Continuing our week long concentration on all things Back to the Future, we take a detour into the musical realm, highlighting a hit song from the soundtrack of the film, a song that itself ranks high in ’80s musicology. That’s “The Power of Love.”
The Power of Love really is a curious thing. The #1 hit by Huey Lewis and the News is almost as vital a part of Back to the Future lore as any other aspect of the movie itself making it one of the best examples of how powerful (no pun intended) soundtrack songs can be as not only marketing tools but also as a further artistic extension of the movie and the inevitable nostalgia for said movie.
So it’s rather ironic then that the song has nothing to do with the movie. Granted the theme of “the power of love” certainly looms over Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker’s romance but his love is more evidentally powerful for a friend (Doc Brown) and his family. But the lyrics could be related to many movies for that matter. Regardless of the subject matter, the song quite effectively become the de facto theme to Back to the Future.
The ’80s were particularly adept at effective associations between movie and music. The advent of MTV had created a new forum for essentially advertising your movie. Imagine a video with movie clips interwoven into the performance playing once an hour on television. Previously movies only had 30-second TV spots to promote their product, and those were fleeting. Otherwise, one had to actually be at the theatre to get a glimpse of the upcoming moving pictures.
But more importantly, popular music never worked as effectively as thematic music for cinema as well it did in the ’80s. John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire,” Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose,” “Don’t You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds, the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. I could do a weekly feature on this and would probably take a year to run out of selections. When you heard those songs, you thought of the movies. “The Power of Love” may be the ultimate ’80s soundtrack song in that regard. The freewheeling synthesizers, boisterous horn section, and precision guitar-playing, along with Huey Lewis soulful singing, certainly helped craft a quality song in and of itself. But close your eyes and you can’t help but be transported to scenes in the movie every time you heard the song in 1985 and every time you hear it today.
Huey Lewis and the News marvel at Huey's phallic microphone.
Huey Lewis and the News didn’t need this song to put them on the map. They already had hits and would go onto release more, making Lewis one of the most bankable stars of the ’80s. It was hard to dislike the group. I wasn’t even that big of a fan, but I adored some of the band’s hits, particularly “If This Is It” and “Do You Believe in Love.” But “The Power of Love” is by far their biggest hit, even nominated for an Academy award. In some ways, Huey Lewis and Back to the Future helped each other out as the hit never would’ve reached such a high summit had it not had the association of a beloved movie attached to it.
Huey Lewis and the News did contribute a more theme-appropriate song to the same soundtrack with “Back in Time,” an underrated song that held court in the shadow of its more popular soundtrack companion. Unlike “Power,” which made a few appearances during the movie, “Back in Time” plays over the credits. Lewis himself makes a cameo in the film as a nerdy judge who dismissed Marty’s band from playing the school dance.
Back to the Future also made vital contributions to scoring with Alan Silvestri’s famous score, one of the preeminent scores in the history of fantasy and science fiction cinema and easily recognizable to even the most casual of cinema fans.
The Back to the Future trilogy’s popularity crossed over into so many other areas besides film, hence its cultural importance and popularity. Music was an important aspect of its popularity, though a natural extension for an epic ’80s franchise. As we’ll learn later in the week, BTTF would cross over into other realms.
[...] The hit single! [...]