Hidden Music 55: The Valley Girl Soundtrack

Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Valley Girl Soundtrack

The soundtrack to the movie "Valley Girl" is a strange story. The movie was not a huge hit when it was released in the theaters in 1983 but grew in popularity when it was played on HBO and the release on video. The original soundtrack was supposed to be released on Epic Records but never was due to rights to many songs. I have a copy that has CBS Records on it so I'm not sure of what happened there. After the film was completed, problems arose in acquiring the music rights and substitute songs had to be dubbed in. The music rights cost $250,000 on top of the film's original $350,000 budget. You see this a lot today when a TV show features a song but when it appears on DVD or Netflix, a new song has been replaced.
It was released in different forms in years later but each one didn't have the feel of the original. I found a promo only copy (CBS Records) in 1984 and thought it was such a cool collectors item. It is one of only a few albums that I still have. The amount of great songs that were used in the movie was pretty amazing. There is no way today that a low budget movie could ever afford to feature this many songs. Now in most lower budget Movies or TV shows you see one or two popular songs and a huge number of unknown artists trying to get their music out. Many of these bands were already having success due to exposure on MTV and I guess the record companies wanted too much money for the rights. Here is a list of the music featured in the film but may or may not be on any of the later soundtracks released. There are a few others but I could not find a corresponding YouTube Video so I did not post.

The Plimsouls - A Million Miles Away