3 Songs With Catchy Choruses From the 80s That Still Get Stuck in Our Heads

The 80s were full of memorable moments and songs. Here are three tunes with choruses that are nearly impossible to forget.

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“I Wanna Dance With Somebody(Who Loves Me)” By Whitney Houston

This Whitney Houston hit is easily one of the most danceable songs of the decade. However, if you look at the chorus lyrics, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is actually sad. Shannon Rubicam, who wrote this song with her husband, George Merill, talked about the common feeling that inspired the lyrics.

“Many of our friends were in this boat -” Rubicam told Songfacts. “5 o’clock comes around, they start getting restless and it’s, ‘What am I gonna do?’ and ‘I can’t stand to be alone again tonight,’ and ‘I really don’t wanna just go party, I’d really like to find somebody, try and find somebody to love.’ So it’s more of that long-term partnership that people want.”

“Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel

Perhaps the reason why so many of us know this Billy Joel song so well is that it has roots in classical music. Joel, whose father was a classical pianist, told TODAY that the song could have been composed by one of the greats.

“I actually brought that classical education into my writing. It was whether it could be played as a piece on its own, without words. Take, for example, ‘Uptown Girl’. It could have been a Mozart piece,” he shared.

Maybe that’s why we can’t get that chorus out of our heads.

“Summer Of ’69” by Bryan Adams

This song about teen love, summer, and growing up is such a jam. It’s hard to remember a time when we weren’t singing along to “Summer Of ’69”. Ironically, though, as Adams later revealed, the song almost wasn’t called that.

“I had no idea it would become such a classic,” Adams told American Songwriter. “Originally, the song had been called ‘The Best Days Of My Life’, but we had always played around with the idea of writing a song about summertime. At one point while we were doing the demo, I just threw in the lyric ‘It was the summer of ’69’ and it stuck. And the guitar intro is about the only thing I can play, so that was pretty easy.” 

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