“Dirty Dancing” soundtrack, 1987. Starting off the New Year with some major guilty pleasure listening (some of it so very very bad that it’s great). Dirty Dancing was a massive smash; the album spent 18 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart while the movie, starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, became the  first film to sell more than a million copies for home video after a wildly successful theater run.

My friends and I loved Dirty Dancing back in ‘87, the sexy dancing, the drama, not putting Baby in the corner, etc. I guess by default we also fell in love with the film’s music, though we mocked many of the songs relentlessly. The first single from the soundtrack, “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” is a sappy soft rock duet by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes that went to #1 and won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Grammy. The second single, “Hungry Eyes” by Eric Carmen, went to #4. Back in ‘87 the rumor was that it was written after Carmen saw the way that Jennifer Grey looked at Patrick Swayze during the filming of Dirty Dancing. I hate to break this to my friends, but the song was actually written back in ‘84 by John DeNicola and Franke Previte, long before Grey ever set her hungry eyes on Swayze. But it was the third single from the film that inspired most of our mirthful ridicule: “She’s Like the Wind” performed by Patrick Swayze (he cowrote it back in ‘84 with Stacy Widelitz and it was originally intended for the movie Grandview, USA). Oh it so very very bad, an over the top schmalzy and dramatic 80′s power ballad. People loved it, though, and it went to #3 on the Hot 100 and to #1 on the Adult Contemporary charts (though I doubt most of those adult contemporaries listened to it while driving around with a bunch of teenagers hanging their heads out the window so that their hair could be like the wind. That was probably just us).

A few of the songs on the soundtrack are great classics, originally released long before the late 80′s. “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes is classic Wall of Sound Phil Spector production from 1963. “Hey Baby” by Bruce Channel is late 50′s/early 60′s rock-n-roll, harmonica front and center, from 1961 and hit #1 on the Hot 100 chart. “Love Is Strange,” performed by Mickey and Sylvia, was written by Bo Diddley who first recorded it in ‘56 but that recording was not released until 2007. Mickey and Sylvia’s version went to #11 in early 1957 and in 2004 was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The original soundtrack concludes with The Five Satins’ “In the Still of the Night,” one of the most popular doo-wop songs from the 50′s which went to #24 on the Hot 100 and has been covered over the years by She Na Na, the Beach Boys, Boyz II Men and Debbie Gibson among others.