Great Soundtracks of 1985: Rocky IV

1985 saw two films where Sylvester Stallone, as his two most famous characters, John Rambo and Rocky Balboa, beat the evil Russians. In “Rambo- First Blood Part 2,” Stallone kills about 38 Russian soldiers and rescues American prisoners still held from the Vietnam war. The second, “Rocky IV,” he beats up one Russian boxer, Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren. While the theme is the same with both movies, “Rocky IV” has a much better soundtrack.

Unlike the “Vision Quest” soundtrack, the soundtrack for “Rocky IV” doesn’t go all out to include a wide range of musical tastes. There are no heavy metal songs on here but on the flip side, there aren’t any Madonna ones either. What Sylvester does is rekindle his fondness for Survivor. Once again, the song from “Rocky III,” which shot Survivor to fame, “Eye of the Tiger,” is on the soundtrack to “IV.” However, there is a second Survivor track and it’s the best track on the entire album. In fact, I’ll go out and boldly declare that “Burning Heart” is my favourite Survivor song of all time.

The other tracks on the soundtrack range from quite good to interesting. The only real 80s synth pop offering comes from Go West in the form of “One Way Street.” I call it synth pop but it’s not terrible. A very interesting song comes via “Double or Nothing” which is a duet of Kenny Loggins and Gladys Knight. That was a combination I never would have thought would work but it does. Besides, there is a cool guitar solo on the song. Of course, no Rocky film or soundtrack would be complete without a training montage song. Vince DiCola does the honours here and I admit, it does make want to go out for a run, though my 57 year old body vetoes any thought of that. The “Rocky” films made training montages cool and eventually would lead to what I consider the best training montage of all time. See below:

Then again, another song from this soundtrack used in a training montage. Family Guy makes effective use of the song from John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, “Hearts on Fire,” a pretty decent song by the way.

Saving some of the best for last, in addition to “Burning Heart,” there are two really good tracks on the “Rocky IV” soundtrack. One of these is fairly obvious, I mean you can never go wrong with a little James Brown.”Living in America” is a great song no matter what genre of music you like to call your own. James just really delivers and his actual performance of it in the film is just great! Finally, there’s “No Easy Way Out” from one hit wonder Robert Tepper. The fact that he appears on the soundtrack is why I didn’t include him in my One Hit Wonders of 1985 post. Anyway, the song rocks, it’s the hardest song on the soundtrack. It’s definitely the hidden gem, hands down.

Track Listing

Survivor

1. Survivor- Burning Heart

John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band

2. John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band- Hearts of Fire

3. Kenny Loggins and Gladys Knight- Double or Nothing

Survivor

4. Survivor- Eye of the Tiger

5. Vinnie DiCola- War

6. James Brown- Living in America

7. Robert Tepper- No Easy Way Out

8. Go West- One Way Street

9. Touch- The Sweetest Victory

10. Vinnie DiCola- Montage

History states that “Rocky IV” was no way near the best Rocky film of all time. It’s success came on a wave of America gets even films that were coming out in 1985. Whatever the film, one can’t fault the soundtrack much.

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