The Road to "1985"
bowling-for-soup
After “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” became a hit, Jive wanted more.
The label wanted to rerelease the album with additional songs.
Jaret hated the idea.
Fans had already bought the record. Asking them to buy essentially the same album again felt wrong. To BFS, that was exactly what people were complaining about when they argued that file sharing was a result of the record labels' own greed.
Jive made it clear that refusing was not really an option.
Jaret returned to Atlanta and wrote “Punk Rock 101” and “Star Song” with Butch Walker.
The experience remains complicated for him.
He hated the circumstances.
He loves the songs that came from them.
“Punk Rock 101” became a Bowling for Soup staple and a massive Radio Disney song.
That contradiction would not be the last.
For A Hangover You Don't Deserve, Jaret dove deeply into co-writing. Zac Maloy became one of his most important collaborators. He also wrote a few with Butch.
Jaret and Rusty Cobb handled much of the production themselves, with Butch helping make that possible in the eyes of the label. That in itself is a complicated story, but the fact of the matter is: Butch Walker knows how to work a label!
After a month or so in Atlanta...
They believed in the record.
They had “Almost.”
They had “Trucker Hat.”
They thought they were done recording.
Then Jonathan Daniel, Butch's manager, called.
Mitch Allan of SR-71 had a song.
Jaret heard the SR-71 version of “1985.”
He thought it was pretty good.
That was about it.
That same evening, after a few beers, Gary suggested he listen again.
He did.
Then he called Mitch and asked whether he could change a few things that didn’t really sound like BFS.
Mitch told him it was his.
Jaret rewrote the lyrics to fit Bowling for Soup's voice. Butch returned to produce the track. The arrangement was simplified and rebuilt.
When Jive heard the finished Bowling for Soup version, there was no debate.
This was the single.
The label put everything behind it.
For the video, Bowling for Soup returned to Smith & Boren, who had already directed several of the band's videos.
Jaret had the idea: suburban garages opening to reveal Bowling for Soup dressed as different characters from the 1980s, desperately trying to get the attention of the woman across the street.
Joey House played Debbie and looked enough like Tawny Kitaen to make the Whitesnake references work perfectly.
The stylist nailed the Mötley Crüe costumes, which allowed lifelong Mötley Crüe fan Jaret to live inside one of his childhood fantasies for a day.
Mitch Allan appeared in the video too.
That matters to Jaret.
Bowling for Soup has never tried to hide the song's history. They have always thought of the finished song as a collaboration.
Mitch Allan and John Allen, who wrote the original version, feel the same way.
Everybody’s life changed because of it.
“1985” went everywhere.
MTV.
Pop radio.
Radio Disney.
The shows got bigger.
The audiences became dependable.
The band started earning enough money for its members to buy houses.
And Bowling for Soup became, forever, “the ‘1985’ band.”
They could tell someone what they did for a living and watch the recognition happen in real time.
“I'm in Bowling for Soup.”
“What do you sing?”
“‘1985.’”
“Oh shit!”
“Almost” followed and became another major hit.
The band was at its commercial peak.
Life, meanwhile, was getting more complicated.
