In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 192: 1985 The Year In Pop Culture(4-23-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 192

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Tell me doctor, where are we going this time? Is it the 50s, or 1999? No, it's 1985.

Episode 192 is about the year 1985 in pop culture. This new style of show will be introduced periodically. In the future, it will include looks at years from 1960 to 2005. 

We kick it off with a deep dive into the world of television in 1985. New shows, the most popular shows, the weirdest shows (hello, Small Wonder). Also an overall lay of the land in the industry.

We go way back in the day and look at the music landscape in 1985. New artists making their debut, the rise of MTV and music videos, new tech and sounds and so much more.

The Top 5 crosses over to the other side as we look at the weirdest and funniest news stories from the year. Watching television while your house burns down around you?

There is as always a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the epic failure that was New Coke.

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Speaker 00:

Hello, world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 192. We've got something fun and slightly new this week, as the entire podcast will be dedicated to one year, 1985, the year in pop culture. We're going to be looking back at television in 1985, the best, worst, weirdest shows. We're going to go way back in the day to look at what music was like in 1985, big artists, big albums. There'll be a brand new top five that are going to be some weird and funny news stories from 1985. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule, obviously from 1985, dealing with the release of the epic failure known as New Coke. All of that is coming up right now on episode 192 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So what are we going to talk about this week? Obviously, lots of things that have to do with the year 1985, as that is the subject matter for this week's podcast. This was one of those ideas that popped in my head during a walk on the bike trail, where I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of doing episodes based around a single year. As I said last week, these will be dropped in here and there throughout the podcast. I'll be choosing years between 1960 and 2005. So in a few weeks or so, when the next year in pop culture kind of episode comes up, if any of you have a year you want me to dive into, shoot me a message. Also, coming up soon is episode 200 of the podcast. So those of you on Patreon, on the free and paying tier, anyone that's a member, I'm going to be putting up polls for what you want me to talk about on episode 200. So it'll be another listener's choice, but it'll be completely on Patreon instead of all over social media like I did for episode 150. Speaking of Patreon, we can't kick off this podcast proper without me giving shoutouts to my Patreon subscribers. Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, Matt, thank you all so much for being my biggest fans, my biggest backers. $5 a month gets you access to bonus podcast episodes. It gets you access to the remastered Without a Map live streams. They were kind of the post-game podcast wrap-up shows that I did on Instagram. During the first year or so the podcast was out, I've tried to fix the audio, the visual on these without a map streams. They were done with my iPhone 6, so the quality's not bad, but compared to 4K and 8K that you have now, it definitely looks primitive. We can take care of more of the housekeeping parts of the podcast when we get to the end. Thank you all for being here, for your weekly dose of Gen X nostalgia to make us feel young again briefly. So right now for this new format this week, close your eyes, except if you're driving, don't do that, and imagine yourself back 40 years ago. God, I can't believe it's been that long. I'm sorry. Well, the cat's out of the bag. Anyway, let's go back 40 years and do a deep dive into the year 1985, now on episode 192 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So here we are. Face to face, a couple of silver spoons, and we're going to go where everybody knows your name. It's 1985. I was seven years old. I don't know where you were, but we're sitting in the living room in front of a larger CRT boxy type TV. I believe 1985 was the year that my family got cable from Cape Cod Cablevision. It gave me access to MTV, to Nickelodeon, to New England Sports Network, Nessun, to Sports Channel with the Boston Celtics, who were the best team in the NBA at the time. So here I was, seven years old, living on Cape Cod. This is my memories of TV. The year 1985 was a defining moment in American television anywhere. In the middle of the 80s cultural boom, those of you that lived through it, you remember it was a time with neon colors, synthesized soundtracks. They weren't the trends. That was the way of life. Maybe it's because this is the year that I remember getting cable TV, but it felt like this was when cable really got its claws into the culture of America. So what we're doing here is we're looking at 1985, the year in television. First, let's look at the shows that burst onto the scene in 1985. Perhaps the most notable debut was The Golden Girls.

Speaker 01:

Thank you for being a friend. Travel down the road and back again. Your heart is true. You're a pal and a confidant.

