Song: “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”
Written for “The Breakfast Club,” the song is now free to stand on its own
For most of its existence, Simple Minds’ 1985 hit, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” has been inextricably tied to the 1980s “Brat Pack” film, The Breakfast Club.
Written by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff for the movie, the first choice to record the song for the film was Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music, but he turned it down.
Forsey pursued the Scottish band Simple Minds next. They weren’t initially interested because they didn’t write the song and didn’t like the “vanity . . . insecurity” lyric.
They ultimately were convinced to give it a try after watching a cut of the film to see how “vanity . . . insecurity” made sense in the context of the characters and story arc.
They recorded the song in a few hours in a London studio.
“Once we go into the studio, we don’t know how to do things by half measure,” Jim Kerr, their lead singer, recalled later. “Suddenly it was game-on, and we weren’t thinking about ourselves, we were just thinking about what’s coming out of the speaker, and every time someone did something that was cool, that encouraged us more. We were kinda looking at each other going, ‘It’s good this? isn’t it?’ This is the thing with music: You can analyze it and you can come with an attitude — and bands are notorious for politics — but once you start playing and you like how it makes you feel, everything else goes out the window. That’s all that counts.”
The “la-la-la-la” coda was a placeholder because nobody could think of actual words that made sense. Kerr planned to write a real lyric and record it the next day, but when they played back the song, it was clear the section had to stay.
The song reached #1 in the US and Canada. Today, with The Breakfast Club a movie most young people don’t know about, the song stands on its own. It still crushes.
Enjoy!