Michael Sembello – Maniac
#quotefromthe80s
There's a cold connective heat
Struggling stretching for the peak
Never stopping with her head against the wind
She's a maniac, maniac I sure know
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
#Maniac #MichaelSembello #Flashdance
In the 80s we all were dance maniacs. And many of us still are, after so many years. But maybe it wasn’t really all our fault, we were children of our times, sons of our own adolescence and our the will to break the world, grown with also of unparalleled music and iconography. And movies had a very important part, of course. And the music films in the 80s (already from the previous decade) were something irresistible, because they merged action, feelings, great music and fantastic dancers. The tradition is long, starting with Saturday night Fever, passing through Staying Alive, Xanadu, and coming to the masterpieces Flashdance, Footloose, and later Dirty Dancing.
But the film that divided the generations was mostly Flashdance. A truly complete success: film, soundtrack, songs, Jennifer Beals, everything was at the highest level. Unparalleled energy, the story of steel town girl Alex and her passion for dance truly conquered the whole world. And also thanks to an unreachable soundtrack, with Irene Cara singing “Flashdance (What a feeling)” and especially with this incredible hit by Michael Sembello. He was actually quite unknown, but on one of his albums he created this song talking about a real psychopath, inspired by a character in a movie called “Maniac”.
Paramount received the song on a tape sent by Michael Sembello’s wife, and decided to include the song on the film’s soundtrack. Producer Phil Ramone (who has nothing to do with the Ramones) understood the situation on the fly, and with Sembello he edited some verses so that the song was now talking about a girl who went crazy for dancing , a dance maniac, we could say. And that’s it. Sembello also personally performed the incredible guitar solo contained in the hit.
In the movie, the song appears in the early scenes and is the background for a workout of Alex, a bit Jennifer Beals and a bit of the stunt double Marine Jahan. And in fact there are two versions of this video: one is precisely the training sequence of Alex taken from the movie footage, the other is the version edited with other scenes for television and especially for mtv.
Anyway with this song we are making history: the movie made history, the song made history. Of course the history of the 80s!
Michael Sembello on Wikipedia
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