Patrick Swayze – She’s Like the Wind

I’ve never seen “Dirty Dancing”. I have no plans to watch “Dirty Dancing” in the future. From what I know about “Dirty Dancing”, which is very little, but still far more than I should know for never having seen it, I am confident that my life is not less satisfying by its absence. I’m not judging those who love it: I just know there are a lot of things I would rather do with 100 minutes than spend them in the company of Baby, Johnny and the rest.

The music from the movie was a little more difficult to ignore, since it was all over the airwaves in 1987. There were three hit singles (four if you count the revival of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ “Stay”), and not one of them sounds like it could have been in the air during the early 1960s when the film was set. It was obviously the right choice to get radio play and record sales, and I just as obviously have no idea how the songs were used in the film, but it just feels wrong. This isn’t anachronistically using rock music because it’s fun as in the awesome “A Knight’s Tale”: it is cynically rejecting the sounds of 1963 – which were, I must admit, pretty awful in a lot of cases – for a pure cash grab that would play well in 1987.

One of those hits – “She’s Like the Wind” – was sung by the film’s male lead, Patrick Swayze, who also co-wrote it. Though he was a beloved romantic hero in “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost”, and a tough guy in “Point Break” and “Road House”, Swayze did some of his best work as an actor when he got weird. In “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar”, he was one of three drag queens (with John Leguizamo and (!) Wesley Snipes) stuck in a hick town for the weekend. Even better was his dark turn as a paedophile motivational speaker in the absolutely demented “Donnie Darko”. I don’t think I could bear to watch even five minutes of “Ghost” now, but would gladly rewatch those last two anytime. And let’s not forget his brilliant straight man work alongside Chris Farley as they both auditioned to become Chippendale’s dancers, while a less celebrated dancing moment comes when he gets very up close and personal with another male dancer at 4:24 of the video to Toto’s hit “Rosanna”.

What Swayze wasn’t, really, was a singer. As best I can tell, he only sang for the soundtracks of movies he starred in, which was probably for the best. (True fans lack any sort of objectivity about the artists they love, and this is no clearer than if you spend some time in the YouTube comments section of his tune “Raising Heaven (in Hell) Tonight” from “Road House”.) And yet, of the three hit songs from the movie, his was easily the one I liked best, and, yes, I owned the 45.

It’s a synth-heavy track – again, that lack of fealty to the sound of 1963 – with the same four notes repeated over and over, and frankly the whole thing could be synths and I doubt anyone would notice. Drums are an afterthought, the occasional rich bass notes are quickly forgotten, and while there are a few saxophone sections, they are blunt, not sensual. The lyrics are unbearably cheesy (“Can’t look in her eyes / She’s out of my league”) and clunky (can you be a “young old man”?), and the guitar, such as it is, is mostly a gummy mess, low in the mix. Swayze, so charismatic on the screen, offers none of that magnetism in his voice.

So, yes, I don’t think it’s a very good song. And yet, I still sort of like it, and that’s one of those weird alchemical things that happens with pop music, where the complete work is greater than the sum of its parts. There’s definitely nostalgia involved: we can easily convince ourselves that nothing beats the things we loved when we were younger, like your mom’s pot roast, even though we now know that the grey overcooked protein that she covered with a heavy handed amount of artery-clogging gravy is a culinary offence worthy of being banned from the kitchen. But it’s also good to be reminded that I was a lot more committed to my music back then. I might have been embarrassed by some of the things I loved – cough, Wham, cough – but I still went out, invested my limited income in those records, and played them. 23-year-old me loved “She’s Like the Wind” enough to choose it among all the possibilities to add to my curated record collection. It only took a toonie and a trip to the mall, but that is still worth celebrating in an era when finding a favourite song requires no more effort than a few clicks on your phone, and when there are millions of other readily accessible other songs competing to replace it in your heart.