such.
Speaker 4: Got a energy.
Speaker 8: Somebody size, somebody size.
Speaker 2: This is a song about Ariel can't get away because
everybody's got their eyes on her. She can't break free
because somebody is always watching her. This is not let's
hear it for the boy and learn how to dance. Right,
But this is a great song.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, fantastic song. I remember calling you whenever we
first started listening to this album again and saying, I
think this song would have been a mega hit had
it not been surrounded by so many super ultra awesome
mega hits. Right, Like, this is a really good song,
but it's just it's kind of drowned out by being
surrounded by so many good songs. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This was also released in nineteen eighty four. It reached
number sixteen on the Adult Contemporary chart. It's not bad, Yeah,
a very respectable position. And this was used to pace
the dance songs.
Speaker 3: Like we said before, Yeah, this is a This is
a song that I could see parents listening to more
than the kids. Yeah, this was a skipper for me
when I was playing the tape for sure.
Speaker 2: Though my mom loved this song.
Speaker 3: I like a little better now that I'm older, but
it's still probably it's still gonna.
Speaker 2: In the musical, this song is sung by Rusty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a different dynamic and they changed the words
a little bit too, and it's more a plot point
in the musical than it is in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good song.
Speaker 3: Song sang by Carla Bonoff. She's still doing stuff. She's
still touring and doing stuff. She's more like I think,
has more made more of her career being a songwriter.
She's done a ton of work for other folks, but
she's still performing, doing great stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, will be ready for the next one.
Speaker 3: We better be all right.
Speaker 2: The next song is called The Girl Gets Around.
Speaker 3: And this is a rocker by the Red Rocker rockiness
rock rock, rockety.
Speaker 2: Rock song on the album Yeah, this was my introduction
to Sammy Hagar. Oh really, I didn't know who he
was before this song.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well this is and it's perfect. It is again perfect.
This is the second song that you have in the movie,
and it's the point where we're telling you Ariel is
the wild preacher's daughter. Right at first lines of the song, Well,
she'd like you to think she was born yesterday. With
their innocent looks and her little town ways when she
smiles at me. She's got angels in her eyes. But
I've seen how she moves, and this girl really cooks.
She taught me some tricks she can't learn and books.
Speaker 2: This is played when she crawls out of the car
and she's standing with her foot on one car and
her foot on her boyfriend's car, and they're going full
speed ahead at a semi yes right, and she's a
psycho on wheels. At this point, I'm like, what is
what is Ren doing chasing this girl?
Speaker 3: And then they defy the laws of physics somehow the
evil boyfriend manages to pull her entire body in and
a seating position from her ankle.
Speaker 2: He grabs her peaky towel and pulls her in. Great song,
total rocker. I mean, the variety that we have on
the soundtrack is really great. You've got rock songs, you've
got dance songs, you've got ballads, you've got pop gold.
Speaker 3: You got it all, you really do. There's all kinds
of music to appeal to all kinds of audiences in
this one, and it's all just hook after hook after hook.
Now this one didn't, this one didn't get released.
Speaker 2: This is the only one that did not get released as.
Speaker 3: A single, which is kind of crazy. I mean, if
if it had been, it probably would have been in
our sites more than it is. But just the fact
that it didn't get released probably is why we don't
remember it from the album. Yep.
Speaker 2: Right after this one, we have I Can't Drive fifty five,
and then another year or so later.
Speaker 3: The band what was that called? Yeah, Yeah, Roth something
rather yeah.
Speaker 2: And then of course in nineteen eighty five he joins
van Halen flashback to our van Halen van Hagar episodes. Okay,
another great song. I'm not skipping it, no, in fact,
I'm turning it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're crawling out the window.
Speaker 2: I'm crawling out the window, and I'm buying my hands
up looking at the semi like all right. Last song
on the album. This song is called never.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: This song was played during the Rage Dance. This is
the rage Dance song.
Speaker 3: The Punch Dance, Punch Dance. This is the scene where
you had to have four different body doubles for Kevin
Bacon because he's dancing better than he can dance and
doing gymnastics better than can do gymnastics, and is physically
stronger and better built than Kevin Bacon actually was. But again,
huge memorable scene. It's been parodied multiple times in different places.
The song is performed by a band called Moving Pictures.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They're an Australian band.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Apparently they never got paid any money for this.
