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)

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.