Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

“You put the boom-boom into my heart. You send my soul sky high when your lovin’ starts…”

…and so, dear friends, we have come to the Wham! portion of the program.

Yes, you British folk knew all about Andrew and George long before us Yanks, but for us, well… “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” was our introduction to the magic of Wham!

In the summer of 1984, “You do the jitterbug. *snap* *snap*” invaded our radios, causing many of us to wonder what the heck a jitterbug even was. Wasn’t that a dance our grandparents did during the war?

Then we saw the video, with these two happy fellas bopping around in white T-shirts emblazoned with “CHOOSE LIFE”, and our heads were spinning.

And then we just took a step back, realized it was catchy as hell, and went along with it:

As the story goes, the title came from a note Andrew left for his parents one morning, but even knowing that, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” makes as much sense (meaning ‘very little’) as most of the music to emerge from our favorite decade.

It spent a total of 24 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #1 for three weeks in November 1984.

But the song’s greatest legacy may not even be an 80s thing at all. Zoolander (hell, ‘comedy’) fans always think of one thing, and one thing only, when they hear the tune: male models dancing at a gas station… and then blowing up.

Killer.

We ♥ Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

~ by weheart80s on August 24, 2011.