Old-Time Rock ‘n’ Roll:
How The 1980s Embraced 1950s and 1960s Oldies Music
Other 1980s Movies with Oldies Soundtracks
Photo: "Hollywood Diner, 400 E. Saratoga Street, Baltimore, MD 21202" by Baltimore Heritage is licensed under CC0 1.0
Other 1980s movies used oldies music in their soundtracks. Stand By Me (1986), a movie that recounts a journey taken by a group of teens hoping to see a dead body, has a humorous lip-syncing scene of The Cordette’s Lollipop.
In Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, a film reeking with 1950s suburban nostalgia, Pee Wee Herman, played by Paul Reubens, dances to The Champs’s 1958 hit Tequila
winning over a rough biker crowd. Set in 1959 Baltimore, Diner (1982) has an American Graffiti feel centering on several college buddies with rock ‘n’ roll music playing in the background. Hairspray is a John Waters’s movie revolving around a 1962 Baltimore teen dance television program that brings teens of different backgrounds, different physical appearances, and different races together through rock ‘n’ roll and dance. The film’s antagonists want to keep Baltimore segregated. The soundtrack moves the story forward. In the mega-blockbuster hit Top Gun, Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, sings The Righteous Brothers’s You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling
to charm and pickup women he encounters at bars. Bill Medley credits the scene for introducing a new generation to the Righteous Brothers.