“Arthur’s Theme” (1981) by Christopher Cross is a MASTERPIECE

WHET Christopher Cross

Not really.

When you get caught between the moon and New York Shitty. I know it'sh crashy but it'sh true.....

It’s one of those songs that got played so much at the time I don’t ever feel the need to listen to it again. Plus it was popular the year I started middle school which was a horrible time for me so I don’t really have fond memories of it. Same with It Might Be You from Tootsie the following year

I love it, too, OP. And I also love It Might Be You from Tootsie, so I guess R4 and I won't ever be best friends.

These seemed like bland, easy listening movie songs to me.

OP = Christopher Cross.

I love Christopher Cross!

R4- Wasn't it called Junior High School in 1981?

R9 yes. It was still Junior High in 2000 when I went.

It is very pleasant as would be expected from CC, but calling it a masterpiece, in caps yet, is way over the top. I don’t even think it is particularly exceptional in the easy listening genre. If any of them are. That might be a good thread.

CC sounded rather homosexual

OP, there are many more superior songs than this one. Your reference to Taylor Swift is odd. Are you a Log Cabinette?

Christopher Criss Cross

Where I grew up it was middle school, r9. Grades 6 through 8. I read somewhere that junior highs started with grade 7 but I have no idea if that’s true or universal. I grew up in Texas so maybe it’s a regional thing

No, it's dreadful. But then I'm not a big caught in the am er if the early Eighties like a lot of DLers.

R15- My junior high school at the time was 6th grade to 8th grade and it was called Junior High School - this was in the late 1970's in a suburb of NYC.

R15 no.

R17 in a suburb of NY.

Overplayed song with awkward phrasing.

The only line I liked was "when you get caught between the moon and NYC" because I've been in plane landing situations like that and it is beautiful.

My junior high school was grades 7-9, high school was 10-12.

Peter Allen’s contribution to the song was the”When you get caught between the moon and New York City” part.

Here’s the Oscar performance. He’s off key and nervous.

Wasn't Liza in that movie? If so, why didn't they ask her to sing the theme song?

Chris wrote most of the song r24. He sang his song.

R23 he was clearly nervous. It happens.

And them winning the Oscar for their song.

Bette Midler was insufferable. I know everyone was wanting her to STFU

My high school job was at a mulit-plex movie theater. When I first started there, "Arthur" was playing in our main theater. I heard that song mulitple times every time I worked for those first few weeks. I got pretty tired of hearing it.

Also, in my suburban Dallas school district in the 70s and 80s, K-6 was elementary school, 7-8 was middle school, and 9-12 was high school.

Love the song.

R28 it was Junior High School. Middle School became a thing in the 00s.

Shirley Bassey version

In the 1960s it was proposed that Junior High should be changed to Middle School. Very few pockets around the country went along with it though. The movement did begin in the 60s so it’s possible some people did go to “Middle Schools” back in the 70s and 80s but it’s unlikely because it was called that in only a few districts in the country. It did not become Middle School official until the 00s. Some places still called it Junior High as recent as 2015.

OK, R30. I guess you know better than me what my school experience in the 70s and 80s was. I must have just imagined that the sign in front of my school or my 7th and 8th grade yearbooks said "middle school" instead "junior high".

Sailing was better

R34 cool. But this isn’t about that song. Nor was it a song for a film

Produced by the stellar Michael Omartian and played by legendary studio musicians. Quintessential Yacht Rock.

Christopher Cross – lead and backing vocals, guitar

Michael Omartian – keyboards, synthesizers, string arrangements

Michael Boddicker – synthesizer programming

Steve Lukather – guitar

Marty Walsh – guitar

David Hungate – bass

Jeff Porcaro – drums

Paulinho da Costa – percussion

Ernie Watts – saxophone

Burt Bacharach was a god. there was a period of time when it was fashionable to write his music off as lightweight because his image wasn't sexy or aggressive, but there's so much there musically. The phrasing and musical complexity of this little song is so unusual and innovative for pop , indeed miles away from anything Taylor Swift could ever hope to come up with.

