Another soundtrack song. It’s official…I love soundtracks.
Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough
Cyndi Lauper, 1985
It was a scorching summer day in Upstate New York. High humidity, condensation dripping along glasses of iced tea. My brothers and I were playing (unsupervised) in the yard. At a certain point in the late morning, we ran out of energy. The heat drained us. As kids do, we sought shelter in the lower branches of a walnut tree.
This day wouldn’t have been different from hundreds of other childhood summer days except for the palpable excitement between us.
I went into the house to fetch my boom box. Back in the tree’s embrace, we listened to the theme song for the movie we were going to see later that day. For some reason, my family didn’t go to the movies often. And the fact that we were going today created an atmosphere of anticipation.
Plus the movie was one we were really looking forward to. We’d heard great things about it at a time when the only way to learn about a movie was word of mouth and Siskel & Ebert.
Goonies, we’d heard, was funny and exciting, a totally 80s over-the-top adventure. A ticking clock, a treasure map, a hidden world beneath their normal town, and kids on their own trying to save the day. Sounded perfect. And it was.
But that morning, we still waited to see it, imagining our trip to theater, lounging in the branches of a walnut tree, listening to Cyndi Lauper belt out Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough.
I’ll just say it…I love this song. Specifically, I love the juxtaposition between melancholy verses and the upbeat chorus. Plus, this might be the song where Cyndi’s high-pitched chromatics fit the best.
The song was a top ten hit in 1985.
Did I mention the melancholy? There’s something about my brain that loves positive melancholy. I’m a sucker for nostalgia too. Both tickle the same areas. It’s almost as though pure positivity veers into over-sugared pop and unadulterated sadness is too painful to consume. But mix the two together and the taste is perfect.
Lauper was 32 years at the time of this release. Old enough to miss some elements of youth, but not old enough to have really internalized change and decay and loss. Perfect for this mix of melancholy and positivity. Though sometimes when I listen to this song, I wonder if she is trying to convince herself (Is it good enough?). The new paradigm isn’t better, change isn’t necessary. This life I’m clinging to is good enough, good enough for me.
The Goonies movie is ostensibly about this same theme—rich developers foreclosing on the shanty neighborhood where the Goonies live. The end of one lifestyle, supplanted by another.
But that’s not what we remember about the movie is it? Yes, the frame story (the very beginning and the tippy end) is about the impending loss of their home, but the story is about being open to adventure.
And that’s where the chorus of the song fits so well. It’s about the adventure, the chase, bonding over danger, leveraging a strong sense of humor. It’s about who we become if we’re open to a bit of fun. Because isn’t it nice to believe that world provides traps and challenges that can we overcome if only we band together and display our cleverness. That at the end of a linear sequence of puzzles, some treasure awaits.
And here the treasure is inconsequential. Sure, the kids found some loot, but director Richard Donner was wise not to focus on this fact. It’s absolutely not the point and whatever string of bad decisions got their families into this mess will probably occur again in the future. The jewels are a band-aid, not a solution.
We could say the journey is the reward, but the real reward is enjoying an hour and a half of silliness and escapism. Tickling that portion of our brain that wants to believe there is hidden world just beneath our normal days, that villains’ flaws can be exploited, that bad guys can be defeated, that we can see something that others cannot see. We are special, just waiting for a moment to show our stuff.
I know Lauper didn’t care for this song. She refused to perform it for years. I could accuse her of being another artist not understanding her own art, but I won’t. First off, people are allowed to like what they like. But secondly, Cyndi Lauper is one of the artists I’ve most changed my opinion about.
In the 80s, probably thanks to those MTV heavy-rotation music videos, Lauper had the persona of a party girl, with bright orange hair. And that’s how I thought of her. But I can see now that she was more about True Colors, a song I found too slow and not on-brand for her when it was released in the 80s, but now find to be devastatingly emotion-provoking.
If those are the kind of songs she loves, she probably wouldn’t think highly of a pop confection like Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough. But it’s good enough for me.