1985

Album

A Hangover You Don't Deserve

Label

Jive Records

Genre

Hip hop

Composer(s)

Jaret Ray Reddick;John Lowe Kenneth Allen;Mitchell Allan Scherr

Entered Chart

Sep 11, 2004

Peak Date

Nov 13, 2004

Released

Unknown

Recorded

Ruby Red Productions (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.)

Catalog #

Silvertone/Jive Album Cut

he music video is directed by Smith n' Borin (Ryan Smith and Frank Borin).[8] It takes place on a neighborhood street where the character of Debbie, played by actress Joey House,[8] fixes up the cluttered lawn of her house but gets distracted by Bowling for Soup playing music in their garage across the street. The band parodies the music videos for Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" and George Michael's "Faith", as well as the acts Run-DMC and Mötley Crüe. At the end of the video, Debbie walks across the street to the band, lets her hair down, and in a nod to Whitesnake's video for "Here I Go Again", writhes around on top of a Jaguar. She continues to do this even after the song ends, until her husband calls out to ask her what she’s doing. Mitch Allan from SR-71 appears in the video as a passersby who gives the band a look of contempt.[

This song is about a woman who is still living in the past, reliving her glory years when she was a teenager in 1985. She had big dreams, but now spends her time immersing herself in '80s pop culture. Music icons from the '80s mentioned in the song are: Whitesnake, Madonna, U2, Blondie, MTV, Bruce Springsteen, Ozzy Osbourne, Wham! and Van Halen. Movies from the '80s mentioned: The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty In Pink. This song was written and originally released by the band SR-71 on their 2004 album Here We Go Again. In a Songfacts interview with Bowling For Soup lead singer Jaret Reddick, he explained how they ended up recording it. Said Reddick: "'1985' was interesting because we were coming off our biggest record, which was Drunk Enough To Dance. And we went in thinking that we had a complete album, and we recorded a complete album. We did Hangover You Don't Deserve, and it was pretty much done. Butch Walker produced three songs on that album, and we recorded the whole record at his place. And his manager called and said, 'Hey, a song came across my desk. You know Mitch Allan, right?' I'm like, 'Yeah.' 'Well, he wants you to call him.' So I call Mitch Allan from SR-71, he's like, 'Dude, I've got this song. It's a freakin' hit for you guys. It sounds like you.' And evidently that whole conversation happened because Mitch was pitching his band to Jonathan Daniel, who is Butch's manager, trying to get this record that they had put out in Japan released here in the United States. And JD said, 'Dude, that sounds like a Bowling for Soup song.' And Mitch said, 'You know what? You're right.' So anyway, he sends me the song. And I'm actually like, 'Man, we're done. We're literally leaving tomorrow. This album is complete.' We had a little studio apartment that we were staying in and I listened to the song a few times, and I'm like, 'Yeah, it's good.' And the night goes on, had a few more beers, me and Gary (Wiseman - BFS drummer) sat in our kitchen and listened to it twice. And we're just like, This is a great song. We don't really know that it's going to be a single, but it is great. We might as well just do it. So we went back in the next day and we cut it. So my thing to Mitch was, Look, there's some lines in here that definitely don't sound like something I would say. Like, I would never say, 'The rubber broke.' Or any of those kind of things. So I was like, I definitely think it needs a different bridge, I think it's gotta have more of a catchy intro. So basically I said, If you'll let me have my way with it and make it a Bowling for Soup song, then I think it'll work. And history shows that it did indeed work." SR-71 lead singer Mitch Allan penned this song as a potential lead-off single for his band's third album. Having been dropped by RCA records when the label merged with Sony Music in 2004, Allan was shopping the record around hoping to get SR-71 signed to a new label, with little success. "All the labels said they were not interested in our sound, that we sounded too pop/punk, even though we were just a rock band," explained Allan in an interview with Alternative Addiction. "They also thought that the song 1985 was too old school, and people would not understand the lyrics, and it would just never work." Frustrated with no label interested in his band's music, Allan jumped at the chance, when Bowling For Soup expressed an interest in recording this song. "Every single person who told me the song would never work and this kind of music is finished- it made me realize those people are idiots," said Allan. "They want to dictate pop culture and dictate what people hear, but meanwhile they are not listening to what the audience wants. They want to be the ones to set the trends, but they don't know what they're talking about." With the success of "1985," Allan switched from being a recording artist to songwriting and has subsequently penned songs for a wide spectrum of artists including Chris Daughtry, Faith Hill, Jonas Brothers, Tokio Hotel, Anberlin and Bo Bice. The line, "She was gonna shake her ass on the hood of Whitesnake's car" is a reference to Whitesnake's video for "Here I Go Again," an MTV classic that piqued the interest of many teenage boys with fleeting images of the model/actress Tawny Kitaen dancing on the hood of a Jaguar. In the video for "1985," the actress Joey House stars as the now-housewife who yearns for the '80s. Directed by Ryan Smith and Frank Borin (Smith n' Borin), the video also sends up scenes from George Michael's "Faith" and Robert Palmer's "Addicted To Love." The Whitesnake and George Michael songs were actually released in 1987; "Addicted To Love" was 1985.

Woohoo
Woohoo

Debbie just hit the wall
She never had it all
One Prozac a day
Husband's a CPA
Her dreams went out the door
When she turned twenty four
Only been with one man
What happened to her plan?

She was gonna be an actress
She was gonna be a star
She was gonna shake her ass
On the hood of Whitesnake's car
Her yellow SUV, is now the enemy
Looks at her average life
And nothing has been alright

Since Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on M-T-V
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
'Cause she's still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985

Woohoo
(1985)
Woohoo

She's seen all the classics
She knows every line
Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink
Even Saint Elmo's Fire
She rocked out to Wham!
Not a big Limp Bizkit fan
Thought she'd get a hand
On a member of Duran Duran

Where's the mini-skirt made of snake skin
And who's the other guy singing in Van Halen
When did reality become T.V.
What ever happened to sitcoms, game shows
(On the radio was)

Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on M-T-V
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
'Cause she's still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985

Woohoo

She hates time make it stop
When did Motley Crue become classic rock?
And when did Ozzy become an actor?
Please make this
Stop! Stop! Stop!
And bring back

Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on M-T-V
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
'Cause she's still preoccupied
1985

Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on M-T-V
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
But she's still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985