If you think it shows sophistication to roll your eyes at this song. You. Are. Wrong.

I hate this song. The movie however was one of my mom's absolute favorites I'm not sure why I've only seen parts of it I've caught while she was watching it but I've never watched it all the way through. I'm not sure how she felt about Arthur 2 though.

Many people loved it r38. It was a huge hit too. It earned $95 million at the domestic box office, which is equivalent to over $318 million in 2024.

Fantastic interview with Omartian...

decent elevator music

R39 oh good I'm glad other people could like it in spite of my bad taste for it.

It IS a masterpiece, OP. Have you seen the opera adaptation by John Adams with libretto by Peter Sellars? It blew me away at the Salzburger Festspiele.

I hated this song at the time. Maybe because my straight male friend played it constantly when we were out causing in the parents car at midnight, sneaking out of the house, pushing the car down the driveway, driving around on mountain roads with the lights off at the age of 14. That's when you play loud rock music, not Muzak hits. I swear he was a 40 year old man in a 14 year old body.

christopher cross didn't take off because he's ugly and fat. when the music video for sailing came out it hurt his career quite a bit i think.

Bette presents the Oscar to Alen, Bacharach, Cross and Sager

In some documentary about MTV, they showed a clip of Christopher Cross to illustrate the point that musicians now had to be sexy and good looking after music videos came in in the early 80s

No.

It's a great song. Cross had a good career but it should have been bigger. I agree it was his looks that killed it for him.

R37: The complicated phrasing previously had been supplied by Hal David. Bachrach didn't write lyrics. He wrote tunes with complicated time signatures. They worked as songs because he had a collaborator who knew what to with them and singers like Dionne Warwick who could sing them. Warwick had classical training, in addition to gospel---she was the perfect interpreter for so many of their songs.

This just comes across as awkward and Cross seemed to be adopted by programming consultants at a time when am radio was dying but they could still foist stuff on the public.

R49 Omartian went on to produce Summer's 1983 hit album (and single) 'She Works Hard for the Money' and her 1984 follow-up 'Cats Without Claws' (which flopped). Summer liked what he did with Cross in the early 80s, and bonded with him over being Christian.

Cats Without Claws flopped because of the alleged anti-gay shit Summer said. Her gay fans turned on her.

"Endless Love" should have won the Oscar, hands down. It was the one of the most popular songs of 1981 (coming in at #2 for the end of the year's Hot Singles), spending 9 weeks at #`1 in the summer of 1981. Ross and Ritchie made the perfect duet partners, and this song has stood the test of time. For decades, it was 'the wedding song'.

I think the Academy figured it had gotten enough accolades all year long, and decided not to give it an Oscar.

The Academy is comprised of a lot of different voters, if you want to be real about it. "The Academy" doesn't "decide" anything.

It would be a better song if it weren’t specific to a movie. If you don’t know the film, the references to Arthur make no sense.

[quote] "Endless Love" should have won the Oscar, hands down...For decades, it was 'the wedding song'.

Which is hilarious, considering it was the theme song for a psychotically obsessive boy who burns down his girlfriend's house when her parents force them apart.

Middle school = 7th and 8th grades

Junior High School = 6th, 7th, and 8th grades or 7th, 8th, and 9th grades

R56 Is that how you interpreted it ?

I went to a Middle School from 1982 to 1985 and it was grades 6-8.

The term was used at different times in different places with different grades. The people trying to insist they and only they know what defines the term "middle school" need to give it up.

R56: "Endless Love" is another annoying, overplayed song. A good example of why awards often are meaningless.

Now I have this song - that I can't stand - in my head. Thanks, OP.

I remember in my school district (Rhode Island), when I started fifth grade (September, 1973), there was massive confusion on where to send students that year. Some elementary schools had fifth grade, while other elementary schools (like mine) had gotten rid of fifth grade (added extra fourth grade classes) and fifth grade was moved to the new 'middle schools' which now housed 5,6,7,8 grades. One of these middle-schools was less than a half mile away from me (and my friends in the neighborhood), yet we were assigned to another elementary school for fifth grade - getting bused three miles away just for fifth grade. It made no sense. I ended up going to 'middle school' for 6,7,8 grades - the school which I walked to, a half mile from my house.

