I’ve got a collection of 1980’s movie songs; some of the movies are well known and others less so.

My favorite movie song in the collection is from White Nights (1985).

Say You, Say Me

White Nights starred a famous ballerina and Gregory Hines, but was under the radar for the most.

The White Nights theme song, Say You, Say Me, sung by Lionel Ritchie, won the Oscar for best original song. It featured on Lionel Ritchie’s Dancing on the Ceiling album of that year.

Movie songs can lighten or enhance a movie. Say You, Say Me might have enhanced White Nights rather than complimented it. The movie was interesting all the same.

Say You, Say Me tends to sneak up on you and get into your system:

“I had a dream, I had an awesome dream. People in the park, playing games in the dark. And what they played was a masquerade. From behind the walls of doubt, a voice was calling out.”

The lyrics effectively convey the hidden and dark recesses of the human condition and the need for finding authenticity or an authentic self.

The Best That You Can Do

Another Oscar winning song is also a gem. Christopher Cross won an Oscar for the theme song from Arthur (1981), The Best That You Can Do (Is Fall In Love).

Chris Cross sings, “When you get caught between the moon and New York city, the best that you can do is fall in love.”

In life, the best that we can do is not always the biggest and brightest thing in the world. But it may be something better and maybe messier: perhaps that is love.

Getting caught between the moon and New York city; between the bright lights of success or the strange and unpredictable rhythms of life that take people unawares. If life casts a curve ball, like a ‘lunar eclipse’ shadowing over life, there is still something good to hang onto. This despite everything else failing or falling apart.  “The best that you can do is fall in love.”

They were two great movie songs from the 1980’s.