Search - Various Artists :: Brat Pack Years

This blindingly garish, tossed-together compilation betrays little affection for the movies it supposedly celebrates. Worse, The Brat Pack Years omits many songs that fans of those flicks--many of them John Hughes touchstones--associate with their most romantic and thrilling moments. Few who've watched Valley Girl would choose the Thompson Twins' fine nouveau-disco "In the Name of Love" as representative of a picture that includes five cuts by raunchy power poppers the Plimsouls (none included here) and a couple apiece by unjustly neglected early-'80s new wavers Bonnie Hayes and Josie Cotton; also, is there anyone under the age of 40 who hasn't heard enough of "I Melt with You"? Sixteen Candles' defining musical moments were the Twins' "If You Were Here" and a Stray Cats cover of the titular doo-wop classic--both absent--and Pretty in Pink remains best remembered for... well, you know. And John Cusack's brief appearance as a geek buddy of Anthony Michael Hall in Candles hardly justifies the presence of tunes from his Sure Thing, Better Off Dead, and One Crazy Summer. But be sure that when Nicolas Cage's Valley Girl character spat, "That techno-rock you listen to is godless!" he'd heard the immediate future: John Parr bellowing out his genetically engineered lungs in service of "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)." --Rickey Wright