The Starting Line, “Best of Me,” and 80’s Appropriation

617 Midway readers will likely remember my rant on the Wu-tang Clan shirt being featured in Wet Seal and the misappropriation of my youth. Well, my insistence on having musical tastes like those of a 'tween have only exacerbated this issue. Lately I notice 80’s music, 80’s movies—remakes everywhere. Whether from The Starting Line doing “Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now,” Fall Out Boy remaking “Beat It,” or New Found Glory redoing endless 80’s hits like “Crazy For You,” “The King of Wishful Thinking,” or Peter Cetera’s “The Glory of Love,” it is borderline ridiculous. And yes, I love it. Add to that the nod to Say Anything in The Starting Line’s video above and suddenly the 80’s are everywhere. Except I weigh more than 120 pounds now—and I’m not wearing a skinny tie.

As an aside, in regards to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”: I'm still convinced when someone pitched the movie Mannequin it was for some cutting-edge independent movie about love and materialism that got turned into a 80’s feel-good comedy by the movie execs. That, and Weekend at Bernie’s was likely much different in its first draft.

Seriously, how good is that Eddie Van Halen guitar riff and solo in Beat It? He keeps showing up in my poems lately. And my friend Johnny Mac and I had a John Mayer sighting at Don Rickles in Foxwoods in Jan. He is no king Edward though, that's for sure.