10 Biggest Rock Songs From Every Year Of The 1980s
3. 1987: Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now - Starship
Mannequin is a 1987 romantic comedy starring Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrall as a shop window dummy that comes to life and falls in love with a man. Nobody cares about that though - everyone’s here for the main track on its soundtrack.
Starship knocked up a little something called Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now as the theme song to this terrible film and it’s now the only thing anyone remembers about it. Canadian, Irish, Portuguese, British, and American shoppers sent it to the top of their respective charts, resulting in gold and platinum sales figures out the wazoo. That’s a technical term in music sales.
It was also nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars, losing out to (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing, which yeah, fair enough.
There’s a case to be made that Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer should have taken this spot, but Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now sold way more copies and finished higher in most year-end lists. Plus, were Bon Jovi ever in a movie about a talking mannequin? Didn’t think so.