AA.VV.
Dirty Dancing Soundtrack

We twenty-five-year-olds have a rather clear idea of what the '80s were like. Maybe a bit blurred because we experienced them during our childhood, but perhaps precisely for this reason, some memories have imprinted themselves even more strongly in our consciousness, due to a strange phenomenon of imprinting. There are things that are too "80s." For example, to this controversial decade, I associate women's blazers in outrageous colors (worse than Fiorello's jackets at karaoke) with extra-padded shoulder pads, skinny jeans tight at the ankle with a waistline under the armpit, super-teased hair... music by Cyndi Lauper, Culture Club, Gazebo, and Duran Duran... the punk-trash version of the early Madonna... and in cinema?
Quintessential eighty mood "Grandi Magazzini" (Castellano and Pipolo? I hope I'm not mistaken), "The Goonies," "E. T." and... "Dirty Dancing"!!!! Well, since the latter is a movie that based much of its success on music, why not talk about the soundtrack???

It opens with the famous, immortal "(I've had) The time of my life," which at the time turned out to be a chart-buster not to be taken lightly. Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes duet in a huge hit that will later identify in a unique and unmistakable way the melodramatic story of this film. Cult movie of the "dance-movie" genre, we've all seen it at least once, and maybe among you, there's someone (like me) who watches it again every time our networks air it (an average of once every six months between Rai and Mediaset).

Even though the film itself may have grated on many, the soundtrack is really nice. Sixties atmospheres (eighties set in the sixties... lethal vintage mix!!!) in "Be my baby" by the Ronettes, my favorite track even before the movie (it was heard a while ago in a commercial), here as the closing credits background. Another famous track is "Hungry eyes" by Eric Carmen, to whose notes the awful Baby learns "how to dirty dance" with the gorgeous Johnny at the moment when his partner has to recover from an illegal abortion and cannot perform on an important night that means saving Johnny from debts. Baby replaces her and in the meantime falls in love (really???) with her teacher... iconic "Hey Baby" by Merry Clayton, tooooooo sixties and tooooo much "makesmewannadance"! Even "Stay" by Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs was used in a commercial, but here it’s presented in the original version, with a proto-funky sound that makes me want to wear a polka-dotted dress with a tight waist, a headband, and hit the dance floor... last word for "She's like the wind," a melodic-sad-reflective moment with the voice of Patrick Swayze himself (a singer too????) which really... it was said that he wrote it and then sang it for a missing person... who knows if it's true. It's a pity that the whole piece, in general, suffers from the weak and unconvincing voice of the hunk who had the idea of making a (decisive??? who knows) vocal contribution to the film... his gyrating hips, I’d say, were more than enough but oh well... download this CD for a double somersault into the past like few can offer and try not to think, if you can, about De Filippi redoing the famous final dance with Kledi... maybe you'll hate less this landmark of the teen idol movies of the legendary Eighties!