Cheesy '80s Songs About Heart and Soul and Overcoming and Winning and Givin' it All That You Got (RIYL Action Movies and Training Montages and Cocaine)

The musical episode of Buffy lampshaded its parody of the genre by saying "I'm just worried this whole session is going to turn into a training montage from an '80s movie."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YKg6016rTQ

Obvious choice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOvMpND2OZY

here's that wet hot version. best part is that it's just a chorus amidst some epic guitar solos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR2Hm2mVO1I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwac6mRHF2A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liw4Z6StgL8

that Karate Kid song is always the first thing to come to mind

i also enjoy Arrested Development's take on this trope, "Balls in the Air"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhpQLH1ZIe8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQHhqDRn4_c

a little more on the rock ballad side but the chorus lyrics definitely fit

there's crossover with this thread
Rolling Synthwave/Retrowave/Outrun 2017 Thread

tuned into community radio show recently that was just both these things, and i couldn't tell if a lick of it was old or new and it really kind drove me bonkers. IT WAS TOO MUCH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIAX72wLTe4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to2KasivROc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oHGgDhzRnE&list=PLuert5gRcKDuhy_csB5hdQPahcGA5Bo4X

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oHGgDhzRnE

not 80s but this thread dredged up a memory of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siwpn14IE7E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6mEeuehNc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpqAUtzWDuw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvYEdmW47gQ
(Y'all really need to watch this video if you haven't already. And probably even if you have.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B17RclyxQHg

in that video John Carpenter looks like he could be a character in his movie

Don't look back, look straight ahead, don't turn away, then the voice it said
Don't look back, yesterday's gone, don't turn away, you can take it on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNrbrhQknLQ

The lyrics to some of these songs read like someone feeding commands to a semi-sentient factory robot.

Like one that's starting to question its purpose and needs a pep talk so that it can get excited about grinding out camshafts again.

I want to arrange a mashup of "Holding out for a Hero" with "We Don't Need Another Hero."

Heart and Soul did you say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oSB-MDt_10

Pokemon theme is pretty much this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wxyN3z9PL4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueRzA9GUj9c

The Beyond Yacht Rock guys did a great ep on this kind of music, they baptized it Heavy Medal:

http://www.yachtrock.com/podcast/2016/9/22/heavy-medal

I didn't realize until quite recently that there's a song on the Rocky IV soundtrack which is literally entitled 'Training Montage'.

sorry for another parody but 10-15 years ago in Atlanta there was a band called Rump Posse that was all about this aesthetic. they used to cover the Top Gun theme song and the song from Mike Tyson's Punch Out. for stage clothes they wore Hanz N Franz style workout costumes and in between songs they would blast a techno track while working out. needless to say some of these guys work at Adult Swim nowadays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg70NlyXb0Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2hPtN8rFyE

E.G. Daily's "Mind Over Matter". I actually went to see this movie in the theatre when it came out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-XB1DDiu5c

Pat Benatar's "Invincible" is probably my favorite of these. I felt so powerful after seeing that movie as a pre-teen haha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crIZ_hgKlAg

^Good one!

I just realised Katy Perry looks exactly like the actress from Billie Jean when she cut her hair short at 1'23".

I've never seen Billie Jean but in the summer of 1985 when my cousin and I were 11 we spent about a month yelling "WHERE IS SHE?" at each other, and you had to reply "EVERYWHERE" in a shitty southern accent because of this trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMzTItRnx4k

Sammy Hagar might be the godfather of heavy medal.

"Top of the Rock" (HSAS) + whole 'VOA' album

This record was a thrift store punt. It's... not good, but maybe it fits here. Actually it's so earnest I wonder if it's a Christian Rock thing.

Tony Carey - We Wanna Live

https://youtu.be/_So6i9bFI8I

If only a bona fide rock star took a pass at this maligned genre. Imagine how great it could be. Maybe for a movie that captured the electric energy of bike messengering. Break from the pack. Shoot for the stars. Trade your chains for wings.

My friends, submitted for your pleasure, Roger Daltrey's theme for Quicksilver. Can you dig it? I know that you can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5gDgoyNaa8

on the other hand, why trade those chains for wings when you can take these broken wings and learn to fly again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKhN1t_7PEY

or, for that matter, throw off your mental chains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fjg7N_mGaU

This song has been discussed in detail on another thread, but it deserves a spot here. Jefferson Airplane: Planes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0gnnVcOLNc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRzjVFyrQjk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsFbpWQOMWU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur8ftRFb2Ac

verging on power-pop/synth-pop but I think this qualifies...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofL-ePVAshs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n5U_UExIu4

How did this thread last two weeks without anyone mentioning the roughly 500 times that "Only the Young" appears in Vision Quest?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9hWqa4xxZY

Well if we're talking that film then we have to nominate this song, which my sister, without a shred of irony, has insisted we play at her funeral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApZ1aD8nYEk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ymEXHefjMc

This thread recreates the trauma of watching music videos waiting for The Cure or Prince to show up, but all you got was endless this

That is terrible. That movie was such a disgrace to the Garbage Pail Kids.

my mom took me when I was 7. I loved it, but I also loved Superman IV at that age so little Neanderthal was stupid

Have we talked about John Waite's "Change" yet? It was on the Vision Quest soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vLQdsQsq68

Tangent: seeing the word "duchy" in the news led me to think of Musical Youth, and I went down the rabbit hole of their fate, and got tangled up in that of John (no relation) Waite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vLQdsQsq68

I've never heard it but damn, that's the fun cheese that I would expect from that soundtrack.

was the movie it was attached to any good

I like how worried he is about losing his hat

he does lose his hat, that's what "Missing You" is about

Quite the plot twist at the end of that video.

