Valley Girl at 40

When I posted the Wham! video below I thought I had hit absolute peak mid-80s look/feel/vibe, but then I realized that Valley Girl was released 40 years ago today. It's hard to think of a more "this is what the early 80s looked like!" in the same way Leave it to Beaver would be for the 50s: actual memories to few, but in the cultural conscience of the many. For one, it is probably almost solely responsible for the curiously famous classic I Melt with You (which led to one of the lockdown's best moments 🤗🤗🤗🤗). It's a great example of a time when a movie's soundtrack could come to mean even more than the movie itself.

I don't really have much to add that you can't just look up somewhere else and read for yourself. It's just one of those flicks everybody loves, and you look back and wonder if they somehow KNEW how to drench themselves in the absolute look/style of the day? Is anybody really that brilliantly self-conscious and present at any given moment in time?

Also, the only time I was ever really cool is the summer after 10th grade we watched Valley Girl and Rylo got his clippers and cut my hair so it looked just like Nicolas Cage's. Dudes around town tried to copy me, but didn't pull it off. I, however, looked bitchin' af.

Also, Valley Girl will always be as great reminder of how criminally overlooked the absolutely incredible Peter Case was (is):