Radio 83, side A, track 3: “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins

Oh, Kenny Loggins, I was so excited when I captured this off of BOB.  So excited, Kenny Loggins!  And it’s not like I’d never heard this song before.  After all, the “Top Gun” soundtrack was one of the few actual cassette tapes I actually owned as a kid and I listened to it all the friggin’ time.  But I hadn’t heard it for years and it was just great to know that this song is still getting airplay and still kicks as much ass as it did the first time I popped it into my cassette player.

What I don’t understand, Kenny Loggins, is how you’re not hired to write the main theme of every movie ever made.  I don’t think I realized it until just now, but not only are your theme songs so damn good, but they’re so well-researched.  You are a wizard at incorporating all these different aspects of a movie into your music.  Like this one, there are so many references to fighter jets and the different aspects of flying them.  In less deft hands, this could have sounded like an instructional video, but instead, you’ve got lines like “the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity”, which is actually referring to airfoils but also just sounds bad-ass.  I am not the kind of guy who would ever want to ride into the Danger Zone, Kenny Loggins, but I definitely love hearing you sing about it.

lyrics to “Danger Zone”