Speaker 00:

This NBC show, it was a sitcom that featured four... Older Women Living Together in Miami, Florida. It starred Bea Arthur as Dorothy, Betty White as Rose, Rue McClanahan as Blanche, and Estelle Getty as Sophia. This was a show that broke stereotypes around aging and became an instant classic. The funny thing is this show has a very deep connection for me to my family. No, none of them were on the show. But I first started watching this, there was a summer in the late 90s when my family was in between homes. And I had to spend the summer living with my nana, which was a really fun time and I'm glad that I did it. But my nana always watched the Golden Girls. I think because the women on the show were her age. So anytime I hear the Golden Girls theme, I think of my nana. But I also think of my great aunt Elsie, who was like the spitting image of Sophia Petrillo, except with a lot more dirty language. It used to be a lot of fun back in the day when we would have holiday get togethers and my aunt Elsie would come over and my uncle Bob would needle her, trying to get her to go off on kind of a rant and swear at him, just like Sophia, except swearing a lot more. Also premiering in 1985 was MacGyver. This ABC action-adventure series centered around agent Angus MacGyver, a secret agent who solved problems with scientific knowledge and household items rather than brute force. There's a term called MacGyvering, or the idea that using your ingenuity to piece things together to make something different is your MacGyvering something. I don't know if anyone still uses that term now in the 2020s, but it was prevalent when I was growing up in the 90s. Another big show that debuted in 1985 was Moonlighting. And this ABC show was comedy, romance, mystery. It introduced us to Bruce Willis, and it also starred Sybil Shepard. It was famous for its fast-paced, witty dialogue, behind-the-scenes drama... And it was played with breaking the fourth wall and ushered in a more stylized, self-aware approach to storytelling. Those were the new shows. What were the most popular shows of 1985? One I bet you could guess before I even say it. Because I've stated in a lot of the time capsule segments, if they're from the 1980s, the Cosby show is usually the number one show. This was a show about the Huxtables, an upper-middle-class black family in Brooklyn. It was the number one show in America for years. This show helped to revive NBC, as did Family Ties, which was another NBC hit. It was centered around Michael J. Fox, who was Alex P. Keaton, a young conservative in a liberal household. Other ratings juggernauts in 1985 included Dallas... which was the tangled web of the oil tycoons, the Ewing family. There was also Dynasty, a glitzy nighttime soap opera known for outrageous fashion and catfights. And there was Cheers, where everybody knew your name. This was the year that Cheers really took off. It was modestly popular in its first couple of years, but it led to it becoming one of the most beloved sitcoms ever. There were also some longtime staples of television that bid farewell in 1985. One notable goodbye was The Jeffersons.

Speaker 04:

Well, we're moving on up. We're moving on up. To.

Speaker 00:

The CBS show was the spinoff of All in the Family, and it ended its run after 11 seasons. This had the theme song, Moving on Up to the East Side. 1985 also saw the departure of Different Strokes, an NBC sitcom that had been picked up for a short revival by ABC. It was the Drummond family, and Arnold... Played by Gary Coleman with his catchphrase, what you talking about, Willis? 1985 also saw the ending of the Three's Company universe, I guess, for lack of a better term. Because Three's Company had ended and they did a spinoff called Three's A Crowd. where Jack Tripper and his love interest, Vicki Bradford, move in together. She was introduced in the last few episodes of Three's Company, but Three's A Crowd was a fail. It lasted one season and was canceled in April 1985. What about some weird or forgotten TV shows? Do you remember Small Wonder?

