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)

An avenue worth exploring: I've noticed that there are a few of these songs where they've been used more than once, but by different artists. For instance, many people know the song Nothing's Gonna Stand In Our Way as performed by Spectre General (aka Kick Axe) on the Transformers the Movie soundtrack.

Ok, so this isn't quite the same, but here's Stan Bush doing John Farnham's Thunder In Your Heart. This is a newer recording from 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGSSuziWX3A

Here's more Joe "Bean" Esposito. Cry of the City, from the 1986 film Knights of the City. Co-written by Stan Bush's The Touch collaborator Lenny Macaluso.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kvKD5kG9z8

Not cheesy or eighties, but relevant to the interests of this thread.

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

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

Shooting Star by Sylvie Vartan, a Euro-Pop singer from Bulgaria. It was written by Gloria Sklerov, who along with Lenny Macaluso wrote Thunder In Your Heart and Cry of the City.

Exemplary! Every note of the guitar solo was exactly as expected.

Maybe Lee Aaron fits in here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbMAai64t9Y

Trying to find my way into more fitness/sports video soundtracks. Here's Bobby Caldwell - Don't Quit from 1984's Body By Jake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b00L5_WJS6U

Bonnie Tyler with another entry for the ladies: Breakout, from 1990 German action sports drama Fire, Ice and Dynamite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nlWeTL4dtk

Going just on the song titles, I bet there are several more "givin' it all you got" tunes on the soundtrack:

Bonnie Tyler– Breakout
Chris Thompson / Marietta*– Never Give Up
Connie De Groot– Win It All
Moses P.*– Muscles
Chris Thompson– Wire It Up
Deep Purple– Fire, Ice & Dynamite
Roger Chapman– Eye To Eye
Rockafella (2)– Get Ready
Bruce Ingram– Out Of Control
Dominoe– Rock Noon
Isaac Hayes– Fly
Jennifer Rush– We Are The Strong
Marietta*– Thunder & Lightning

Was “Man in Motion” used recently in a show or something? I hear it a LOT, like last Saturday, where I heard it in both a CVS and a smalltown bar within an hour or so. It didn’t used to be this popular, what gives?

Featured in Stelmo Things iirc

ever heard the version he did for Tim Tebow?

i've been playing St Elmos for years, since basically it was popular, so I welcome this

Did anyone mention Secret of My Success by Night Ranger?

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

Keep an eye on their horn section, which is comprised of 0.5 Motley Crue + 1 Weird Al Yankovic.

Thanks— I was wondering whether it had been featured in the 80s throwback show of the moment. Fwiw, I also welcome it, because I love it.

Pokemon theme is pretty much this

― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, July 18, 2018 11:22 AM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

the Pokemon theme song is heavily influenced by this genre.

― peace, man, Saturday, April 30, 2022 6:50 AM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm sorry, Adam. I didn't mean to bite your post.

Having watched at least part of every single Pokémon show and movie when my daughter was into them a few years back, I was certain that the main 1990s theme was not the only example of a Givin' it All That You Got song.

Stand Tall, from Pokémon the Movie: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel (2016) composed by Ed Goldfarb and performed by Ben Dixon and The Sad Truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hzzdzj-pD4

Stay Together, originally from the episode Time Warp Heals All Wounds (2006) and on the Pokémon X: 10 Years of Pokémon CD (2007). Written and performed by Nini Camps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBebZa0UiwI

I'm sure that there are more heart and soul songs in Pokémon, but I will need to do further research.

While y'all are posting actual great songs, I'd like to make a nomination for the category of Worst Example of This Subgenre: the mind-bendingly terrible song from The Garbage Pail Kids Movie - "We Can Do Anything (By Working With Each Other)". Hooooly shit, this may be the most garbage (ha ha) song in movie soundtrack history.

Imagine the don't-expect-to-sleep-for-a-month-after-watching-this visuals of the creepy life-size anthropomorphic Garbage Pail Kids (one of whom is not a kid, but a freaking alligator) attempting a just ghastly rap-adjacent synthed-up Smurfs theme. And hey, that's a non-union sweatshop in which they are working!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeeQ41VS2S0

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.