"My old man pushes me aROOOOUNd!"

When Ferris Bueller's Day Off came out in the summer of 1986, no soundtrack album was produced. That's unheard of these days, especially for a film targeted at teen audiences, but back in the '80s I guess it wasn't uncommon. From what I've read, the film's writer-director, John Hughes, thought the songs wouldn't fit together as a cohesive collection when separated from the movie.

According to a helpful Web site, the songs that most likely would've ended up on the soundtrack (in order of their appearance in the movie) are:

1. "Love Missile F1-11" (Sigue Sigue Sputnik)
2. "Oh Yeah" (Yello)
3. "Beat City" (The Flowerpot Men)
4. "B.A.D." (Big Audio Dynamite)
5. "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" [Instrumental] (The Dream Academy)
6. "Danke Schoen" (Wayne Newton)
7. "Twist and Shout" (The Beatles) *
8. "Radio People" (Zapp)
9. "I'm Afraid" (Blue Room)
10. "Taking the Day Off" (General Public)
11. "The Edge of Forever" (The Dream Academy)
12. "March of the Swivelheads" (The English Beat)

If I had a music blog, I'd let you download all of these songs. But I don't. And now you feel like you've wasted your time reading this.

I can live with that.

I wish some record label—possibly Rhino, which specializes in reissues and doesn't shy away from music with nostalgic value—would put out a 20th-anniversary edition of the Ferris soundtrack, but I haven't heard any rumblings about it recently, so I guess it won't happen. Too bad. I bet a lot of people would buy it.

* "Twist and Shout" was also used in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School the same summer, so it must not have been until later in the '80s that Michael Jackson, who purchased the publishing rights to the Beatles' songs in 1984, jacked up the prices for studios who wanted to use the songs in movies. However, Jackson, or whoever was running his empire at the time, did allow Nike to use the electric version of "Revolution" in a 1987 ad campaign.