Speaker 03:

Small Wonder. Oh

Speaker 00:

man, this show was weird even when it was out when I was watching it as a kid. The show debuted in September 1985. It was on for four seasons, which I was kind of surprised. It's about a family that has a robot daughter named Vicky. which stood for Voice Input Child Identicant. Tiffany Brissett played the 10-year-old android Vicky. And I just remember the show being based around her superhuman strength and intelligence and speed. And also her talking in a robot voice, which was definitely off-putting. There was the sci-fi show Street Hawk, which lasted a whole 14 episodes. where a former motorcycle cop is hired to fight crime using Street Hawk, which was a combat motorbike. Do any of you remember that show? I have no memory of it. For us little kids back then, there was the Berenstain Bears show that debuted in 1985. Stan and Jan Berenstain created this family of four, mother and father and two kid bears. The show was only on for two seasons and 26 episodes. I thought it was on a lot more. Maybe it just made a big imprint on me watching it on Saturday mornings. There was also the workplace comedy called Sarah, which was one of the earliest roles for actress Geena Davis. The show only lasted 13 episodes, but when I was researching it, it's got pretty positive reviews, so I don't know why it didn't last. I saved the best for last as far as forgotten. There was a show called Troubles and Strife. This is when an attractive young church official takes over the parish and starts to have an effect on the local wives. The show debuted in November 1985 and it has the honor of being one of the lowest rated shows from the 80s on IMDb. The show lasted two seasons, but only 13 total episodes, with the reviews at the time being mixed at best. But what about the trends and innovations of 1985 in television? As I stated a few minutes ago, cable TV was no longer just a novelty. It was becoming a powerful force. Like I said, I think that's when my family got it. I don't know when you out there got cable TV. If you don't have it yet, it's too late. Just get streaming. You had MTV influencing music, fashion, and youth culture. You had CNN with their 24-hour news cycle that reshaped how audience consumed current events. You had other new cable TV networks coming out in 1985 like VH1, the Discovery Channel, Arts and Entertainment Network, A&E. You had Nick at Night, but that was on the same channel as Nickelodeon, but I guess it does kind of count as a separate thing. That's where I learned about all the 50s shows, Car 54, Donna Reed, The Danny Thomas Show, My Three Sons. I knew more about My Three Sons than Small Wonder. I don't know if that's saying much. Cable TV gave you more options. You weren't stuck with the big three of ABC, CBS, and NBC. Technologically, the VCR became more common in American households. So it gave you control over when you watched your show. It was in the late 80s that we started to record all our favorite movies or sporting events. And then one of us five siblings would tape over the other one's stuff. Because VHS tapes were expensive. They were like gold. Now the only thing old VHS tapes are good for is building a fort. It was also around this time that syndication exploded, giving older series new life. Like I said, Nick at Night. I wasn't alive in the 50s, but yet I got to see all those shows in the 80s. Narratively, in television, there was a shift towards more serialized storytelling, particularly in the dramas like Dallas and Dynasty or Falcon's Crest or Knot's Landing. These laid the groundwork for the more complex narratives that would dominate TV in the decades that came after. TV was also becoming more self-aware and socially conscious, from the clever meta-commentary of Moonlighting to the Golden Girls tackling issues like aging, illness, and LGBTQ rights. 1985 was a year that television dared to be a little smarter and a little bit bolder. A time when Thursday night lineups were sacred and network jingles were a part of everyday life. What were your favorite parts about 1985 television? Favorite shows? Favorite commercials? Favorite theme songs? Favorite cable TV networks? This week in history, I know, surprising, we're going back 40 years ago to April 23rd, 1985, and the launch of New Coke.

Speaker 02:

All right, we're New Edition, and we're here to introduce the great new taste of Coca-Cola, the taste of today. Yeah, Coke is it. Come on, check it out now. It's got a new taste. It's a definite wow.

Speaker 00:

