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: Weird Science
As a young teenager growing up in the 80’s, “Weird Science” was pure fantasy. Kelly LeBrock was like a goddess that stirred the hormones of boys with just a blink of her eye. We all wanted it to be real. The characters were extreme. Anthony Michael Hall, the epitome of the nerd. Bill Paxton, the definition of dirtbag. Robert Downey Jr., the false facade of cool. The music was extreme, too. Everything was fueled with large doses of testosterone. The highlight of the soundtrack is Killing Joke’s “Eighties”.
Killing Joke played it hard. They were louder and brasher than other post punk outfits. Listening back to the track, I can hear foreshadowings of Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden and Nirvana. It sounds eerily similar to the trio of Cobain, Grohl and Novoselic. The guitar is relentless in “Eighties”, tearing through the song like a hurricane with a variety of hooks. The song appears in a party scene in Weird Science, while the lyrics seem to function like an ode to a grittier, darker, dystopian version of the decade.
“Eighties - I got the best, I'll take all I can get.”