The classic 1980s song that Bryan Ferry, Chrissie Hynde and Billy Idol rejected
The 1980s was home to some truly brilliant and, of course, some truly awful pop music. Similar can be said of the movie catalogue that graced our screens over the course of the decade. Whether you’re partial to a bit of cheesy pop or not, it’s difficult to discredit the colossal impact of John Hughes’ music-laden comedies on ’80s pop culture, whether it’s Ferris Bueller’s rendition of ‘Twist and Shout’ or Duckie’s lip sync to Otis Redding’s ‘Try A Little Tenderness’. While an appearance in one of Hughes’ movies would seem attractive to most artists at the time, Billy Idol and Bryan Ferry didn’t seem so fussed.
The musical accompaniment to Hughes’ movies was as integral to their success as the cheesy dialogue and Molly Ringwald’s angsty performances; hence, a strong presence of contemporary pop was vital. For Sixteen Candles, it was The Thompson Twins’ ‘If You Were Here’; for Pretty in Pink, it was The Psychedelic Furs’ 1981 track of the same name; and for The Breakfast Club, it was Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’.
Hughes generally filled his soundtracks with classic and contemporary pop music, but he decided to try something a little more original with The Breakfast Club. Contrary to popular belief, Simple Minds didn’t write ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’; it was written and composed by the producer Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff, a guitarist and songwriter from the Nina Hagen band.
When Forsey was first commissioned to write The Breakfast Club soundtrack, he had Simple Minds in mind to record it. However, when he approached Jim Kerr, the Scottish singer declined, stating that he only sings his own songs with Simple Minds. Dejected but not defeated, Forsey approached Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry, Billy Idol, Cy Curnin of The Fixx and Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, who was incidentally married to Kerr at the time.
All of the artists Forsey approached to sing his lyrics declined, leaving him with no option but to recircle and persist with Kerr. Eventually, Simple Minds agreed to record the track for The Breakfast Club, but it wasn’t without a battle.
“We turned him down six times,” Kerr once told Christie Eliezer of Mixdown. “Finally, we felt so sorry for him we thought we’d go through the motions of recording it, figuring the record company would hate it, and we’d be off the hook.”
Little did Kerr know, ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ would become the band’s biggest hit, reaching number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and haunting the top ten in the UK, Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand.
Addressing the smash hit in another interview with The Guardian, Kerr revealed that the la-la-las at the song’s end were his improvisation and that he had hoped to add some of his own lyrics in their place. “I added the big ‘la, la-la-la-la’ ending because I didn’t have any lyrics. I said I’d write some, but Keith said: ‘Over my dead body. We’re keeping that.'”
Listen to Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ below.
