This was the title song to one of the first movies to not fit into the traditional "musical" category that was centered around the songs. As more people started watching MTV, it became easier and more acceptable to integrate pop songs into films, which led to other movies like Footloose and Dirty Dancing.
The two guys who helped today’s singer write this song were geniuses when it came to movie songs. They also wrote "Danger Zone" and "Take My Breath Away" for Top Gun and "Don't You (Forget About Me)" for The Breakfast Club.
The movie was released on April of 1983 and by May this song hit #1 US, where it stayed for six weeks. In June, the soundtrack when to #1 and stayed for two weeks, interrupting the run of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which had been at the top spot for 17 weeks and would return for another 20 (eventually knocked off by the Footloose soundtrack).
By September of 83, another song from this movie, Michael Sembello's "Maniac," also went to #1 US.
The title of the song and the movie never actually appears in the lyrics, but the song still relates to the movie, as it's specifically about dancing. Today’s singer was an accomplished dancer who not only sang the title song to the movie ‘Fame’, but she also starred in that film as an aspiring dancer.
This singer won the 1983 Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, for her work on this song. She and her co-writers were also awarded an Academy Award for Best Original Song, beating out two songs from Yentl, and one from Tender Mercies.
The video for this song featured the dance sequences used in the movie and was the primary driver of the leg warmers trend back then, by the way,
But the best kept secret about those dance sequences was that the star of the movie, Jennifer Beals, did not dance in the film...like at all! All of the dancing moves were performed by body double Marine Jahan. More Lies!!!
It’s Irene Cara...Flashdance...what a feeling...I Know That Song!
Congrats to Mary Mitcheldyer who won free lunch from Jersey Mikes, "Always A Sub Above" for guessing the theme of the songs this week: "Song Titles are also the Movie Titles."