Full disclosure: I created this top ten list pretty much so I could list today’s SOTD in the #1 spot.

John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club is, incomprehensibly, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and has been very much in the cultural spotlight recently. All that coverage has teleported me back to my early teens, when this film (and this song) were godlike.

The funny thing is that I’d always assumed the track was not written for the film but unearthed by Hughes from a Simple Minds record. Not the case, as it turns out. The song was written for the film by Keth Forsey and Steve Schiff and recorded by Simple Minds only after three other acts declined.

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Certain songs are so intertwined with movies they’ve appeared in that they sort of become extensions of the film. The films of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Andersons Wes and Paul Thomas come immediately to mind.

I don’t think I can ever hear ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ or Urge Overkill’s cover of ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’ without being thrown back into Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Nor can I hear the piano coda of ‘Layla’ without picturing the parade of corpses toward the end of Goodfellas. Nico’s version of Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’ is married to the image of Margot Tenenbaum stepping off the green line bus and Aimee Mann’s ‘Wise Up’ and ‘Save Me’ conjure up the heart and soul of Magnolia.

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