This new year I’m starting out with a series of tributes to my favorite “girls rock” musical numbers from films with dynamic female leads.

This post is my salute to Diane Lane (Ellen Aim) and to one of the great bass thumping, energy boosting, heart-stirring numbers I love from the 80’s. (Giving credit where credit is due, those incredible vocals were performed by Holly Sherwood; another unsung, backup hero.)

 

 Streets of Fire 1984

 

 

My emotional connection to this song has not diminished. It’s still as powerful and meaningful to me as when I first embraced it over 20 years ago. Penning this post was difficult but also cathartic. To write this piece from truth, I had to acknowledge my own struggle to reconcile the ideal with the real. My vision of myself as the rebel, the dreamer and the one determined to not look back with regret.

“Tonight is What it Means to be Young” amplifies those feelings of that perfect love, staying true to one’s self, and the reality of having to let go.

This driving beat is palpable. It’s a CPR pumping of blood sent to both quicken and relieve the relentless pain Ellen Aim is feeling after losing the love of her life; the embodiment of her dream of an “angel.”

Rockin’ that hot red dress, she channels acceptance and remembrance of another time and another place of youth and the promise of love.

 

 

I’ve got a dream when the darkness is over
We’ll be lyin’ in the rays of the sun
But it’s only a dream and tonight is for real
You’ll never know what it means
But you’ll know how it feels

It’s gonna be over
Before you know it’s begun
It’s all we really got tonight
Tonight is what it means to be young
Tonight is what it means to be young