Blogocentric Formulations

St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)

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Song: "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)
Artist: John Parr
Album: St. Elmo's Fire Soundtrack


So I was bad this weekend and pretty much didn't check into WdC at all. Which means today is catch-up day where I have to finish up my Soundtrackers do Soundtracks week. For some reason I picked a song from another Joel Schumacher movie after already covering "Kiss From A Rose" , but don't worry... this is from one of Schumacher's earlier works that doesn't involve bat-nipples or Colin Farrell screaming into a pay phone for 81 minutes. No, for this entry I went all the way back to 1985 to recall John Parr's classic theme song "St. Elmo's Fire" from the movie of the same name. You're not going to find a better 80s power ballad than this one!

While the song rose to prominence after being included in Schumacher's movie (eventually spending two weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100), it was originally written by John Parr and David Foster for Canadian athlete Rick Hansen who was then touring the world in his wheelchair to raise awareness for spinal injuries. Hansen's event was called the "Man in Motion Tour" which is where this song derives the parenthetical in its title (and a line of its lyrics).

Unlike certain other artists I've mentioned during this challenge {e:cough} Stan Bush {e:cough}, John Parr did not feel the need to include his only major hit on multiple album releases. He didn't even include it on his studio albums, with the exception of the re-release of his self-titled album in the United Kingdom, and on an exceedingly rare West German re-release. Parr did update the song in 2012, renaming it and revising some of the lyrics to "Tim Tebow's Fire" in honor of the current NFL free agent quarterback who gained a lot of publicity for being outspoken about his Christian values.

The song has appeared in numerous other media. If you've seen The Brothers Solomon... you have my condolences. But hopefully you enjoyed the pervasive use of this song throughout, including John Parr himself performing two different versions of the song. That's probably still not enough to make that movie worth paying any amount of money to see it, but it's better than nothing?