This seems to fir the bill. From the movie of the same name with Michael J Fox and Helen Slater. Straight up banger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z6lUn4XTzY

Also this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4pg6Jh94Lo

I posted the Secret of My Success like a month ago - it's such a wild song!

Also, I'm pretty sure that John Waite's Change was in here previously, but I think it's one of the Youtube links that has died. Important to add a title to your links!

I can't remember if Never Surrender was on here before, but I love that one.

"It's like the sound of E-LEC-TRIC GUI-TARS!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3cLKmHSuv8

I don't think we've posted this yet-- Rick Derringer's "Real American" Long Hulk Hogan's theme song.

Ooh, that's good! I went through a phase where I was looking for good songs related to wrestling but that passed me by. Maybe I just assumed from the title that it wasn't a fit.

Kenny Loggins - I'm Free (Heaven Helps the Man)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdEvuQE6t5c

"Change" is one the decade's best songs.

This only marginally relates to the thread, but I'll mention it – I recently watched Mystic Pizza (terrific movie), and was smitten by the Super Generic 80s Song™ playing in the background of this scene.

Turns out it's "Is It Hot in Here," by Renée Geyer – and apparently can't be heard anywhere but in that clip (per one of the YT comments - Spoke to the producer on LinkedIn. He said their recording studios were flooded and he thinks the original is gone. This song was never released on the soundtrack.)

Also only marginally related – I rewatched St. Elmo's Fire, and the whole thing with Rob Lowe's "hot saxophone playing" is so funny/bizarre. Especially the scene where he's onstage, as a band's "lead saxophonist." Why didn't they make it a guitar or something? (He doesn't even keep it in a case! When he's leaving town at the end, he just has the sax hanging from his shoulder as he gets on a Greyhound bus.)

That said - when it was time to choose an instrument to play in elementary school (and beyond), I chose the alto sax... that's how hottt the sax was in the '80s, that aura rubbed off for sure.

Morrisp, the moment in SEF where he says "let's rock" and starts clapping is like one of the least rocking moments in the history of non-rocking.

And I unapologetically love that movie. It was set in my home town during my teenage years; I can still recognize where various scenes were filmed. When I was in minth grade, my sister drove me to school, and she would take a longer route when the sax-driven instrumental love theme came on the radio.

When I was 15 years old that movie was one of my main sources of information about what being an adult was going to be like. I have no regrets.

Loggins has so many of these. I love "I'm Free".

"Meet Me Halfway" though is my real Loggins jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQsM9mS4pk

Mickey Thomas - Stand in the Fire
from 1986 Rob Lowe/Patrick Swayze hockey movie Youngblood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dskBv2_mzqc

Jon Butcher Axis- This Raging Fire
Iron Eagle Soundtrack

Morodor, Daltry, Kevin Bacon...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApLAUYYEILM

Quicksilver Lightning from Quicksilver

This one is a banger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlDlJTPEbOo

John Farnham- "Break the Ice" from "Rad"

same artist & film, nearly as good...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGFAjwtjlPc

lol already Farnham in the first post I see now

Peace, man, I need to tell you that I just walked through a room in which my child is watching a trivia show called "Mental Samurai," hosted by... Rob Lowe.

I can go a LONG time without encountering or thinking about Rob Lowe. Like, it's one of my superpowers. Between first seeing "St. Elmo's Fire" in 1985 and today, I have thought about Rob Lowe maybe eleven times, so an average of approximately three times per year.

Because of you I have thought about Rob Lowe twice in one day. That's my quota for the year. One more and will will somehow have to avoid any mention of him for a while, or it will skew my average.

Wouldn't it be once every three years? So you're actually good for your Rob Lowe fix until 2028 now (or 2031 if you count this post as #3)

Rob Lowe was really good in Behind the Candelabra from 2013, fwiw

Outside of the realm of DX7s and searing electric guitars, but I was thinking this morning about how the theme song to Laverne and Shirley is a lyrical antecedent to this stuff. There's probably a rabbit-hole to go down of other television themes about overcoming and winning, etc. If I find some free time in the near future, that's my plan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAnecJl_Z1A

Making Our Dreams Come True (performed by Cyndi Grecco, written by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel)

I always considered the L&S theme a more lighthearted homage to the Mary Tyler Moore theme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNKOt2k7Pm4

There is also a Husker Du version, because of course there is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFyy3XB_3Y4

See also: Diff'rent Strokes, Good Times, Family Ties, One Day at a Time, Alice, Gimme a Break.

All those themes had uplifting messages in spite of difficulty.