Fin: Eric Carmen and anachronistic movie music, Oscar ratings, Jonathan Glazer, and RIP Deadspin

This week’s notes column

Singer Eric Carmen, who had a series of hits in the 1970s and ‘80s with both his band The Raspberries and as a solo artist, passed away this week at 74.

I’ll always associate Carmen most of all with his 1987 song “Hungry Eyes,” which was included on the soundtrack that year to Dirty Dancing. It’s a great pop song, but you can’t underestimate how poorly it fits into the rest of that movie’s soundtrack.

Dirty Dancing is a movie set in 1963, and 90 percent of its soundtrack consists of vintage hits that match the setting. Indeed, it’s one of the best movie soundtracks in history. But “Hungry Eyes” is a song from 1987 that sounds, in every way, like it’s from 1987. It’s a Yacht Rock entry that deploys the saxophone extensively in the way pop songs of the 1960s never did. 

Yet somehow, it fits anyway, as does the movie’s finale, "(I've Had) Time of My Life” — from the same duo of songwriters — which not only won that year’s Best Original Song Oscar but is an indelible part of one of the best movie finales in history. That tune is a 1987-ass song that sounds nothing whatsoever like any music from the early 1960s. But I couldn’t imagine any other song in that spot.

So farewell, Eric Carmen, and thank you for contributing an all-timer of a movie song. Two of them, actually, since The Raspberries’ “Go All the Way” was featured on another of the best-ever soundtracks for Almost Famous. 

Eric Carmen, however, did not write or perform this song: