Songoftheday 10/10/14 - Seven years went under the bridge like time was standing still...

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - "If You Leave"
from the album Pretty In Pink (Original Soundtrack) (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day is the third big hit from a "Brat Pack" movie after "Don't You (Forget About Me" (from The Breakfast Club) and "St. Elmos Fire". Pretty In Pink was the third in the triumvirate of classic coming-of-age movies directed by John Hughes, and starred Molly Ringwald (who appeared in his Breakfast Club), Andrew McCarthy, and pre-Two & A Half Men Jon Cryer. Like Simple Minds before them, John Hughes recruited a classic British act, in this case electro-pop group Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, and "cleaned them up" for mainstream America pop audiences. The act had previously had a top-40 hit with "So In Love", but for their soundtrack contribution, "If You Leave", they went for the sweeping dramatic sounds and intentions, though they at least wrote the song themselves and co-produced the track with Tom Lord-Alge, so it sounded more "like them" than Simple Minds' "Don't You"...

"If You Leave" became OMD's biggest American hit as it crossed the top-ten in May of 1986. The single also made the adult-contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart at #24. Internationally, while the record went top-10 in Canada and New Zealand, it surprisingly didn't even make the top-40 in their native England, stopping short at #48.

And as much as I love "Don't You", "If You Leave" remains my quintessential John Hughes movie song, as it captures the essence of the group while providing enough sonic dramatics to accompany the movie's emotional tempo.

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Good Charlotte covered the song for the spoof movie Not Another Teen Movie in 2001 (where they had a brief cameo)

Meanwhile, Nada Sutf took the song to a darker place for their version from the TV show The O.C. in 2004...

Lastly, here's OMD themselves from a concert in 2011..

Up tomorrow: A Flyte-ty pair has a weekend tryst.