Sweet Child O’ Mine Don’t Stop Believin’ i’ve got a Hand In My Pocket so Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

It’s the first Monday of October – fall is in the air, my favorite season is here, and my favorite holidays are looming – life is good! Since it is Monday, that, of course, means music! This week’s theme is “Pick a song or build a playlist of your favorite rock songs from any decade.” Let’s get this rock party started! I, of course, picked songs from my favorite decades – the 80s and 90s. 😉  

Let’s start with a song from one of my favorite bands from the 80s—the lyrics came from a poem the lead singer was working on. He wrote the song about his girlfriend, Erin Everly, the daughter of Don Everly of the Everly Brothers. After dating for four years, they got married at a quickie wedding in Las Vegas on April 28, 1990, but just nine months later, the marriage was annulled.

The first two singles from this album flopped, but when this song was released as the third single in June 1988, it steadily climbed to the top, bringing the album with it. The song hit #1 in September; the album reached the top spot in August. In the wake of this song’s success, one of the previous singles was re-released, and this time became a hit.

Give a listen to Guns N’ Roses with “Sweet Child O’ Mine”:

Next up is a song from 1981, this group’s most enduring and most famous song, while not their biggest chart hit. The line, “Strangers waiting, up and down the Boulevard,” refers to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, where dreams are made. The keyboard player got the idea for the song when he went there to pursue his career. He was quoted as saying:

“The song began with the chorus. My father had coached me. I was in Hollywood, struggling with my career, kind of lost. I was asking him, ‘Should I come back to Chicago and just give up on this dream?’ And he said, ‘No, son. Stay the course. We have a vision. It’s gonna happen. Don’t stop believin’.’”

His dream came true when he joined a group called The Babys with John Waite. In 1980, he joined this group in San Francisco, and this song took shape. He told the lead singer about his idea for placing the song in Sunset Boulevard, and the lead had him describe it:

“I described the menagerie of people who would show up on a Friday night. All the dreamers that had dreams to become actors. Producers, artists, lawyers, anything… they were all there on a Friday night.”

The song’s popularity resurged in the 2000s when it was used in numerous movies and TV shows.

Here’s Journey with “Don’t Stop Believin'”:

Next, the songs on this 1995 album are very Zen, including this song. It finds the artist staying composed and relaxed in a maddening world while railing against conformity. The artist wrote this song with the producer of the album. She was quoted as saying:

“I was scribbling all these dichotomies and dualisms. Human beings are all things. At any given moment, if you said, ‘What are you feeling right now?’ I’d probably be feeling 16 different things – it’s rare that I feel one emotion at any given time. So I thought, I’m just going to chronicle in this moment right here while Glen’s out of the room. When Glen came back in the room, I showed him the piece of paper and he started playing while I sang the lyrics. We wrote that song in about 15 minutes.”

It never reached “Y.M.C.A.” level, but when the artist performs this in concert, audience members often make hand gestures to interpret the lyrics about what the free hand is doing as she sings. She performed this during her first Saturday Night Live appearance on October 28, 1995.

Give a listen to Alanis Morissette with “Hand In My Pocket”:

Last but certainly not least is a song that got lots of promotion from being featured in the movie Mannequin, which starred Andrew McCarthy (an original Brat Pack member) and Kim Cattrall (who played Samantha Jones in Sex And The City). The director of the movie commissioned songwriters Albert Hammond and Diane Warren to write this song for the wedding scene of the film and sent them a script for the movie. The songwriter said:

“I had lived with my girlfriend Claudia for seven years. I had finally gotten divorced from my other marriage and was thinking of writing a song for me to sing and make a demo for our wedding, so I combined the two. What we thought of, what I said to Diane was, ‘it’s almost like they’ve stopped me from marrying this woman for seven years, and they haven’t succeeded. They’re not gonna stop me doing it.’ That’s when suddenly Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now came up.” 

Without further ado, here’s Starship with “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”:

That’s a wrap for this week – have a great Monday! See you on the dance floor!

Now, onto the particulars of Monday’s Music Move’s Me:

I have the supreme honor and privilege of being a co-host with the inimitable Xmas Dolly and our musical cohort, the awesome Cathy from Curious as a CAThy, and Alana of Ramblin’ with AM!

Want to join in the fun? It’s easy – just find a tune that rocks your boat, post it and link up – don’t forget to grab Xmas Dolly…er, um, I mean her button…over at her place here. Check out Xmas Dolly’s sidebar for the random themes we sport each week – and you can always ask for a specific theme of music you like, too. Check out the other music lovahs and let’s jam!

Want to join in the fun? It’s easy – just find a tune that rocks your boat, post it and link up – don’t forget to grab Xmas Dolly…er, um, I mean her button…over at her place here. Check out Xmas Dolly’s sidebar for the random themes we sport each week – and you can always ask for a specific theme of music you like, too. Check out the other music lovahs and let’s jam!