Boy, in the annals of marketing history, there are few product launches that have earned as much notoriety or immediate backlash as New Coke. When Coca-Cola reformulated the iconic soft drink in 1985, it ignited a firestorm of protest that not only threatened the brand's reputation, but also revealed just how deeply American consumers identified with their favorite soda. Coca-Cola first came out in 1886, when Atlanta pharmacist John S. Pemberton created it as a medical tonic. By the mid-20th century, Coke was a dominant force in the beverage industry, a brand so embedded in American life that it was practically a national institution. In the 1970s, Pepsi launched the Pepsi Challenge, which was a blind taste test campaign, showing that a lot of people preferred Pepsi over Coke. This got the Coca-Cola people worried, fearing that their classic formula might be too classic for the evolving tastes of younger consumers. So Coca-Cola took what seemed to be the bold but logical step and changed the formula of their soda. After conducting thousands of taste tests and market research surveys, Coca-Cola developed a sweeter version of its cola. Initially referred to as Project Kansas, the new formulation consistently outperformed both Pepsi and Old Coke in taste tests. On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola announced it was retiring its original formula, replacing it with a new version called New Coke. You'd think all these taste tests that said, oh, we love this New Coke, then when it comes out it should be an immediate hit, right? Nope. The backlash was immediate and intense. Coca-Cola's phone lines were flooded with up to 1,500 calls a day complaining. There were protest groups popping up around the country. People were hoarding cans of the original formula. There was even one Houston consumer who founded the Old Coca-Cola Drinkers of America, which was a grassroots group demanding the return of the original beverage. What's interesting is it wasn't that new Coke tasted bad. Many people admitted it was smoother and sweeter, even preferable in a blind test. But the problem wasn't the flavor. It was the emotion. Coca-Cola had misjudged the deep emotional connection people had to the original formula. It was entwined with nostalgia. You know how powerful that is as you listen to a Gen X nostalgia podcast. So to many, in 1985, it felt like they were losing a piece of their identity, their cultural heritage. Incredibly, after just 79 days, Coca-Cola announced on July 11th, 1985, the return of their original formula, now rebranded as Coca-Cola Classic. The public was happy. Sales surged. The company spun this fiasco into a wind. And it was almost like an urban legend that they had intentionally done this, tanked the company very briefly to make it way more popular after. Even though Coca-Cola Classic came back, New Coke continued to be sold for several years under different names. First as Coke 2, before being quietly phased out in the early 2000s. There was even a quick, quirky revival in 2019 thanks to a promotional tie-in with Stranger Things on Netflix. Did you ever try New Coke? I know I didn't. I drank whatever soda was bought and put into the fridge. But that epic disaster known as New Coke was unveiled 40 years ago this week in history. Now it's time for a brand new time capsule. Obviously, we are sticking to that same day. We're sticking to 1985. April 23rd, 1985. What was going on in the world of pop culture back then? Well, let's find out. The number one song was We Are the World by USA for Africa. This was the charity single with dozens of famous musicians all singing together. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and had some of the biggest names in music at the time. Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder. What I didn't know at the time is there was a full album called We Are the World that had unreleased songs from other artists that were a part of the song. The We Are the World single has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, though, making it one of the best-selling singles ever. And one of the best charitable songs, charitable donations ever, because it was for the famine in Ethiopia at the time. The number one movie was Stick. And you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $3.55. What is Stick, you ask? It's a crime film starring Burt Reynolds as Ernest Stick Stickley, who witnesses the murder of his friend during a drug deal and has to get a job as a chauffeur to kind of go on the lam and lay low. Despite it being the number one movie, it was a major box office bomb, making just over $8 million on a budget of $22 million. So it lost $14 million. It was part of the series of films that knocked Burt Reynolds down to B-level star from A-level that he was in the late 70s. The number one TV show was The Cosby Show. I told you, mid-80s, it's always The Cosby Show. If you don't know what it's about, rewind this podcast about 10 minutes when I talked about it back then. A little something different, though, on this time capsule because it's 1985, the year in pop culture. Some celebrities born in 1985 include Kaley Cuoco from The Big Bang Theory, Gal Gadot from Wonder Woman, Keira Knightley from Pirates of the Caribbean, Bruno Mars the singer, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, hockey