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Weekend Earworms: Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough for Johnny 5

An estimated 98% of us experience earworms. Despite the annoying times that we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things ever.

We here at Nerdist are dead-set on bringing you those types of songs, if only for the weekend. We’ll be scouring the internet for the best earworms we can shove into your meaty brains!

Oh boy. I bit off more than I could chew this week. My thought was to do an earworms article about songs made for, or at least incorporated into, ’80s movies. I was planning to have at least 5 to both celebrate and pick apart for their ’80s terribleness, and boy that was setting the bar too damn high. What I have for you this week are two songs that are arguably very catchy but their videos make no sense whatsoever. Ugh, alright. Lets start with…

Cyndi Lauper – The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough

Where… to… begin? The song “Good Enough” was always a Lauper original, but, as some of you may know, was re-branded with the “Goonies ‘R” portion of the title due to the release of what became one of the best ’80s movies in existence. It’s been reported that the experience of the song and the music video resulted in Lauper absolutely hating the tune for a very long time, and I really don’t blame her.

The video above plays out like a fever dream of a WWF fan as it features a cast chock full of pro wrestlers in a plot that’s vaguely like the that of The Goonies film. If the above 7+ minutes of ’80s nonsense didn’t satiate your required intake of bad acting and found yourself truly worried if Cyndi would escape the pirate wrestlers and inexplicable green-faced sea witch well fear not dearest Goonie! (That a combination of words I never could have predicted I’d ever have to write) Because there’s an additional 5-and-a-half-minute supplemental part 2 to the video.

Did you notice how they just repeated the song? Boy, I did! Oh, did I mention that it was directed by none other than Richard Donner? YUP! The only thing this video is missing to be more ’80s is if it zoomed out and revealed that it was all happening in a gas station snowglobe held by autistic kid Tommy Westphall. [That was a really old reference, I’m fired, right? I bet I’m fired. Rule #1: No St. Elsewhere References. I knew it and yet I couldn’t stay away] [Editor’s Note: I’ll let it slide just this once, for getting the name of the kid right.]

Speaking of staying away from bad ideas… Steve Guttenberg had the right idea when he passed on being in…

El DeBarge – Who’s Johnny

Let me say that I unabashedly love this song. I know all the words to it which I am well aware is 100% more words than anyone, including El Debarge, should ever know. [Editor’s Note: maybe, but I’m pretty sure people know all the words to Weird Al’s parody of it] I was going to make some sort of jab at El Debarge but found he’s actually still touring so… well done, sir. El Debarge-1. Blake-0. The song was featured in another great ’80s movie, Short Circuit, which by now is hopefully been seen by everyone, even by accident. Little known fact: the movie Chappie was 100% inspired by this scene from Short Circuit 2.

The “Who’s Johnny?” video features shenanigan-filled court proceedings with El Debarge taking the stand for – we can assume – Fisher Stevens’ Ben Jabituya, while Ally Sheedy reprises her role as Stephanie and a cardboard cutout of Steve Guttenberg does a spot-on portrayal of Steve Guttenberg. The case, which is lax enough to include singing and dancing participation from everyone in the courtroom including the judge, is eventually caught in a windstorm after a robot arm attempts to murder a judge with explosives and calls the fire department. You know, just like the movie!

I’ve watched this bananas video a dozen times while writing this and I still can’t tell if that’s actually Ally Sheedy. I think I may just want her NOT to be in this terrible video that it makes my brain think that’s a lookalike. Steve “Sure I’ll be in Cocoon: The Return” Guttenberg passed on this video and the acceptable replacement was a black and white cardboard cutout of him. They didn’t even spring for a color copy. The video appears to have been made with the idea in mind to barely dodge copyright infringement from the film makers.

Now, It could be argued that these videos weren’t allowed to parallel the plots of the movies for which they were made in any major ways for some weird fear of people saying “Ahh, I’ll just watch the music video instead of going to the movie,” but these were made at a time when videos really mattered to the success of musicians. Both El Debarge and ol’ C-Laups up there were established enough at the time to probably be able to say no to these video designs and yet…

Have any insight to how or why these videos turned out like they did? Let us know in the comments below.

Blake Rodgers writes for Nerdist from Chicago IL where he lives happily with his Guiness World Record for High Fives. You can be his pal by following him on Twitter (@TheBlakeRodgers)

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