It was clear just how important music was to John Hughes’s cinematic vision of teenage life when The Breakfast Club, his high-school detention drama, was released in 1985. As the film ended with its five principals – “a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal” – having reached mutual understanding, the voice of Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr crooned: “Won’t you come see about me?”
The writers of Don’t You (Forget About Me), Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff, were trying to emulate the rhythm of Our Lips Are Sealed, by the Go-Go’s, and the song was inspired by a conversation in the film between Anthony Michael Hall (“brain”) and Judd Nelson (“criminal”). “When they were away from everybody else, the two of them actually recognised each other,” Forsey says now. “It reminded me of when I was going to school. If you were in the school playground, the bad guys would be pretty bad to you, but if you met them at the bus stop in the morning, there was some bonding there. That was the reason I came up with Don’t You (Forget About Me). It was: don’t forget, when we’re back in the classroom, you’re not just a bad guy and we’ve got other things in common.”
