Revvin' up your engine, listen to her howlin' roar

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

07/12/86 : Top Gun OST - Various Artists

Yes, I know the rules say "no soundtracks" but the rules are there to be broken, particularly for soundtracks which are all (I think) original tracks and, more particularly, for soundtracks that I think feature some great tracks.

It opens up with Kenny Loggins's "Danger Zone" which I find impossible to listen to without imagining planes zooming through the sky, so I guess it pretty much does its job. And then of course there's Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" which was absolutely everywhere that summer - it does what it does well, but I'd struggle to say I love it. I think it's fair to say the rest of the tracks (with the possible exception of "Playing With The Boys") struggle to reach a similar level of quality, but in the context of the soundtrack to this film, they're perfectly fine - I wouldn't be buying the album to have them though. Doesn't Tom look amusingly young on the album cover though?

We're at #8 in the charts this week on its tenth week of a decent 25 week run, with it peaking at #4 in its sixth and eighth weeks. The top five this week were a compilation-ish clean sweep of Now 8, Hits 5, best-ofs from Kate Bush and The Police and a live album from Queen (a new entry) and the next highest new entry was The Damned (#40).

Wikipedia has remarkably little on the album other than telling me that "Take My Breath Away" won the Academy Award for best original song. What's more interesting is the people that wanted nothing to do with the album - Bryan Adams, Toto, REO Speedwagon, Judas Priest and ABC were all approached to get involved and declined for a variety of reasons. But Mr Loggins was very happy to get involved - which caused me to think that I knew absolutely nothing else about him (other than "Footloose" obviously) so I checked out his entry. 

He first found fame as half of Messina and Loggins in the early 70s - apparently they were a big thing and released six albums before Kenny went solo and released FOURTEEN albums taking him up to 2009. He's also done a lot of soundtrack work including A Star Is Born, Caddyshack, Over The Top and, obviously best of all, The Tigger Movie. He also co-wrote "What A Fool Believes" with Michael McDonald - they both recorded a version of it, but I think we all know which version everyone knows.

Back to Top Gun, AllMusic declared it "a quintessential artifact of the mid-'80s" (and who's going to argue with that?) and I think it's fair to say it did pretty well commercially. It got to #1 in Finland, Germany, Switzerland and the US and was top five in most places - it sold NINE MILLION copies in the US!

"Customers also listened to" soundtracks from Rocky, Rocky IV, Over The Top and Top Gun:Maverick - only one of which I've ever seen (yup - never seen Rocky!). I haven't seen Top Gun in ages - I imagine a lot of it hasn't dated well, but I bet the action scenes still look great. And they'll be improved by the soundtrack - but I don't think I'll feel the need to just listen to it ever again. I do, however, stand by my contention that "Danger Zone" is a bangin' track.

30/11/86 - Subtle and understated
14/12/86 - Mystifyingly popular