player Alex Ovechkin, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. Some celebrities who passed away in 1985 include Orson Welles, Ricky Nelson, Rock Hudson, and Roger Maris. The big new companies that were founded in 1985 include Blockbuster Video, Papa John's Pizza, and Samuel Adams the Beer. So that wraps up another time capsule, another This Week in History. But let's get into some weird, funny, yet true news stories and events from 1985. Here is a top five that'll have you shaking your head in amazement as I did when I researched it. We couldn't get through 1985 without me finding some news stories that'll just have you saying what in the world was going on back then. If you enjoy weird slash foolish news stories... In episode 181, I did a segment on weird 1960s news stories. And back in episode 158, I did a segment on weird 1970s news stories. Here, though, we're sticking to the one year, 1985. And boy, there were some weird stories here. As with many of these top five lists, there are some honorable mentions, and the top five itself is in no particular order. So let's get into the honorable mentions, and there are a couple of them. One honorable mention is the NFL's Houston Oilers threatening to try to shut down the NFL draft. This is a very complicated story. It has to do with Houston not getting a draft pick they were owed and having to do with quarterback Bernie Kosar coming out of college. and Houston threatening to sue the NFL and Commissioner Pete Rozelle. It didn't happen, and the day before the draft, Houston dropped the lawsuit. And the other honorable mention is the famous Sports Illustrated April Fool's article about baseball pitcher Sid Finch. Obviously, Sid Finch wasn't a real person, but the story was he was raised in an English orphanage, learned yoga in Tibet. and could throw a fastball 168 miles an hour. Despite the absurdity of this article, there were people who thought he was a real person. He was supposed to be signed by the New York Mets. They even gave him a locker, but then on April 2nd, they had a news conference where he announced his retirement. In the article, Sid Finch was photographed, and he was played by a man named Joe Burton, who was a friend of sports illustrative photographer Lane Stewart. So those are the honorable mentions, but let's get into the actual top five and just the insanity that was 1985. Number one, is a TV show so good that you'd watch it while your house was burning down around you? This occurred in January 1985 in Birmingham, England. Nancy Thurlow and her daughter Madeline were We're watching the TV show Saint Elsewhere, along with husband George Thurlow, when a fire broke out, but they were so into the episode of the show that they watched it while their house was burning down around them. The firefighters arrived, saw the fire, sent people inside, and were shocked to see three of them sitting in the burning living room watching Saint Elsewhere. Everybody was rescued and the fire was put out. And once the fire was out, Nancy and her daughter Madeline rushed back inside to catch the final few minutes of St. Elsewhere. Is there any episode of television where you would actually sit and watch it while your house burned down around you? I guess they didn't have a VCR. Number two is What Happened to Bambi? This is from February 1985 and centers around a Soviet Union production of a live-action version of the movie Bambi, so about the deer. The movie was going to be called Bambi's Childhood, and there were three fawns that were brought in to play the baby version of Bambi. These three fawns were stolen... killed, butchered, and eaten at a birthday celebration. So the movie Bambi's Childhood never got made because three Bambis were killed for this party. Two men were arrested. One of them ended up getting six years in prison, and the other one got four years in prison, and he was the one the birthday was for. One of the best things about this is is that this story was in Weekly World News at the time, and it was actually real. It was not made up. The headline in Weekly World News said, Drunken Russians Eat Bambi, with a picture of a mother and a baby deer. That's unreal. Number three is The Ultimate of Irony. This story is from New Orleans. It's from July 1985. There was a party being thrown for more than 100 lifeguards celebrating a summer season without any drownings, which obviously is a good thing to celebrate. No one died on your watch. Where the irony comes in is where lifeguard Jerome Moody, who had been drinking heavily at the party, fell into the pool and drowned. The party was so fun and raucous that none of the more than 100 lifeguards celebrating no one dying on their watch had another lifeguard die on their watch at this party. I don't know if that is the textbook case of irony, but it's got to be up there. It's at least jinxing yourself when you say you never get sick and then the next day you're sick or you say you never get speeding tickets and as soon as you start your car, cops are just waiting for you. Not that that's ever happened to me, though. Moving on. Number four, stupid criminals. This is from December 1985 from Washington, D.C. It was called Operation Flagship. U.S. Marshals used the get something for nothing scheme to get wanted fugitives to voluntarily