Schools Back in Session

September 3, 2026

I can’t remember what I walked into the kitchen for, but the summer of 1986—40 years ago, when I was 15? That, I remember!

I remember the brand-new red espadrilles I wore to see INXS on their Listen Like Thieves tour—and how they were destroyed in the rainstorm that hit as soon as I walked out of the Felt Forum at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

I remember the day-long Parade of Tall Ships on the Hudson River, which was followed by the way-better-than-usual Independence Day fireworks (it was the Statue of Liberty’s 100th birthday). I viewed it all from the Jersey side while seated on a towel next to my crush…and a few feet in front of my mom.

I remember watching the World Cup with my dad, and us looking at each other in amazement when Diego Maradona scored his “Hand of God” goal for Argentina. I remember standing in the middle of the street in Hackensack, NJ, giving my right hand to a friend, my left to a stranger, to join in the human chain that attempted to stretch sea to shining sea. We sang “Hands Across America,” “We Are the World,” and “America the Beautiful.”

For me, 1986 is full of core memories. Today I noticed the barista who made my matcha was wearing a t-shirt that read: What if we could go back in time? Not to change anything but to feel a few moments twice? I immediately thought: I would go back to the summer that the New York Mets dominated the National League on the way to winning the 1986 World Series! (As of this writing, the “Amazins” are among the worst in MLB, and I don’t see things improving.) And then: I would return to the time my family vacationed together in Seaside Heights, NJ, when I won a framed Duran Duran poster in a boardwalk game. I close my eyes and hear Bon Jovi playing, see the girls in their “86” half-shirts with dangling beads, smell the ocean mixed with pizza and zeppoles—and feel how lucky I was to be a teenager in the eighties.

What are your memories of that summer—when regular leaded gas cost 86 (ha!) cents a gallon, a movie ticket was $2.75…and the federal minimum wage was $3.35? Let these music and movies jog your memory:

It’s a toss-up between Madonna’s True Blue (released on June 30th) and the Top Gun Soundtrack (May 15th).

My favorite Madonna album, True Blue, would go on to be the best-selling album of the entire year, and she dug her heels in at pole position on the Billboard 200 for five straight weeks from mid-August through mid-September. Powering it were three number-one singles: “Live to Tell” (also the theme song for At Close Range, starring hubby Sean Penn, to whom True Blue is dedicated: “the coolest guy in the universe”); “Papa Don’t Preach” (because “Italians Do It Better”); and “Open Your Heart.”

As for Top Gun, it was inescapable. A literal soundtrack for youth culture that summer, it topped the album chart for a week in July, the first two weeks in August, and a week in September. Add to that the sheer ubiquity of its songs: Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone,” Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away,” Loverboy’s “Heaven in Your Eyes”—which we just might hear on the next 80s Cruise—and “Top Gun Anthem,” courtesy of Harold Faltermeyer and Steve Stevens.

If I made you a mixtape to transport you back to that summer, it would contain—aside from the aforementioned Madonna and Top Gun tunes—“Sledgehammer” (the Peter Gabriel video dominated September’s VMAs), “Higher Love” (Steve Winwood), “The Edge of Heaven” (Wham! performed it at their last-ever live concert at Wembley Stadium, London, on June 28), “Venus” (I still know every move in Bananarama’s video choreography), “Walk This Way” (the Run-DMC/Aerosmith video was filmed at a theater one town over from mine), “Nasty” (Janet Jackson), “Mad About You” (who else played Belinda Carlisle’s debut solo album until it warped?), and Billy Ocean’s “They’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)” (because Billy was SO GOOD on the 2026 Cruise!).

Yet, 1986 was also the year I became a full-on alternative-music fan. Right before the school year ended, I received a cassette made by a friend that I played all summer long, and it would go on to solidify my taste in music forever: left of center (thanks, Suzanne Vega). On that mixtape were the latest from the Smiths, New Order, the Housemartins, Hüsker Dü… I was also newly obsessed with Depeche Mode, and I had “A Question of Lust” and “Stripped” on repeat. And I just couldn’t get enough of “Each Time You Break My Heart”: Madonna co-wrote it and recorded a demo during the True Blue sessions, but Levi’s model Nick Kamen ultimately recorded it, with Madonna producing and singing backing vocals.

This is considered one of the great movie summers of a great decade of movie summers. Blockbuster action flicks, teen comedies, sci-fi classics, and a soundtrack culture endorsed by MTV and radio: ’86 had it all.

The aforementioned Top Gun —the year’s biggest film—had us wearingaviator sunglasses and buying bomber jackets to wear back to school. Released just before Memorial Day, it took us straight through to September…and beyond.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was memorable for me, because I saw it at the theater on a double-date! However, it also reinforced the movies-for-teens trend that so defined the decade. Four decades on, I’m still heeding Ferris’ warning about life moving pretty fast, still hearing “Oh Yeah! Chicka-chickaaah!” in TV commercials. (BTW, I feature in the 2025 documentary short Oh Yeah! spotlighting the eccentric electronic Swiss duo Yello.) Sadly, no matter how much I beg him, my husband refuses to say he’s Abe Froman—the Sausage King of Chicago—when he makes a restaurant reservation.

Other films released that summer: Stand by Me (“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”), Back to School (“Stop thinking… let things happen… and be the ball!”), the film that gave us a popular 80s Cruise costume, Labyrinth (“You have no power over me”), and the sequel Aliens (“Get away from her, you bitch!”)

—END—