Songoftheday 11/17/14 - Revvin' up your engine listen to her howlin' roar, metal under tension beggin' you to touch and go...

Kenny Loggins - "Danger Zone"
from the album Top Gun (Original Soundtrack) (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day comes from rock singer/songwriter Kenny Loggins, who had racked up another big soundtrack hit in 1984 with "Footloose", but his following album had more moderate success, though he still got two top-40 hits with "Vox Humana" and "Forever". So back to the movies it was for Kenny, as his next hit comes from another film soundtrack, this time for the Tom Cruise star-making vehicle Top Gun. And he wasn't even the first, second or third choice to record the song that was written by disco legend Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock (who also composed the movie's "Take My Breath Away"). So instead of Toto or REO Speedwagon, you've got Kenny growling his butchiness away on "Danger Zone"...

"Danger Zone" returned Loggins to the pop top ten in America in July of 1986, while scaling up to #7 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, while the single went top-10 in Germany, Switzerland, and Canada, it stalled under the top-40 in England at #45 (the macho rock hits weren't selling in the UK at that time).

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


The awesome animated show Archer has used "Danger Zone" as a running gag, even going as far as having Kenny Loggins do a country duet with show character Charlene...

Glee also co-opted "Danger Zone", to lesser effect, "mashing it" with the totally mismatched "Old Time Rock And Roll"...

Lastly, here's Kenny live in concert from last year...

Up tomorrow: My second least favorite song of all time. From the same year as the first. What was up with 1985?