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Just having the annual Jim Steinman/Streets of Fire/80s Power Pop fit. This too shall pass. But not before being shared!
I did not know the above song existed before last week. (Thanks, AfterElton, for kicking off the current nostalgia fit!) However, as soon as I heard it, I knew it was a Steinman song. Nothing else sounds like him. (I cannot imagine any circumstance in which that song was a remotely appropriate fit for the period piece "The Shadow", but then, credits songs frequently have nothing to do with the movie to which they're attached.)
It's worth noting that Fire Inc -- the nominal group responsible for the above two recordings -- had two different women singing lead, Holly Sherwood and Laurie Sergeant. I'm pretty sure that each one of them had one of the "Eileen Aim and the Attackers" songs, because those really do sound like they're sung by two entirely different women.
Weird casting notes: Diane Lane's part was originally written for someone nearly twice her age -- or, in other words, someone slightly younger than she is NOW, which would have made the throughline of that film even weirder than it was -- and Amy Madigan's part was originally meant for a "grizzled war vet type", both male and older. Oddly enough, reportedly, they didn't do much rewriting for her character.
Weird musical note: both "Tonight is what it means to be young" and "Total eclipse of the heart" (not linked here, find your own 80s power pop!) were rewritten for Steinman's musical bomb Dance of the Vampires. Which explains one hell of a lot about the latter song, actually, if he had that in the back of his head when he was writing it. (Well ... "rewritten" -- "Total Eclipse" retained its title and most of its lyrics, although it became a duet [which makes a bit more musical sense, actually], and "Tonight is what it means to be young" became "Dance of the Vampires", which ... didn't really help that song. Not at any level. Seriously, just start playing the video, put it in the background, and follow along with the lyrics. There are some places where, clearly, the tune structure changed a bit, because there are words that don't match up with the song structurally. But still, I can't quite imagine that song in context. In ANY context. Though I do love the lyric change from "If I can't get an angel, I can still get a boy, and a boy would be the next-best thing" to "If I can't get a vampire, I can still get a boy...")
EDIT:: Someone out there has put the revised version on Youtube! It's very ... um ... yes. Very. (Seriously, who knew you could make a Steinman song worse by taking the bombast out?)
So, that was ... that. Yes. It was.
The only commercially successful song from the film. Oddly enough, NOT the version briefly heard in the film; that one has never gotten a commercial release.
I love this song in an entirely unironic way. Mostly because when it first came out, I was actually young enough to BE The Young. So to speak.
And now, for your Moment of Modernity:
One of the things I also love about songs about being young, in perhaps a slightly ironic way, is that essentially they're all "We are young and we are stupid because this is the time for being young and stupid so let us be young and stupid."
What I love about this version of the song, in particular, has nothing to do with the song per se. It's that they hired Janelle Monae to, as far as can be told, sing exactly four lines. Or the same line four times, depending on how you look at it. Except when you watch the video, you realize that they weren't so much interested in her singing, but in having her physical presence in the video. In the past three or four years, she's created such a visually distinct persona that it was worth putting her in just to Be Janelle Monae, an oasis of stylish calm in the midst of all that Gallagher-inspired chaos. That's weirdly impressive.
That said, the acoustic version of the song makes it a bit more clear why she got a "featuring" credit (and frankly, I like it a whole lot more -- although, oddly enough, it comes across as a much more melancholy song this way):
I did not know the above song existed before last week. (Thanks, AfterElton, for kicking off the current nostalgia fit!) However, as soon as I heard it, I knew it was a Steinman song. Nothing else sounds like him. (I cannot imagine any circumstance in which that song was a remotely appropriate fit for the period piece "The Shadow", but then, credits songs frequently have nothing to do with the movie to which they're attached.)
It's worth noting that Fire Inc -- the nominal group responsible for the above two recordings -- had two different women singing lead, Holly Sherwood and Laurie Sergeant. I'm pretty sure that each one of them had one of the "Eileen Aim and the Attackers" songs, because those really do sound like they're sung by two entirely different women.
Weird casting notes: Diane Lane's part was originally written for someone nearly twice her age -- or, in other words, someone slightly younger than she is NOW, which would have made the throughline of that film even weirder than it was -- and Amy Madigan's part was originally meant for a "grizzled war vet type", both male and older. Oddly enough, reportedly, they didn't do much rewriting for her character.
Weird musical note: both "Tonight is what it means to be young" and "Total eclipse of the heart" (not linked here, find your own 80s power pop!) were rewritten for Steinman's musical bomb Dance of the Vampires. Which explains one hell of a lot about the latter song, actually, if he had that in the back of his head when he was writing it. (Well ... "rewritten" -- "Total Eclipse" retained its title and most of its lyrics, although it became a duet [which makes a bit more musical sense, actually], and "Tonight is what it means to be young" became "Dance of the Vampires", which ... didn't really help that song. Not at any level. Seriously, just start playing the video, put it in the background, and follow along with the lyrics. There are some places where, clearly, the tune structure changed a bit, because there are words that don't match up with the song structurally. But still, I can't quite imagine that song in context. In ANY context. Though I do love the lyric change from "If I can't get an angel, I can still get a boy, and a boy would be the next-best thing" to "If I can't get a vampire, I can still get a boy...")
EDIT:: Someone out there has put the revised version on Youtube! It's very ... um ... yes. Very. (Seriously, who knew you could make a Steinman song worse by taking the bombast out?)
So, that was ... that. Yes. It was.
The only commercially successful song from the film. Oddly enough, NOT the version briefly heard in the film; that one has never gotten a commercial release.
I love this song in an entirely unironic way. Mostly because when it first came out, I was actually young enough to BE The Young. So to speak.
And now, for your Moment of Modernity:
One of the things I also love about songs about being young, in perhaps a slightly ironic way, is that essentially they're all "We are young and we are stupid because this is the time for being young and stupid so let us be young and stupid."
What I love about this version of the song, in particular, has nothing to do with the song per se. It's that they hired Janelle Monae to, as far as can be told, sing exactly four lines. Or the same line four times, depending on how you look at it. Except when you watch the video, you realize that they weren't so much interested in her singing, but in having her physical presence in the video. In the past three or four years, she's created such a visually distinct persona that it was worth putting her in just to Be Janelle Monae, an oasis of stylish calm in the midst of all that Gallagher-inspired chaos. That's weirdly impressive.
That said, the acoustic version of the song makes it a bit more clear why she got a "featuring" credit (and frankly, I like it a whole lot more -- although, oddly enough, it comes across as a much more melancholy song this way):