When I started looking for songs to fit my Stranger Things “predict the next 80s viral hit” challenge, Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ was the first one I considered a slam dunk.
This anarchic classic has the perfect feel for a show about the threat of apocalypse, and the epic sweep of its soundscape — particularly in the opening minute — would beautifully match images of death and destruction.
As I wrote yesterday, I’ll spend the next two weeks featuring songs I believe could (or should) play a prominent role in the next season of Stranger Things. My aim is to predict the next 80s viral sensation, following in the footsteps of Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill.’
I have a few ground rules. First, I’m looking only at songs released in the year 1987, a year after the setting of the most recent season. Granted, the show could pull music from any year leading up to 1987, but I wanted to narrow the scope to give myself more of a challenge. I’ll also set aside the question of whether artists would continue to release music on schedule even as world-threatening events are taking place in middle America.
Stranger Things is a big deal in my house. Equal parts Stephen King and Steven Spielberg, the hit Netflix series is a winning blend of humor, horror and heart. My daughter Fiona has watched every season multiple times, and has bought enough merch to fund the series’ upcoming final chapter.
Fiona is so rabid about the show that her practice is to binge each new season without interruption starting the moment it drops. So for season three, that meant an 8-hour stretch starting at midnight. And I’ll add that we were on a family cruise vacation at the time. She’s crazy.
‘The Moon and St. Christopher’ is the final track on Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 1990 album Shooting Straight in the Dark. It’s a beautiful, simple track that has a bit of that early 90s adult contemporary polish but could really have been written and recorded at any time.
Shooting Straight in the Dark was Carpenter’s third album and her first of three straight Platium releases to start the decade.
Eight years ago, in the middle of the initial wave of Hamilton-mania, I posted a handful of songs from the Hamilton Mixtape, a project that saw the musical’s songs reinterpreted by a host of contemporary musicians.
It was a cool project that shed new light on great songs, and allowed Lin-Manuel Miranda to enlist some of the artists who inspired his work. It’s also the kind of novelty release you listen to once or twice and never revisit.
Meet Me In Montauk 