Chart Week: October 4, 1980
\nSong: \u201cI\u2019m Alright\u201d – Kenny Loggins
\nChart Position: #8, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 the next two weeks.<\/p>\n
Every successful career has a turning point, a moment that elevates it from being run-of-the-mill into something special and lasting. This song, for example, recorded as a favor to a friend for a movie that initially was a bit of a flop, helped turned Kenny Loggins into one of the best known artists of the Eighties.<\/p>\n
After a decent run in the Seventies – first with The Nitty Gritty Dirty Band, then in Loggins and Messina, and finally as a solo artist – Loggins hit the Top 40 six times in the 1980s with songs that appeared on movie soundtracks. Four of those would crack the Top 10. His title track for the movie Footloose<\/em> would become the only #1 of his career. <\/p>\n Eventually, people started calling Loggins the King of the Movie Soundtrack<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s funny for me to think of him in just that way. That\u2019s primarily because my mom really liked his music and had many of his solo albums. I can go deep on some early \u201880s Kenny! Really, only three of his movie songs had staying power beyond their chart runs. \u201cFootloose,\u201d\u201cDanger Zone,\u201d from Top Gun<\/em>, and \u201cI\u2019m Alright\u201d were so big, they are what people remember him for, not the eight other Top 40 hits from his solo albums, or for co-writing the Doobie Brothers\u2019 #1 hit \u201cWhat A Fool Believes.\u201d But it seemed like every summer would bring another Loggins song (or two) that was tied to a movie.<\/p>\n He started on the path to his honorary royalty thanks to another movie connection. <\/p>\n In 1976 he wrote the song \u201cI Believe In Love,\u201d which Barbra Streisand sang in that year\u2019s version of A Star Is Born<\/em>. Through that project he became friends with the movie\u2019s producer, Jon Peters. A few years later Peters called Loggins and said he was working on a new movie, Caddyshack<\/em>, and needed a song for the title sequence. Loggins saw an early cut of the movie – one that did not yet include the animatronic gopher tearing up the golf course – and was struck by Michael O\u2019Keefe\u2019s character Danny Noonan. <\/p>\n \u201c\u2026 I got the idea they wanted to portray him as a bit of a rebel, even though he had not yet achieved that particular character,\u201d said Loggins. \u201c(He) was trying to figure out where he fit. But at the same time he wanted people to leave him alone and let him find his own way. So I wanted to grab him and summarize that character, and that’s what ‘I’m Alright’ is doing."<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure I ever got much of that. Probably because I was nine years old when the single was released and didn\u2019t bother to consider the lyrics much then. Or since, to be honest. It was just a really good song that I heard often before, during, and after our move from southeast Missouri to Kansas City in the summer of 1980. I heard it often on the AM radios in my parents\u2019 cars and on the transister radio I received for my birthday that I carried around everywhere. <\/p>\n It also fit Peters\u2019 title sequence perfectly. It followed Noonan as he rode his bike from his chaotic, overfilled, over-the-top stereotypically Irish home to the assumed relaxed and refined environment of Bushwood Country Club. The song is fun, engages the listener, and has some momentum to it that gets you amped for what you\u2019re about to see on the screen. I also hear the rumble of the road in our multiple trips between Southeast Missouri and KC that summer.<\/p>\n When re-listening to \u201cI\u2019m Alright\u201d this week, I thought for a moment that Lindsey Buckingham might have co-wrote it with Loggins. There are so many elements to it that sound like a Buckingham song. The structure, the instrumentation, the layering of the vocals, that hint of country-rock. Hell, the drums, with their floppy, heaviness recall Mick Fleetwood\u2019s work behind the kit, so I guess this sounds more like a Fleetwood Mac song without the female vocalists than a Buckingham solo effort. There might be some common threads in there, but neither Buckingham nor Fleetwood had any involvement in the track\u2019s writing and recording.<\/p>\n Casey Kasem\u2019s introduction for the record on this week\u2019s countdown blew my mind a little. He said sometimes a song will be a hit no matter what gets in its way. In this case, he noted, Caddyshack<\/em> had not done well at the box office, and the soundtrack wasn\u2019t selling well either. But \u201cI\u2019m Alright\u201d was doing just fine on its own, still climbing in its fourth month on the Hot 100.<\/p>\n It\u2019s wild to hear a transmission from the fall of 1980 claiming that Caddyshack<\/em> was a commercial disappointment. I didn\u2019t see it then, but it seemed like every kid I knew with an older sibling had seen it. There was much talk about it at the bus stop. Weird that Caddyshack<\/em> didn\u2019t really become a huge hit until a few years later, when it landed on cable and our generation could watch it over-and-over, memorizing every line, and boring bystanders with horrible immitations of Carl Spackler\u2019s \u201cGunga galunga<\/a>\u201d speech. <\/p>\n The song holds up. It\u2019s not just nostalgia for the movie that keeps it in high rotation on \u201880s stations. It\u2019s a genuinely good song, by an artist who knew better than anyone else how to craft a pop tune that pulled in vibes from the film it was attached to.8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n One more note: when Loggins was recording \u201cI\u2019m Alright,\u201d Eddie Money was working on his own album in a nearby studio. Loggins invited him over to lay down some background vocals. You can hear Money most distinctly when he sings the line \u201cYou make me feel good!\u201d in the bridge. <\/p>\n Well, Loggins did not give Money an official credit for his contribution. That started a grudge that lasted at least 34 years. <\/p>\n “I’m not a fan of Kenny Loggins to tell you the truth,” he told Cincinnati morning show host Kidd Chris of WEBN in 2014. “I sang the bridge in that. We were label mates, you know.”<\/p>\n I wonder if they made up before Money passed in 2019.<\/p>\n