go to the Washington Convention Center. They were responding to an invitation from a fictional television company saying they had won free NFL tickets. They had to go there and claim the tickets to see the Washington Redskins play the Cincinnati Bengals and get a chance to go to Super Bowl XX. 101 wanted criminals showed up and were arrested immediately. There were 166 marshals posing as ushers, cheerleaders, MCs, caterers, and even mascots. They all just swarmed these criminals and arrested them. These criminals and many criminals are living embodiments of the Dunning-Kruger effect. That is, stupid people are too stupid to know how stupid they are, which is why they get caught up in stings like that. Speaking of stupid, finally, number five on the list of weird and funny news events of 1985 is one of the worst changes you could ever see. This is from March 1985 from St. Louis, Missouri. And the absolutely asinine idea that the term bus stop conveyed too many negative emotions. So they changed it from bus stop to bus start. Many people thought it might be an early April Fool's joke, but nope, it was voted on, and there were 1,800 bus start signs put up all throughout St. Louis. All this did was cause massive confusion, which you can understand. It'd be like changing a stop sign to something else, or changing stop lights from red while red's an angry color. Let's make it happy. It's just nothing but confusion. After a year and a half of stupidity, they had to change it back, which meant they had to get all new bus stop signs made, so there's a nice waste of city funds. There you have it, though. Some of the weirdest, funniest, head-scratching news events from 1985. I don't know. To me, the craziest one is the people that were watching TV while their house burned down around them. I could see maybe if I was on the verge of beating a game on Nintendo and the house was burning down, I might be like, please, I just gotta defeat Metroid. But even then, I think my mother would have stomped a hole in the Nintendo and thrown me out the door. Oh, here we go. 1985 was a vibrant and transformative year in music. It straddled the last wave of new wave, the peak of synth pop, and the first steps into the digital future. As with any year, there were some artists that reached their peak of their career, some that fizzled out, new talents that emerged. So let's take a look at all of it. Let's do a deep dive into the music scene in 1985. For me, I believe at this time I was still kind of a metalhead. I listened to a lot of Van Halen, Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, Rat, Quiet Riot. But I also enjoyed Huey Lewis and the News. Obviously Michael Jackson, he was still riding the wave of thriller. There were some big new artists that came out in 1985. First and foremost was Whitney Houston. She released her self-titled debut album in February. It had the songs Saving All My Love For You and How Will I Know. She was very different on that first album, very made up with teased up hair. I mean, she was only 21 years old then. LL Cool J released his debut album Radio, produced by Rick Rubin. Guns N' Roses was formed, although they wouldn't have their first album come out for two years. Sade released their first album with Smooth Operator. Run DMC released their first album, King of Rock. One band that seemed like they were destined to be big based on what they did in 1985 was Mr. Mister. They had two massive songs with Broken Wings and Kyrie. They both went to number one. Their debut album, Welcome to the Real World, went multi-platinum, but they ended up not being able to continue that success. I guess they're not a one-hit wonder, but they are a two-hit wonder. I mentioned We Are the World in the Time Capsule segment, so you know all about that one. Some of the other major songs that were released in 1985 included George Michael's Careless Whisper, though in some markets they credited it as still with Wham. There was Take On Me by A-Ha, including their famous video that's kind of like a graphic novel come to life. Don Henley of the Eagles released The Boys of Summer. David Lee Roth, who had just recently split from Van Halen, released California Girls, the cover of the Beach Boys song, which included a video that I definitely enjoyed watching, even as an eight-year-old. There was REO Speedwagon and their song Can't Fight This Feeling. One song, or I should say video, that freaked me out was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Don't Come Around Here No More, which was an Alice in Wonderland-themed video. So the end of the song when Alice is a cake and they're eating her, boy, that freaked me out. There was Don't You Forget About Me by Simple Minds that all of us from a certain age group know from The Breakfast Club. Tears for Fears released Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Every time I hear that song, I think of the home video release of the 1985-86 Celtics championship team. There was one highlights package that had the music from that song in it. Huey Lewis and the News released The Power of Love, which I, of course, remember from Back to the Future. And don't worry, Back to the Future, when it turns 40 in July, will be getting its own segment. It has to. Some of the other major albums from 1985 included Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, which had the awesome song Money for Nothing with that crazy computer animated video. Phil Collins released No Jacket Required, which won Album of the Year at the Grammys. The soundtrack from the TV show Miami Vice spent seven weeks at number one, which is just crazy. Mostly because it didn't even have Don Johnson's song, Heartbeat, on there. I mean, you need that. Speaking of celebrities releasing music, 1985 also saw Eddie Murphy release his song, Party, all the time. That is the one where Rick James sings backup. Not everything was sunshine and rainbows for musicians in 1985. The supergroup, The Power Station... comprised of members of Duran Duran and singer Robert Palmer, released the hit song Some Like It Hot, but their album had mixed reviews. It didn't live up to the buzz of a quote-unquote supergroup. Billy Squire released his album Enough Is Enough, but that failed to reverse the damage done by that infamously awkward, one of the worst videos ever, Rock Me Tonight. When it comes to best and worst of music, it's all subjective stuff. As I've done my research for this segment, I have found a lot of people's lists for worst songs of 1985. We Built This City by Starship. That's pretty much on all of the lists. But I guarantee somebody who's listening to this loves that song. Others in the running for worst is St. Elmo's Fire, the theme from the movie. Dancing in the Street by Mick Jagger and David Bowie with another cringy video. There was the song Oh Yeah by Yellow. That's from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which I don't mind it, but as a song in and of itself, it's kind of a quintessential 80s song that couldn't be made at any other time. The song Tarzan Boy by Baltimore. That's kind of a split one. I'm sure a lot of you like that. It's got a very singable chorus. It's not really words. But there are others that would probably find it pretty annoying. By 1985, MTV was the kingmaker. They were the ones, if your video was popular on MTV, you were made. That's where Mr. Mr., A-ha, acts like that became successful because their videos were unique. It became required. Artists needed to have strong music videos to thrive. and careers were made or broken by what aired on MTV. I just mentioned Billy Squire. Early in 1985, MTV released sister channel VH1, Video Hits 1. It was meant to be for older people, which I kind of don't understand because music videos weren't really prevalent until at least the late 70s. So what older people are you looking at in 1985? People in their 60s were born in the 1920s. Do you have any music videos from Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby? I don't think so. In May 1985, you had the creation of Spin Magazine, launched by Bob Guccione Jr., whose father started Penthouse Magazine. This magazine would focus a lot on alternative, hip-hop, grunge music. It was here that you'd get a lot of information about the college radio acts, ones that were popular in college, like REM, Talking Heads, The Cult. You'd probably have Kate Bush, Jesus and Mary Chain, Husker Du. Music itself saw the rise of synthesizers and drum machines, digital recording techniques. It's funny, if you go onto Instagram, if you post a story, and some of them you can put music with, You go and you choose music that fits whatever you've got there. There's kind of a more ironic segment that is the 80s synth-pop sound-alike music. And if you play any of it, for people that are my age, those of you out there around 50, a little older, a little younger, you hear the first few beats of these fake new wave songs and it immediately makes you think of 1985. July 1985 saw the Live Aid concert. The legacy of this concert has grown throughout history. This is the one with Queen and Freddie Mercury's impactful performance. You had Phil Collins performing both in London and Philadelphia, being the drummer for Led Zeppelin. I have some vivid memories of this being on TV at my house when it was playing. I didn't know much about who Queen were or how big the reunion of Led Zeppelin was. Nearly 2 billion people watched it live, though. That's a lot of people. In September, there was the first ever Farm Aid, organized by Neil Young, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp. 1985 also saw the Parents Music Resource Council, PMRC, get formed. This was the beginning of the putting the labels on CDs, parental advisory programs. which only made me want the albums more if I saw that sticker on there. I was like, ooh, I'm cool. Some of the biggest movie soundtracks of the year included The Breakfast Club, Crush Groove, The Goonies, Back to the Future, and of course, The Wrestling Album, which included theme songs sung by wrestlers like Hillbilly Jim, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Mean Gene Okerlund, Nikolai Volkov. As far as awards to kind of wrap up 1985, the MTV Video Music Awards, David Lee Roth was nominated the most with eight nominations. California Girls and also Just a Gigolo, which has him performing with a lot of celebrity lookalikes. Video of the Year was Don Henley, the Boys of Summer. New Artist in a Music Video was Till Tuesday with Voices Carry, and they are from Boston, which is why I remember that song. For the Grammys in 1985, Tina Turner won Song of the Year for