These are the same people who grew up to rant about millennials…
Welcome to another wild Wednesday where The Nest is about ready to put another of your favorite songs through its possum blood stained wringer of torture! It’s time for the next entry in my ever unpopular Top 30 Iconic Songs I Can’t Stand countdown! Let’s see what song DJ Scratchy and the Sponkies will be giving two thumbs down to and sending to detention this week…
#24. “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” – Simple Minds
It was apparently a law in the 1980’s that if you released a major motion picture, it had to include at least one original song on its soundtrack that would go on to become a huge radio hit. So much of the music that has come to define that decade was first heard in Dolby Digital Surround Sound at a theater near you. No other era in pop music history can even come close to matching the 80’s plethora of super movie hits, even if we did kinda forget about some of them…
Somewhere out there somebody has to remember my song!
But one thing we sure didn’t forget about were those two awful songs that rode the two biggest Brat Pack movies of the mid 80’s to the top of the charts… the theme from The Breakfast Club which is fittingly titled “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”…
Again, like last week’s entry, this isn’t really a terrible song. It just doesn’t stand up to the incessant overplay it has received for the last thirty years. What gives this song extra annoyance points with me, however, is that it completely obscures the great work Simple Minds did outside of a shitty John Hughes film…
The only Breakfast Club that The Nest cares about.
Simple Minds didn’t even want to record this damned song… and they were far from alone. The Fixx, Bryan Ferry and Billy Idol (Can you just imagine that?) all rejected this piece of shit as well… and it took a LOT of convincing to get Jim Kerr and the gang to sign off on doing it. And even after its amazing worldwide success that made them quite rich and famous, it was another decade before the group even accepted “Don’t You” as a part of their legacy by including it on one of their own albums and performing it live. I don’t blame them, because Simple Minds did a lot, LOT better music than this tired old coming of age canard. “Sanctify Yourself” is an awesome 80’s song you never hear anymore, and “All the Things She Said” is maybe the most inexplicably underrated music video of all time…
Who wants to perform someone else’s shit when you can be a true independent artiste like these guys?
I alluded to that second well known Brat Pack film earlier, and I can’t end my diatribe about lousy 80’s soundtrack music without also giving it a kick in the nads. John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” just barely beat out the song nobody is allowed to forget about for the honor of NOT appearing in my countdown… but the songs share something in common other than a group of forgettable actors. John Parr fucking kicked ass with his song “Naughty Naughty,” yet gets labeled as a one hit wonder in the 21st century just because rtro radio stations apparently threw out everything but their 80’s soundtrack albums!?!? Life is just so unfair…
The only St. Elmo’s fire The Nest cares about.
Come back next Wednesday to watch me wipe my ass with another classic song….
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I didn’t mind Don’t You Forget About Me. Didn’t care for St. Elmo’s Fire, though.
It was a toss up for me. But I probably hear this one more often, and I think its success did more damage to the artists’ (Simple Minds) other work…
I didn’t realize so many had passed on that song. I didn’t think it was that bad.
I would guess that nobody saw the success of the Brat Pack movies coming and didn’t want to waste their time recording it. So it’s ironic that the one band who initially refused because they didn’t want music written by someone else associated with them was the group who finally relented and got exactly what they were dreading…
even bryan ferry… that’s like et tu Brutus… I agree with you that’s a song what should be covered… but not by other artist only by graveyard soil :o))))
Had Bryan Ferry done this, it would have probably been at the top of my countdown…. assuming he didn’t manage to kill the song in the first place. Bryan was much better with Roxy Music than on his own…
The only thing I really liked about “Don’t You Forget About Me” was the vocal range John Kerr “showed off” as usual. As for St. Elmo’s Fire I love the old sailors legend but NOT the movie…….big yawns.
Pam
I would rather watch the real St. Elmo’s fire than any teen movie from the 80’s!
I think I’m thanking my lucky stars that I don’t live or work in a place where there’s permanently piped music over which I have no control. And that I generally listen to Classic fm rather than a “modern” radio station. It saves me from stuff being over-played.
I can deal with the music at work, but it really chafes me that we don’t have any good variety radio stations where I live. Satellite radio is only marginally better. The olden days of DJ’s having the freedom to play what they want and not what corporate bigwigs want them to play are sadly long gone…
I have seen a few 80s movies since my husband is an 80s guy, but very few. Fast Times & Second City/SNL movies were more my style. Anyway, I know and dislike both songs, but know nothing about either band. I don’t like much 80s music played on radio. Oops, I mean MTV you whippersnappers!
I miss the variety of the music that was popular in the 80’s. It was way more than just pop or commercial rock like both of these songs are. And MTV fueled the melting pot by playing just about everything until it started jumping the shark in the late 80’s.
John Parr was penalized for wearing a hideous jumpsuit AND a mullet. Just saying. You’re right on the overplay for this Simple Minds tune but for me, it’s not the worst overplayed tune. Thank goodness we all ‘got over’ the Brat Pack.
Not just a mullet, but a graying mullet! It’s no wonder the Pat Benatar lookalike he was riding around with slapped his face…
Ahhh, Pat Benatar. Now there’s an 80’s rocker whose songs I never tire hearing.
I bow my head to your knowledge of music. I was never good at this stuff and I’m worse now. You seem to know music they way Garry knows old movies … I’m impressed … and hopeless.
If you missed out on the Brat Pack era of movies and music, I can, for once, definitely say that you didn’t miss anything. Given how much I love music, you’d never guess I’ve never spent a dime on a record or concert ticket before…
ody N biskit….frank lee… we had forgetted a bout this song ….til now !!!!! 🙂 ☺☺♥♥
Oops! Sorry for mentioning it again!
I loathe this song!! OMG! My high school fucking voted for it to be our class song. (1992, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.)
That’s weird because it seemed like 80’s music disappeared completely in the early 90’s. Given that at that age, seven years ago seemed like ancient history, I’m surprised your classmates even remembered it. Thank you for backing me up on this shitty song!!!
We’ve been agreeing more than I thought was possible…
Yeah, there were like 2 other songs, I don’t recall what they were…but of course, this one was the winner…my classmates had…simple minds.
I am SO DONE with the Breakfast Club. I have friends who WORSHIP that film. Ugh. I’m glad my kid didn’t think much of it. Yes, the one born in 1999 thought it was trite and thought the characters were too much of a cliche. Good parenting on my part. Good call ES.
My Mom, who is a generation too old for this movie, gave me the business for including this song because she loves the Breakfast Club. I don’t get its appeal either, but then again, I was the epitome of anti social in high school and was completely out of that loop…
I didn’t like the movie but I like Simple Minds, I always get them mixed up with Tears with Fears, I like Tears for Fears better though, I’m a fan of the lead vocals of Jim Kerr. I like that deep voice thing.. lol.. 🙂 have a great day ES!
You are right that they are kinda similar bands who peaked at the same time. One thing both have in common is that I love their lesser known hits and don’t really care for their best known songs. “Shout” and “Everybody Wants To Rule the World” bore me… but I love “Head Over Heels” and :Sowing the Seeds of Love”…
I don’t really know if I like this song or not, so steeped in childhood memories as it is. St Elmo’s Fire rocked, though.
I don’t know if I ever liked a single movie set around high school kids. Maybe it’s because I didn’t particularly care for that time of my life…