THROWBACK THURSDAY: FLASHDANCE SOUNDTRACK

What a feelin'!!!!! 1983 was a stellar year for music all around, but if you ask me -- and you didn't -- I would have to say the year was stolen by the soundtrack to a little film I like to call Flashdance. Well, the reason I like to call it that is because it was the name of the film, so..... ANYHOOZERS! Flashdance, and  its star Jennifer Beals, were a phenomenon. It changed the way movies were made, the way soundtracks were marketed to sell a film and was the first film to use MTV as a major marketing tool. Giorgio Moroder (and supervisor Phil Ramone) compiled a veritable who's who of the music industry and put together an unforgettable soundtrack with two #1 singles on its tracklisting. Flashdance....What a Feeling by Irene Cara is arguably the best dance song of the 80s or any other era. It shot to #1 on the Hot 100 on May 28, 1983 and stayed there for six weeks, garnering both a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Original Song. Maniac by Michael Sembello was released as the second single and hit #1 on September 10, 1983 and spent two weeks at the top spot. Maniac was also nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards that year. Though no other singles were released from the album for various reasons, several songs enjoyed airplay on MTV with promotional videos, like Donna Summer's Romeo, and the soundtrack itself was nominated for a Grammy for Album of the Year and won one for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special. It went on to sell over 6 million copies in the US. Other top artists of the time who appeared on the album were Kim Carnes, Laura Branigan and Joe Esposito. I would say the highlight of the album for me -- and what else matters -- are Shandi's He's a Dream and Karen Kamon's Manhunt (which is the third video below and it will blow your mind). Those songs ROCK!!! And DO NOT get me started on Cynthia Rhodes who is the goddess of 80s dance movies (see Staying Alive and Dirty Dancing). Seriously, Flashdance is one of my favorite movies of all time and one of the MAIN reasons I became a dancer. The movie and the soundtrack are sexy, flashy and made for the MTV generation. Watch and listen below to some of the cutting edge sounds from 1983's #1 soundtrack, Flashdance.