Tonight there is a lunar eclipse but given the current cloud cover there may no viewing it. While we wait to find out let’s have another album review, shall we?
Disc 1558 is…. Valley Girl Soundtrack
Artist: Various Artists
Year of Release: 1983 (although technically this is a 1994 compilation)
What’s up with the Cover? That eighties thing where you wore short frilly socks and high heel pumps. I think this look has aged well and is due for a comeback!
How I Came To Know It: My wife Sheila introduced me to the movie last year. It is a fun film, but Sheila also loves all the New Wave style music featured. Unfortunately, that soundtrack is very hard to get. There were copyright issues back in 1983 which prevented it ever being released, and while there are a few illegal copies of the original floating around, forget about finding one.
Enter Rhino records, who in 1994 secured the rights to most of those songs and released this 15 track edition. Even this record is very hard to find, but I was determined and when I finally saw a copy I bought it as an anniversary present. It cost me $75 US but I regret nothing! I did it for love!
How It Stacks Up: I have a LOT of soundtracks. 37 in total. Valley Girl holds up well in that crowded field. I’m going to rank it at #13, just behind “Xanadu” and just ahead of “Into the Wild”
Ratings: While soundtracks are technically compilations, I rate them anyway. Valley Girl gets three stars.
Soundtracks are best when the music has a unifying sound to it. “Saturday Night Fever” introduced the mainstream world to disco; “The Harder They Come” has Caribbean soul/reggae pulling it together. Or you can just have Queen do the whole thing (“Highlander”, “Flash Gordon”).
Valley Girl’s vibe lands in the New Wave movement of the early eighties. Like other good soundtracks that cohesive approach to song choice puts you in a certain mood, rather than feeling like you’re being marketed a bunch of random hits. The minor miracle here is the film had to cut and overdub a whole bunch of songs after failing to secure the rights to them. By having to step slightly more toward obscure artists may have even improved the soundtrack. This Rhino compilation captures all the best and heavily featured tunes from the film, although devotees will no doubt recognize some are missing.
The album’s standout song is Modern English’s classic, “I Melt With You.” I don’t recall thinking much of this song when it came out, but wow has it ever held up well. This song will have you floating in a sea of love. It feels like they actually could “stop the world and melt with you.” And while this fate may sound a bit grim taken literally, I give it bonus points for using a very old poetic device of “melting” which goes all the way back to John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” where he says to his lover:
“So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move”
Because back in the day when you melted something like gold if it was sufficiently pure it was known to “make no noise” and Donne is saying his love is equally pure. It felt to me that Modern English was drawing a line back to this time-honoured expression of love, capturing purity, excellence and the loss of the individual into something greater. But I digress…
The best thing this record did was introduce me to Josie Cotton. Eighties movies about high schoolers often featured a real artist as “the band” at the graduation dance, and on Valley Girl this is Josie Cotton. Cotton is rewarded with three of the songs on the soundtrack, all of which are good. She has a pop pin-up girl/eighties punk crossover thing that works both for her music and her overall vibe. She’s been making music for years since she had that brief brush with fame, and she’s still great. I’ve bought three of her records so far, and I’m on the lookout for a fourth.
Other fun tunes include Flirts’ earworm “Jukebox (Don’t Put Another Dime)” and the spacy sounds of Gary Myrick’s “She Talks in Stereo.”
It isn’t all sun and roses, of course. I love the hook in the Payola’s “Eyes of a Stranger” but the saxophone solo in the middle is an abomination. Also, the Flirts’ tell you not to put another dime in the jukebox for about a minute and half longer than is necessary.
Overall this is a great record which is a fine selection of eighties pop and New Wave and will leave you with warm and melty feelings of love.
Best tracks: Johnny Are You Queer – Josie Cotton, He Could Be The One – Josie Cotton, Love My Way – Psychadelic Furs, Jukebox (Don’t Put Another Dime) – The Flirts, She Talks in Stereo – Gary Myrick and the Figures, I Melt With You – Modern English
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