I think the school district finally straightened the mess out years later, when I was in high school. It took years and plenty of money to find the 'solution'.

Exactly, R59. In my school district in the late 70s, middle school was 7th and 8th grades. In that same district now, middle school includes 6th grade as well. Regardless, that district stopped calling them "junior highs" in the early to mid 70s and they have been "middle schools" ever since.

Back on topic, the only Christopher Cross worth listening to is "Ride Like the Wind".

I always found this one, and his "Sailing", tedious.

He didn't have much of a voice, either.

R45 once again speaking about shit out of your pay grade. Tons of artists were not attractive back then. It had nothing to do with his looks and all to do with the change of sounds the music industry had. His music style wasn’t popular anymore by 1983.

R46 see r27. But you did. So why post it again, retard?

r66 MTV definitely played a hand in ending Cross's popularity. He was fat and homely and did not fit in the MTV era.

R54 only the music branch of the academy votes for score and song. Actors etc. don’t.

A lot of you don’t have a clue how the voting works and it shows.

Endless Love was a bigger song but not a better song.

R68 yes. MTV changed the landscape of music and yea, appearance started to matter more but still plenty of unconventional people were successful. Cross was a classical singer, not a pop FM singer.

Ugly and fat are OK again, just ask Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi, and Sam Smith.

How can we live in a world where this song has an Oscar and "You don't bring me flowers" has nary an award. Where is justice!

Christopher Cross was meant for VH1 which sadly didn’t exist at the time he was most popular

R69, you're the one that knows fuck all about voting. [quote]Nominations are made by Academy members who are songwriters and composers, and the winners are chosen by the Academy membership as a whole.

[R69], you're the one that knows fuck all about voting.

[quote]Nominations are made by Academy members who are songwriters and composers, and the winners are chosen by the Academy membership as a whole.

Does anyone even still care about Academy Awards?

R23 - that number needed some dancers to spice it up.

THANK GOD we are having a discussion about middle school vs Jr high in the middle of a thread about “Arthur’s Theme.”

Very few people catch that hidden subtext in the song.

I was 15 when it was released. I don't know a single one of my peers who liked it. It was old people's music. Something they played on the radio to keep your mom from switching stations.

This was the only song of his I liked.

R50 - R37 is obviously referring to musical phrasing.

He was so over rated, so over played, very mediocre, everyone was sick of him. It was a very bleak time in American pop music.

R81, his lack of looks was already so feared by his company that they made an album cover without his picture. The back had the lyrics. When he started appearing on Awards shows, a lot of women were really disappointed.

Cross has a face made for radio

How does one get trapped between the moon and New York City?

Anyway, he's no Crosby Stills and Nash.

I've never understood this lyric:

[quote]Arthur, he does as he pleases

[quote]All of his life, his master's toys

[quote]Deep in his heart, he's just, he's just a boy

southern cross

What an excellent lyric

Hello...

Hi real last name is Geppert and “Christopher Cross” was the name of his band in the 70s but when he singed with Warner brothers they had him keep “Christopher cross” as his stage name. He’s well liked in the industry and has a devoted fan base. His big years were 1980-84. He came in at a good and bad time as soft/yacht rock was having a moment but MTV wasn’t too far behind. Also in 1980 you still had a diverse hot 100 with AC, R&B, disco, pop, county, and rock all coexisting on the charts. By 1985 that was completely gone.

Funny people keep saying that Cross' looks ruined his career as music videos took over and yet...wasn't Phil Collins one of the biggest selling recording artists of the mid to late '80s...

It's an OK song. I can't quite stir up the passion to call it a masterpiece.

I did like Sailing and Think of Laura.

For adult contemporary music of the same era I'd go with "It Might Be You" by Stephen Bishop.

[quote]...wasn't Phil Collins one of the biggest selling recording artists of the mid to late '80s...

and he put a closeup of his ugly face on his albums