3 Rock Songs From 1987 You Heard While Shopping at the Mall With Your Friends

Remember heading to your local shopping center as a teenage mall rat in the 80s? Even if that wasn’t your era, there’s no denying that being a mall rat in 1987 was quite the vibe, especially when the year’s top rock songs would hit the mall speakers. Here are a few songs that 80s teens that year likely jammed out to while loitering around their local mall.

“With Or Without You” by U2 from ‘The Joshua Tree’

This rock ballad from U2 was such a huge crossover hit on the rock and pop charts; there’s no way it didn’t get significant airplay at malls and shopping centers for a good chunk of 1987. If you’re not an 80s kid, there’s still no way you haven’t heard “With Or Without You”. It’s one of the Irish rock band’s biggest hits.

“With Or Without You” by U2 peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It also reached the Top 10 in quite a few other countries in 1987.

“Alone” by Heart from ‘Bad Animals’

Heart turned this arena rock classic from i-Ten into a smash soft rock hit in 1987, and it was popular enough to make it to mall and shopping center speakers that year. This is the ultimate power ballad, in my opinion. 

“Alone” by Heart topped the Hot 100 chart in 1987 and made it to the Top 10 across the board globally.

“Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake from ‘Whitesnake’

It was impossible to escape this Whitesnake hit in the late 80s. And if you were a teen with a love for glam metal, you probably jammed out to this entry on our list of rock songs from 1987 at your local mall.

“Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake was easily the biggest glam metal hit of 1987. The song, written by David Coverdale and Bernie Marsden, reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart. It also peaked at No. 9 on the UK Singles chart. And, according to Coverdale, it was supposed to drop quite a few years earlier.

“It wasn’t written for the ’87 album, it was originally recorded back on the ‘Saints & Sinners’ album,” Coverdale said in 2017. “‘81, ‘82? I’m not sure. And Geffen asked me to redo it, which I wasn’t very keen on, but I said, ‘Okay, well if you want me to do that. I want to redo ‘Crying In The Rain’, because I was never really happy with the original.’ And John, Neil and I worked on an amazing instrumental section in the middle, very symphonic, which featured, at that time, highlighted Cozy Powell and I thought it’s gonna be great to have that too. But we actually had written enough material for a full album without ‘Here I Go Again’ and ‘Crying In The Rain’.”

(Photo by Getty Images/Bob Riha, Jr.)