This is a good one, but also my top mondegreen song of all time. Even knowing what the correct words are, I hear it as “this is scary.”
My nomination is St. Elmo’s Fire / Man in Motion by John Parr.
I’m nominating Culture Club’s “It’s a Miracle,” because the song was changed after marketing research showed that people were hearing them say “It’s a Miracle,” instead of what the actual lyrics were-- “It’s America.”
The lyrics actually make sense if you know they were originally “It’s America,” and the song is about the group’s first impressions of the country after coming here on tour.
But they bent to the Mondegreen of marketing research, and the song ended up making very little sense, but you could dance to it, and what the hell, you could dance to it.
I think choosing what lyrics to use based on marketing research is a very 80s thing-- yes, I know even the Andrews Sisters did it to an extent, but that had more to do with deciding when to use the expurgated versions of their songs and when not to. This is so much more cynical.
Besides, the gender-bending of Culture Club was an 80s thing no one could have done any earlier.
Some thoughts:
“Girls, Girls, Girls”----Motley Crue
“Nothin’ But A Good Time”—Poison
“You Give Love a Bad Name”—Bon Jovi
“Welcome to The Jungle”—Guns N Roses
“One”----Metallica
that and steve winwood’s “its money that matters” i remeber when that hit mtv … even the vj’s commented on how it captured the late 80s mood for a few years …
I don’t think frank Stallone (sly’s brother )who wrote and sang the song is worried too much he was surprised tho its still being played years after what rocky 2 or 3 ? when asked about it in an interview …
This is a really good one. This song was featured in “The Breakfast Club,” of course, which was not only released during my junior year in high school, but was filmed in a recently closed high school less than 15 miles away from my high school in Illinois.
Because of this, both the film and the song are really personal to me. I clearly remember this time in my life, and clearly remember how iconic it felt to me at the time. I can’t believe it’s been 35 years…
It’s “I Ran” by a long shot.
I think this has been done and “Don’t You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds won.
A View To A Kill by Duran Duran. They phoned it in and rushed it out for the movie, so they threw everything at it. It has charisma, but it also is horribly dated and exemplifies all that was wrong with 80s music.
In the 1980s music was really defined by MTV. In that case the most 80s song has to be Money For Nothing-
Coming in at number one…shocking, to me.
Kenny Rogers
I think I’ll third “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
Wow, hard to believe Prince, Madonna and Michael Jackson came in at 8,9, and 10 on that list. I wouda thunk it would be Michael, Madonna and Prince at 1,2 and 3.
I’m having trouble understanding this. Are we talking about “Eye of the Tiger”? That was written by Frankie Sullivan and Jim Peterik. They’re both local guys to me (Chicago area.) I met Jim when I was a teenager at a “Music in the Schools” type of convention where he told us the story of how they were commissioned to write the song, how they were on a very tight deadline, how they used that rhythmic figure to imitate the rhythm of punches being thrown during a bout, etc.
Second mention of “Money for Nothing”, but I have to disagree. Yes, the song was huge in the 80s, got a ton of MTV play, and even name-checked MTV. But Dire Straits’ look and sound just doesn’t define the 80s like say, A Flock of Seagulls did.
The more I think about it the more i’m leaning towards “I Ran” for the win.
Nitpick: that’s a Randy Newman song.
I already wasted my vote on some woman I had a crush on as a university student but if I had another I’d want to mention Wouldn’t it be Good by Nik Kershaw.
I love the wailing guitars, bleeping synths, mariachi horns and the woe-is-me self absorption. I was astonished to learn it was never a top 40 hit in the US. What’s the matter with you people?
I was sure it appeared in the movie Donnie Darko but apparently only in my dreams.
I don’t know why but I love Space Age Love Song. 
Didn’t they go out and try some weird rebrand for like a year, like Acadia or Arcadia?
You would be dead of dehydration if you were in Lima, Peru in April of 84. This played every third song on almost every station I could find. Could NOT avoid it!
Agree with solost on all counts. I was HEAVY into pop at that time, watching The New Music religiously (my friends knew that if the hockey game wasn’t over at 10PM on a Saturday night, it got moved to the B&W TV that lived on top of the color, and The New Music got put on the “big” screen–this in Canada, no less!), listening to MuchMusic whenever I was home and the TV was on (and, since there was no way of looking up a track, often noting the time and setting an alarm for 5:55 later so I’d be sure to listen again and catch it then: the channel ran on a 6-hour repeat, changing every 24 hours), and spending way too much of my income on vinyl–and I never heard of it. And I liked it when I listened now, so I think I would remember it. Maybe it was more a regional hit?
Ah: Greatest Misses: The Producers, “She Sheila” (1982) | 45 Ruminations Per Megabyte says, among other things, “This song should have been a hit. (It made #48 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart, but despite the name the chart has little to do with mainstream success.)” so it wasn’t THAT successful in general, it sounds like.
Also not enough gated reverb to define the 80s.
P.S. MuchMusic didn’t start until 1984, it turns out, but it would still have been playing stuff that was “only” two years old.