#SONGS FOR PICTURE MONTAGE MOVIE#
#SONGS FOR PICTURE MONTAGE FULL#

By adopting a minimalistic, ascetic training regimen in which he communes wth nature, Rocky obtains the superhuman strength and resolve needed to defeat his seemingly invincible adversary, whose reliance on Soviet technology and steroids became the latters’ Achilles’ heel.įrom 1982’s Rocky III, here’s another contender that makes Rocky the ultimate film heavyweight in terms of having the most “montaged” movie scenes from the 80’s.

#SONGS FOR PICTURE MONTAGE FULL#

The one where Rocky is so manly and full of testosterone that he grows a full beard seemingly in a matter of days in order to defeat Drago, who killed his best friend Apollo Creed. One that has been emulated and spoofed to no end. “Hearts on Fire” isn’t the best montage song around, but it IS featured in perhaps the best cinematic montage scene of all time in 1985’s Rocky IV. John Cafferty- “Hearts On Fire” (from Rocky IV)

Like the two major montage songs featured in Rocky IV, this one gets extra points for fitting so well into the adolescently minded “us vs them” Cold War zeitgeist of 80’s pop culture.ħ. Like his contribution to the “Caddy Shack” and “Footloose” soundtracks, Kenny Loggins similarly dispenses with his pure pop perfection confectionaries here for the 1986 film “Top Gun” like an impulsively generous Willy Wonka on Ritalin. Due to this childhood trauma of pavlovian conditioning, the smell of Lysol will forever be unfairly associated with Kevin Bacon and vomit. OSHA compliant this business certainly was not, but hey, it was the 80’s, back when kids could still jump in the back of their father’s pickup truck with no seat belts or ride their bikes without the safety of headgear. To this day I can still remember going to see a double feature of “Footloose” and “Breakin’ 2 Electric Boogaloo” (talk about “montage heaven”!) when a drunk man vomited two rows behind me during “Footloose.” An inept usher then came out and sprayed a ridiculously toxic amount of Lysol to cover up the smell. This stands as definitive proof that Jennifer Beals was a true philanthropic visionary. This scene in the film also single handedly popularized what was to become the charitable “ice bucket challenge” a couple decades later. “Maniac” was featured in an iconic sequence in the 1983 film “Flashdance”, starring Jennifer Beals in the role of protagonist Alex. Our five criteria in our poll were fairly simple: (1) The song had to be featured prominently in a 1980’s movie (2) The song needed an “inspirational message” (e.g., “You can do it!” etc.) (3) The tempo of the song needed to be upbeat (no romantic breakup/reunion “Dirty Dancing” slow-dance type songs allowed here) (4) the song needed to be “training,” “competition” or “fighting” oriented (5) the cheesier the song the better. Based on these factors, we’ve compiled what we believe are the top 10 montage songs of the 1980’s.

It is with this larger context of popular media forms in the 80’s that we undertook this task of compiling the “best of the best” montage songs from that era where sound and vision became permanently intertwined.īased on extensive (and mostly sober) late night “field research” in bars and drinking establishments, I talked to both bartenders and patrons alike about their personal favorites (yes, we know that this isn’t the most scientific methodology). I recently read “ I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution“, a book that highlights in extensive detail the burgeoning intent of musicians and filmmakers in the 1980’s to make early music videos appear more “cinematic.” But I contend that this change also happened conversely in cinema (movies were trying to look more like popular music videos of the time in order to be “edgy” and “relevant” to a younger consumer demographic). No doubt, our aesthetic inclinations were strongly molded by the omnipresent influence of MTV, wherein it was popular for fictional images and narratives to be paired with music for the sake of creating a larger, compelling storytelling arc. However, at the time there were few things my friends and I liked more than watching a film with an “inspirational” action sequence commingled with a memorable song. The orientation of this misaligned compass needle is laughable now, looking back in hindsight. T., Hulk Hogan or Sylvester Stallone as my idols and sucked up these machismo tropes like a thirsty dry sponge.

As an easily influenced (and, admittedly, naive) child, I often looked up to hyper-macho, muscle bound personalities like Mr. As a child of the 80’s, I have a tender fondness in my heart for those iconic montage songs so prevalent in the movies of that decadent decade.

Songs for picture montage