TODAY’S THROWBACK TRACK!
THE YEAR IS… 1984
- This was the theme from the movie of the same name starring Kevin Bacon in his breakout role; Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise also tried out for the part. He plays a teenager who moves to a small town where dancing is illegal. Dean Pitchford, who wrote the screenplay to the film and the lyrics to all the songs in the movie, got the idea from a 1979 newspaper article about the town of Elmore City, Oklahoma, where a law against dancing was on the books since the 1800s.
- Kenny Loggins was a big star and helped make Caddyshack a huge success with his song “I’m Alright” in 1980. In 1982, he had a hit with “Don’t Fight It,” which he wrote with Pitchford and Steve Perry, who also sang on the track. Getting Loggins for the title track was huge for Pitchford, who had never written a screenplay before and was trying to sell a movie based around nine songs – not a popular concept at the time. Losing Loggins could have derailed the entire project, and when Kenny broke a rib from a fall he took at a show in Provo, Footloose almost met its doom. Loggins had to take time off to recover, and the only chance for Dean to write with him was during his engagement at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he was performing before heading to Asia. Said Pitchford: “Paramount was chomping at the bit. They wanted to know that Kenny Loggins was going to be doing the title song, and if he wasn’t then we had to move on and get somebody else. So it became absolutely vital that as soon as Kenny was back on his feet, I had to go and seal the deal in Tahoe.”
- There were nine original songs the Footloose movie, and six of them were Top 40 US hits.
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This single was released a few weeks ahead of the movie, and the video, which used scenes from the film, got a lot of airplay on MTV, building anticipation for the release. By the time the film hit theaters, the song was already in the Top 40, and it went to #1 on March 31, 1984, where it remained for three weeks. MTV played a key role in marketing the film, and movie studios tried to follow this template, enlisting major acts to record a song for their movies and producing slick videos with scenes from the movie, essentially creating a preview.
- The soundtrack spent 10 weeks at #1, knocking Michael Jackson’s Thriller album from the top spot in the US.
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