Few artists that can challenge Kenny Loggins for the (admittedly unofficial) title of King Of The Movie Soundtrack—in the 1980s, anyway. Loggins delivered chart-topping songs for Caddyshack, Footloose, and Top Gun, and even films that have not aged so well, like Over The Top, and Caddyshack II. Even for the films that have not endured as vividly, songs like “I’m Alright,” “Footloose,” “Playing With The Boys,” and “Nobody’s Fool” have become bona fide standards of the era, immediately evoking memories for moviegoers that linger long far beyond the boundaries of the screen. In fact, for Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise and producer Jerry Bruckheimer decided to literally recreate the audiovisual experience from the first film with an opening scene set to the original recording of Loggins’ “Danger Zone.”
To commemorate the digital platform release of Top Gun: Maverick, Loggins spoke to The A.V. Club via Zoom to about his return to the world of naval aviation—and more broadly the world of movie soundtracks. In addition to offering insights about the best way to make a great movie song, Loggins talked about his experiences on both the original Top Gun and its mega-successful sequel, and finally, his legacy as a reliable purveyor of songs that will forever be associated with multiple decades’ worth of blockbuster films.
The A.V. Club: Just to get started, as a songwriter or performer, what’s the key to writing a song for a film? And when did you figure out that formula?
Kenny Loggins: I think I may have figured out my version of the formula based on my experience. But I’d always been a fan of soundtrack albums. My big brother got me into that when I was a kid, and I noticed reoccurring themes, picking certain characters that you feel could use a theme, [but] paying attention to the temp music that the director puts in the film. Because directors, at least in the old days, would pick the songs that they felt applied to that scene. Some directors get more literal, some directors get a little more poetic with it, but from that I would get a sense of what they were after musically, and that would set the tone for the groove and the vibe of the song.
Like the opening of Caddyshack starts with the character Danny, and in the rough cut that I saw, Danny’s riding his bicycle through suburban golf America, and the temp song that the director chose was “Gotta Serve Somebody” by Bob Dylan. And I thought that was very strange because when I first watched the movie, it didn’t make any sense to me. That the song didn’t seem to connect to the character or that scene at all. And I remember scratching my head thinking, I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me. And this was the first time that I’d written for a film, so I didn’t pay that much attention to it. I just figured it was kind of an arbitrary thing. But then at the end, to me, the quintessential Dylan [song] is “Rebel”—and this kid was not a rebel at all! It’s a movie about playing golf. It’s like, what the hell is this? And then it dawned on me at the end of the movie that he really did turn into the rebel, and he was the one who refused to go down that path. And I thought, “Oh, so the director is trying to foreshadow his transformation.” So that’s why I wrote “I’m Alright,” because then I saw, this is a character who’s going to eventually be all right. He’s eventually going to say, “The hell with you people.” So that’s really where that song idea came from. And the fact that they used Dylan at the same time that I was working on that movie, Stealers Wheel, Jerry Rafferty’s band had had a hit song called “Stuck In The Middle With You,” which was Rafferty doing Dylan—and I thought, “Hell, if Rafferty can do Dylan, I can do Dylan.” So my “I’m alright/nobody worry about me” is leaning into my Dylan-esque kind of parody.
AVC: You had huge hits with Caddyshack and Footloose. How was Top Gun different for you in terms of its success?
KL: Well, for starters, I didn’t actually write “Danger Zone.” Giorgio Moroder wrote 90 percent of it. I came in and made some chord changes, substitutions and additions, a couple of melodic lines here and there, some lyric lines, but not much. So I have a first-person connection with “Footloose” and “I’m Alright.” But I think [Top Gun] really was the hat trick of that. It became a third hit for me and really established me in that period where disco was controlling radio. It established me as a movie guy. And so I could do an end run around the disco period just by connecting to theme songs for movies.
AVC: You mentioned Giorgio Moroder. He’s probably the only person who could compete with you for the title of King of the ’80s soundtrack. Can you talk about that collaboration? He was obviously influential in disco, but he was also dragging electronic instrumentation into films.