Speaker 2: This is a really sad story.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The lead singer, Alex Smith said, we were just
the lowest part of the food chain. We got gobbled
up by companies and people that suddenly stopped existing and
when we asked where our money was the things you
get talked into doing anyway. Yeah, we got to record
a sound City and the record plant, but a couple
of bucks would have been nice. Hence we never played
this song.
Speaker 2: They didn't get any money for this, no royalties. Are
you Kidney on an album of this size?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, the guitarist said, we performed it. It was
written by the guys that made the movie and we
got nothing from it. Someone made a lot of money
out of the song, but it wasn't us.
Speaker 2: It's too bad. Yeah, and I don't blame him for
never playing the song.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: And I haven't heard other songs by this band, but
he's got a stellar eighties sounds to his voice, and
the beginning of the song is very very eighties with
that synthesizer. It's a great song, and I mean the
memorableness of the song obviously comes from the scene in
the movie, but it's still powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good. In fact, there is a Japanese version
of this song recorded by the singer m I E.
Which apparently she's a pretty big deal. I don't know
who she is, but so Japanese. She's Japanese, which is
probably the reason why I don't know anything about her.
But it was big success in Japan. It took the song,
changed the lyrics, and made.
Speaker 3: The Japanese cool. Okay.
Speaker 2: So that finishes up the track list. There's a couple
of songs that we didn't talk about that are actually
in the movie that I think are worth mentioning.
Speaker 3: We should at least mention them.
Speaker 2: Okay. So You've got Hurt So Good by John Cougar Mellencamp, huge, big,
big song.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know why that was in the movie and
not on.
Speaker 3: The soundtrack, probably because it was on his album that
he wanted to sell a lot of probably his album
and not their album. Yep.
Speaker 2: Then you also have I've been waiting for a Girl
like You. Yeah by Foreigner Right, which we talked about,
was originally kind of slotted where the almost Paradise song
was supposed to go in.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: Then you have Bang your Head by Quiet Riot Metal Health. Yes,
they take the tape away from Rin and give him
a flip in the chin, telling me better watch his attitude.
That song is not on the soundtrack anywhere. Quiet Riot
was huge in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can remember having that album, having the LP
on that one.
Speaker 2: Oh nice the LP.
Speaker 3: Yeah, him in a leather stray jacket with the metal
doctor Doom face on.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna throw this at you is going to
blow your mind.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So I listened to the audio commentary and I felt like,
this is like the evil Stepchild that they locked in
the basement they don't tell anybody about. But there was
a footloose rap song.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: We talked about the diversity on this album. Okay, So
there was a rap that Kevin Bacon actually performs in
the movie and you can see him do it. Okay,
now you got to look closely. But it's right after
the town council meeting. So they have the victory at
the town council and the next scene is they're riding motorcycles.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, and you can see if.
Speaker 2: You look closely, Kevin Bacon is clearly mouthing words. That
was where that rap was gonna be. But the producer
and Dean Pitchford watched the movie and they hated it
so much they went to Herbert Ross. You know, Herbert
Ross is a stubborn guy, and so Herbert Ross is like,
what's wrong. He's like, well, I don't really want to say,
and he's like, well, go ahead, it's fine, and he's
like the rap. I can't handle the rap. He's like, okay, well,
then it's out. So Herbert Ross was like, okay, fine.
But if he had gone in like pounding the fists,
like you gotta take this wrap thing out, it sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, heard Ross, No.
Speaker 2: Way, I'm not. So they pulled it so it's out.
I can't find it, I can't see it, I can't
listen to it. But if you watch that part of
the movie, you can see mouthing the words.
Speaker 3: All right, Dear Shirley fans, Now my interest is peaked.
If anybody out there knows the wrap that was supposed
to go in footloose. We got to know what that is.
Speaker 2: Lay it on us.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You can find us on Facebook at Shirley Podcast.
You can find us on Twitter at Shirley Podcast. Come
back next week where we will do part two of
this comparison, looking at possibly the best album of the
entire decade of the eighties.
Speaker 2: If you like the eighties, you've got to come back
next week.
Speaker 3: We're talking about it next week.
Speaker 2: Purple Rain, track by track, that's a.
Speaker 3: Mighty long time, but I'm
Speaker 4: Just suck it.