Pretty in Pink’s prom soundtrack was one for the ages

It’s true that Hughes knew a hit theme when he heard one, but there are so many other musical choices sprinkled throughout Pretty in Pink that shed light on our new friends. The title track might be Andie’s signature song, but Suzanne Vega’s “Left of Center,” which Hughes commissioned, perfectly captures the self-awareness of our teen outcast. “But I’m only in the outskirts/ And in the fringes / On the edge / And off the avenue,” sings Vega as Duckie tries to convince Andie that the Russian Revolution actually took place in Germany. Hughes breaks from new wave to solidify Iona (Annie Potts), Andie’s boss, as the teen’s quirky mentor and surrogate mother figure. Will we ever forget her slow-dancing in her old prom dress with Andie to “Cherish” by The Association? Deutch can also be credited with one of the film’s most memorable musical moments. After failing to secure the rights to both “State of Shock” by Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson and The Stones’  “Start Me Up,” Deutch chose Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” for the Duck Man to lip sync and dance to. Not only does the song match Duckie’s old-school taste in music, but his outrageous, balls-out performance proves just how far he’ll go to cheer up and impress his lady in pink. Somewhere, Ferris Bueller was home sick and taking notes.

However, most of Hughes’ needle drops are more subtle than Duckie’s iconic strutting. Andie clerks after school at Trax, Iona’s independent record store, where they have a great selection of Steve Lawrence albums and a shoplifting policy involving a staple gun. As we enter for the first time, Danny Hutton’s cover of “Wouldn’t It Be Good” promises all the guitars, synths, and questionable ‘80s hairdos we could ever hope for. It’s a shop where, if we listen closely, we’ll notice Echo and the Bunnymen aching in the atmosphere as Andie and Blane flirt. “I need every minute with you,” insists Michael Hutchence on a pre-Kick INXS’ funky, sax-driven “Do Wot You Do.” A lot of the soundtrack works almost subliminally in that way. Yes, we expect a record shop to be spinning records, but the songs we hear could just as well be the inner monologue running through our characters’ heads. Similarly, Andie and Blane enter Steff’s house party to The Time’s Jesse Johnson’s “Get to Know Ya” moving bougie bodies. It only gets interrupted for a few seconds by Belouis Some’s “Round, Round” as the couple stumble between rooms. That song asks if two lovers—say, a pair of teens from different social classes—can change the world if they’re brave enough to take the leap together. Pretty on the nose, Mr. Hughes. 

Still, for all the righteous soundtrack cuts that cleverly lurk in the background, Hughes can’t imagine a world for Andie where the music isn’t front and center. She and Ringwald’s real-life squeeze at the time, Dweezil Zappa as stimulating Simon, can always retreat to Cats, a live music club, to see Pittsburgh’s The Rave-Ups or LA bar band Talk Back. We won’t ask how she gets past bouncer Andrew Dice Clay, on school nights no less. If memes were a thing in ‘86, it’s hard to imagine that a deflated Duckie, slumped in bed as Morrissey sings, “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want,” wouldn’t go viral. And, of course, Hughes can hardly resist an ‘80s montage—set to an instrumental of New Order’s “Thieves Like Us” rather than the band’s lead single, “Shellshock”—as Andie feverishly readies her gown and everyone else preps for prom. Deutch films the sequence like it’s Rocky Balboa running through the streets of Philadelphia as his title fight with Apollo Creed looms. It’s all building to the needle drop of needle drops at the prom, one that would make the Thompson Twins and Simple Minds, well, forget about themselves.   

Everything we thought we knew about Andie’s prom was wrong. For starters, in the initial cut of the film, Andie chooses Duckie, not Blane, and the two dance into the night to David Bowie’s “Heroes.” Test audiences hated it. So much so that they had to reshoot most of the prom with Andrew McCarthy in a really cheap wig. This last-minute change would alter the ‘80s forever in more ways than one. Not only did Andie and Duckie not get together, but, given the new ending, producers didn’t think the song already submitted by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), “Goddess of Love,” still fit. As legend tells it, the band had 24 hours to come up with a replacement before leaving on a tour. They responded with “If You Leave,” a song about leaving childhood behind that captures the ‘80s as well as any song out there. Andie’s creative prom dress has come under scrutiny over the years, and others have joked that OMD’s song, the only one playing at prom, must have been on loop, but nobody argues that Andie and Blane didn’t have the perfect song to make out to in a moonlit parking lot.  

A number of ‘80s soundtracks can spin on their own and cause you, as Andie says, to “O.D. on nostalgia.” There’s nothing wrong with that. We all ache for simpler times. However, the very best soundtracks, like Pretty in Pink’s, can send your mind and heart racing back to crushes, friendships, and a kiss outside a prom we never even attended. Maybe those were the simpler times; after all, we wrapped up Andie and Blane’s class dilemma in 90 minutes and change. It’s funny: As you get older, you start to differentiate less between the movies you grew up with and your own experiences. Maybe, it’s because you realize that Andie, Blane, and Duckie’s prom probably had a longer-lasting impact on you than your own. Regardless, we all know whose prom had the better soundtrack. Let’s plow.