KL: Well, he was also a pop writer, and that made a huge difference. His approach to film music was to integrate his pop approach when he recorded. All his songs from that period were using the first generation Yamaha. But he used all the stock sounds that showed up from the clinics in Japan. He’d record with the stock sounds and make hit records with them. We were all trying to get in there and futz with the electronics and make a unique sound that they hadn’t thought of yet. He went, “No, this is great stuff.” The DX-7. It was the very first, the DX-7, that really brought that kind of electronic musicality to pop music.
AVC: The use of “Danger Zone” at the beginning of Top Gun: Maverick is such a remarkable throughline to connect audiences from the first film to the second. But when Jerry Bruckheimer tells you he’s going to make a sequel and use your songs in effectively the same way as the first film, is there a sense of excitement? Or is there a sense of disappointment that you’re not getting to do something new?
KL: Maybe a little of both. I was totally excited that they wanted “Danger Zone” again. When I finally met Tom Cruise on the Kimmel Show, I guess maybe six years ago, I asked him first thing, “Tell me the truth, are you using ‘Danger Zone’ as part of the new Top Gun?” And he said, “It wouldn’t be Top Gun without ‘Danger Zone.’” And he kept true to his word. And really now the two are inextricable. They’re connected forever. And at the same time, I wanted to do the re-record to capitalize on the sound systems that are in theaters now where the sound and the music goes totally around you, to have the drums behind you and have those electric guitars sound like jets passing overhead. And I was really ready to do that major 5.1 mix, but I didn’t get to yet.
AVC: Not that anyone should ever bet against Tom Cruise, but Maverick really is the surprise of 2022. What were your impressions of this film as it was being made? Was it something you were worried about, or were you convinced this was going to be a home run?
KL: I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen the script. It was under lock and key. And I had to take Tom’s word for it, of course, which I was more than happy to do, because he’s Tom Cruise and he was the primary producer on the project. He had the vision. They’d [written] at least a dozen versions of the screenplays to find the one that really worked—and they totally nailed it. And when I saw it in the theater, I was thrilled. We all loved it. And then I had to take my lady with me again to see it in IMAX, and loved it again. So it’s a classic piece of film. It incorporates all those things—a Saturday matinee kind of adventure movie vibe to it. I love that they didn’t identify the enemy. It was this nameless enemy that’s building nuclear weapons, so everybody’s going, yeah, we’ve got to stop that. It was it was definitely a cartoon movie for our time.
AVC: Did they approach you for specific scenes? Was there a scene, that you would have liked to have recorded a song for in Maverick?
KL: Well, obviously, “Danger Zone” is as much as I could hope for, publicly. But I wish that I would have gotten another shot at the volleyball scene, only because of the legacy of it. But there were great scenes throughout, and I think they lean more heavily on the actual scoring this time and less on trying to make a pop record. And I’m not sure whether that’s helped or hindered One Republic with their version of the football scene now. But just being a part of it, as they say, I’m happy to have been chosen.
AVC: I read an interview where you said you’ve never seen Caddyshack II but you wrote a song for that film. Do you have a different barometer for success, regardless of the reception to the movie?
KL: I think it’s a little of both. I’m not the kind of artist that writes in my basement and never cares whether anyone hears it. I want people to hear my stuff. So if a song goes out there and it gets a wide audience, that’s gratifying. And then I have other situations where I wrote a song for San Diego Hospital for their closed-circuit TV channel and all the children’s hospitals, for the care and Feeding of Animals. I wrote a theme song for that channel. And the success of that is that people like it, but that it’s really popular in that arena. It’s been picked up by all the Ronald McDonald Houses around the world. So there’s continuing to have impact. My writing has impact on people’s lives. And that’s probably, at this stage of my life, the most important thing—how is it being received? What is it doing out in the world?
AVC: Is there one soundtrack song that you’ve done that most faithfully captures your identity or your creativity?
KL: Well, it’s hard to say. Each one has its own role. “I’m Alright” really did that thing for Caddyshack, and it’s still a song I love to perform. And so is “Footloose.” So the three of those together, I put them together. I’ve been doing a show where I do almost all my songs from the movies, I call it “At The Movies.” And “Nobody’s Fool” from Caddyshack II is really fun to perform because it’s that kind of quintessential ’80s groove you don’t hear that much anymore. And “Meet Me Halfway” [from Over The Top] and “For The First Time” [from One Fine Day] and songs that kind of got away because they were in movies and not on albums. So it’s been fun to do the songs from that time period. But will they last forever? I don’t know.