What's Love Got to Do With It. Lionel Richie won Album of the Year for Can't Slow Down. Cyndi Lauper was Best New Artist. And if you're wondering, the people from 1985 that won in the Grammys that came out in 1986, Phil Collins won Album of the Year for No Jacket Required. We Are the World won the Grammy for Song of the Year. Sade won Best New Artist. So there you go. 1985 wasn't just a year of hits. It was a pivot point, with pop becoming bigger, brasher, more visual thanks to MTV. Hip-hop was creeping towards the mainstream. R&B started shifting away from disco shadow into smoother, more melodic territory. New technology like CDs, digital recording, and a greater emphasis on music videos. It transformed how music sounded and how it was sold. So what was your favorite part about music in 1985? Did you have albums or cassettes or were you high rolling and got CDs? And are you as freaked out as me that 1985 was 40 years ago now? That's my biggest takeaway from all of this. But until we meet again, that's going to wrap up episode 192 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you all so much for listening, for making it to the end, for reminiscing with me about 40 years ago in the year 1985. We'll keep the content train rolling next week with episode 193. It will be a return to form normal. These year in review type episodes, they'll be sprinkled in. It's not going to be something I do all the time, but it was definitely a fun change of pace. If you enjoy my work, you can support me by becoming a subscriber on Patreon for $5 a month. You can always subscribe to the free tier and just be a part of the community. Maybe try before you buy. You can also buy me a coffee. Links to all this are in the description of the podcast. Of course, the best way to show your support for me, for any content creator, is to share their work, spread the word around about their work. I'm just one person, so I can only speak for me, but doing a lot of content work, it takes a lot of time. Typically, 15 to 20 hours a week, I spend recording, editing, marketing, promoting, creating visual art to go along with what I create. It feels like since I started this podcast in the fall of 2020, that my content creation game has really stepped up. It really is like a second job. And that's not a bad thing. The creative side, using my brain, that's the stuff I really like. Because then when I'm super old and beaten up and I can't do much else but sit at my desk, I can still do this. I will keep you informed when it gets closer to the release date of the movie that I filmed about a month or so ago. I'm hearing that it might be sometime in June. Obviously, you will all know when I know. And then from there, it's off to the races. I am going to try my hand at voice acting, maybe a little bit of on-screen stuff, small roles, background roles, because why not? That's my main thinking. Acting in a film was not anything on my radar as recently as nine months ago. So here's a new thing. Why not give it a shot? I bought a portable soundproofing booth, I guess, for lack of a better term. It should be here for next week's podcast when I record it, so you'll have to let me know if it sounds any different. It's basically a series of three foldable soundproofing panels that I can put around my microphone and me, and it fits on my desk. Maybe it'll make no difference and I'm just wasting my money, but I'd rather take the chance than not. Happy birthday when this podcast goes live on this date to my Aunt Emma out in Las Vegas. I'm hoping that the weather is perfect out there. It usually is much better than Cape Cod's weather, especially in April. So I hope it's the best birthday it can be, and I hope sometime in the future we get together again, whether it's me visiting Vegas or you visiting Cape Cod. If you celebrated Easter, I hope you had the best day possible. I know I was stuffed as full of food as I could be, but hey, I went to the gym in the morning, so that makes up for it. Whenever I think of Easter, it reminds me of my nana and Easter at her house, followed by us being forced to go for a walk down to the nearby cranberry bog. It was something so simple, but it was really good family bonding time. Lots of fun, lots of laughs. And we got in cardio after eating loads of ham and my Nana's special cheesy hash brown potatoes. Those things were so legendary. When I was... A kid when I was like 10, she'd make one pan would probably be enough. Then they got so popular. I think she ended up having to make at least two, maybe three big pans of those. And whether it's holidays or not, I hope that you out there take the time, make the time for those that matter the most to you. Family, friends, maybe you're out for a walk right now in the sun listening to this. I hope my voice is helping you go on your way. Find me all over social media. You know where I am. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow me on Instagram, my Facebook fan page, Threads, Blue Sky. I'm sometimes on TikTok. But until next week, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path And enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life, because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, and you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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