1982 Songs: I Melt With You

Tweet

If you’ve noticed thus far (with three weeks to go, no less), there was a lot of diversity in music 40 years ago. Of course, unlike 1972, you actually had to change the radio station to hear the diversity (where you could hear Alice Cooper and the Carpenters on the same radio station in ‘72…which might explain what’s wrong with me ). Let’s turn the clock back to 1982 and see if you remember this one. I Melt With You - Modern English Valley girl, she’s a valley girl! Oh, wait, that was Frank Zappa. But this song became huge after being featured in the film Valley Girl (and that was quite common at the time: songs getting a spot in a movie and becoming a hit. In fact, the Plimsouls’ sole hit “A Million Miles Away” became a hit after they broke up, because it was featured in the same movie!). The song isn’t the happiest, most upbeat thing thematically. It’s about deciding to have sex in your last moments before the bomb hits. That was the threat of my generation (“I’ll duck and cover with my Yuletide lover” as Weird Al sang in “Christmas at Ground Zero”). Now we’re just destroying ourselves without the bomb’s help. I Melt With You Written by Robbie Grey, Gary McDowell, Richard Brown, Michael Conroy, and Stephen Walker Recorded by Modern English From After the Snow, 1982 (Today’s 1972 song: “Heart of Gold”) There’s nothing you and I won’t do: