OK, so, like, do you remember Valley Girl,Martha Coolidge’s, like, totally awesome, way cool romantic comedy from 1983 that stars a super-young Nicolas Cage and totally fetching Deborah Foreman? If not, then, like, oh, my God, you seriously need to revisit it. Like, now.
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The film, which is the unofficial originator of “Valspeak” and So-Cal teen culture, was just named one of the greatest needle drops of all time by The Hollywood Reporter. The scene the outlet showcased is the dating montage, starring the film’s star-crossed lovers, Cage’s Randy and Foreman’s Julie, immersing themselves in L.A.’s early-’80s music and club scene. And we, like, absolutely, wholeheartedly agree that it makes for an unforgettable movie-music moment.
Let us set the scene: Randy wants to get Julie out of her preppy Southern California bubble, so he introduces her to Hollywood’s edgier nooks where divey punk clubs are awash in a neon glow. As the love birds goof off playing video games and canoodling, Modern English’s “I Melt With You” serenades their carefree chemistry and freedom to be together without the disapproving looks from their respective clans.
“I felt from old movies that the most important thing that you can do in a movie is to play wanting. It isn’t actually the getting of the person that is hot on the screen. It’s the wanting,” Coolidge says in the liner notes of the film, via Film Comment. “It’s the electricity … the eye contact, the reflecting of each other that people do. … I wanted very much for Randy and Julie to really have that great desire and electricity together.”
Coolidge’s choice of music to complement that wanting perfectly encapsulates the youthful, romantic spirit of the film. A definitive post-punk track with dreamy lyrics, it elevates the pacing of the montage and blossoming Romeo-and-Juliet romance suspended in a state of “imaginary grace.”
The whole soundtrack is an ’80s sonic time capsule. Other songs featured on the film’s soundtrack include Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way,” Payola’s “Eyes of a Stranger,” and Sparks’ “Angst in My Pants.”
Released in August 1982, “I Melt With You” was the second single from the band’s sophomore album, After the Snow. According to founding band member Gary McDowell, via Guitar Player, they wanted “it to be a jangly pop song but with avant-garde verses in it, in a Frank Zappa or Tom Waits sort of vein.”
The track became the breakthrough hit the band needed, yet despite the its massive radio and MTV popularity, it never even broached the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, topping out at just No. 76.
Still, it managed to become an enduring classic of both underground alternative scenes and mainstream pop culture, with its status permanently cemented as an iconic ’80s love anthem with its inclusion in Valley Girl. Like, for sure.
Valley Girl is streaming for free on Pluto TV.
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