3 Rock Songs From 1987 That Still Make Me Smile Today
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An Americansongwriter.com writer picks out three rock songs from 1987 that still bring them joy, spanning hits by Steve Winwood, Genesis and Bryan Adams. The piece is a personal reflection rather than a news story, celebrating the strength of late-1980s rock and offering behind-the-scenes trivia about each track's writing and chart success.
The selections are Steve Winwood's "The Finer Things" from Back In The High Life, Genesis's "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" from Invisible Touch, and Bryan Adams's "Heat Of The Night" from Into The Fire. Notable details include that "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" was secretly about drug addiction despite its upbeat feel and was originally titled "Monkey, Zulu"; that Adams himself played the rare lead guitar part on "Heat Of The Night", partly inspired by the film The Third Man; and that all four singles from Winwood's album became hits.
– Feature celebrates three favourite 1987 rock songs, not breaking news – Songs: Winwood's "The Finer Things", Genesis's "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight", Adams's "Heat Of The Night" – Includes trivia on writing, chart performance and hidden song meanings
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In 1987, rock music ranged from polished solo pop-rock to ambitious songs by established bands. Steve Winwood, Genesis and Bryan Adams each released albums that year, with songs shaped by their different approaches to writing and recording.
The three tracks come from Winwood’s Back in the High Life, Genesis’s Invisible Touch and Adams’s Into the Fire. Their stories include details about songwriting, recording choices and commercial success; for example, Winwood’s album produced four hit singles, while Genesis’s “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” has been described as addressing drug addiction.
Full account
Two separate retrospectives doing the rounds celebrate singles from the closing years of the 1980s, when rock was shading into the softer, more polished pop-rock sound that would dominate the airwaves as the decade ended. One piece anchors its choices in 1987, picking out tracks by Steve Winwood, Genesis and Bryan Adams that its author still finds themselves smiling along to. The other looks slightly later, to 1989, gathering songs by Don Henley, Cher and Phil Collins that it argues remain instantly recognisable to anyone who grew up with them.
From the 1987 selection, Steve Winwood's "The Finer Things" is drawn from his fourth solo album, Back in the High Life, a record that produced hit singles across the board, including its title track and, later, the chart-topper "One and Only Man" in 1990; the song itself is described as an upbeat celebration of life's simple pleasures. Genesis close out the trio with "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight", the last single lifted from Invisible Touch and written jointly by Phil Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford; despite its uplifting chorus, the account notes that the lyric is actually about a craving for drugs, and reveals that the track was known internally by the working title "Monkey, Zulu". Rounding out the set is Bryan Adams' "Heat of the Night", the lead single from Into the Fire, co-written with his regular collaborator Jim Vallance, on which Adams unusually took on lead guitar duties himself; the song is said to owe part of its inspiration to Orson Welles' film The Third Man, and remained his most successful single from that album until "Young Lust" returned him to the Top 10 in 1990.
The 1989 grouping strikes a rather different tone. Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence", the title track of his third solo record, was co-written with Bruce Hornsby, who also contributed piano and has continued to perform the song at his own shows; it topped the charts on release. Cher's "After All", a duet with Peter Cetera written by Dean Pitchford and Tom Snow, appeared on her Heart of Stone album and doubled as a soundtrack cut for the film Chances Are, preceding her later hit "If I Could Turn Back Time" — itself her last number one for almost a decade, until "Believe" returned her to the top in the late 1990s. Phil Collins' contribution, "Another Day in Paradise" from his album …But Seriously, is presented as the most sombre of the six songs discussed: rather than a love song, it addresses homelessness, reportedly inspired by scenes Collins witnessed in Washington, D.C., where he described the sight of people sheltering against heating grates in the shadow of Capitol Hill as a stark contradiction. It went on to become his final number one single.
Taken together, the two pieces cover common ground — nostalgic, radio-friendly hits from the tail end of the 1980s — but diverge in focus and, notably, in the years they cite despite both purporting to revisit the same kind of moment: the first is explicit about 1987, while the second frames its choices as 1989 releases, even though the overall theme presented to readers nominally centres on 1987. There is also a difference in mood: the first piece leans towards straightforwardly feel-good, guitar-driven rock, while the second highlights more socially conscious or bittersweet songwriting, particularly in its treatment of the Collins track. One account also appears to contain a minor slip, attributing the chart success of Winwood's song to a similarly spelled but different name.
Where outlets differ
The two pieces disagree on the year in question: one clearly discusses 1987 releases, the other discusses songs from 1989, despite the overall subject being framed as a single theme.
The first source emphasises upbeat, guitar-oriented rock and behind-the-scenes trivia (hidden lyrical meanings, working titles, guest guitar performances), while the second leans into more reflective or socially conscious songwriting, especially around Phil Collins' song about homelessness.
One source appears to contain an inconsistency, referring to the artist behind 'The Finer Things' by two different names within the same passage.