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I Can Dream About You by Dan Hartman

Where were you in 1984 when this amazing tune, composed by Dan Hartman and featured in the rock-n-roll fable “Streets of Fire“, ruled the MTV airwaves (yeah, back when MTV actually played music videos and was worth watching)?

While the movie didn’t turn out to be the summer blockbuster its filmmakers had hoped, one of the songs featured in it – I Can Dream About You – enjoyed smashing success that year, peaking at #6 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

I Can Dream About You has an interesting history…

Hartman’s original idea was for Hall & Oates to record it on their own record but, as luck would have it (bad luck for Hall & Oates; great luck for Hartman), they had just released their new album.  I consider it good luck for us, too, because while I am a fan of Hall & Oates, the song has a magic to it that I feel only Dan Hartman could have delivered.  And so if we didn’t have him performing it, it might never have become the retro pop music song so many now know and love.

After Hall & Oates declined, Hartman was approached by producer Jimmy Iovine to compose a song for a film he had in development.  Iovine said that the song would be performed by a fictional group comprised of 4 guys (“The Sorels”) in a concert situation within the movie.   Hartman thought of a demo he had recorded of I Can Dream About You.   While a studio singer (Winston Ford) did the main vocals in the movie’s concert scene, Hartman had the foresight to negotiate that the song on the soundtrack be sung by him, as well as any single release.  Moreover, he had the wisdom to negotiate that any music video for the song had to feature his own voice.  Very smart moves because the song did become a huge hit and a video was released that helped propel it further up the charts and forever into 80s pop culture.  No doubt about, the late, great Dan Hartman was not only a musical genius, but also very wise when it came to the business side of things.

I Can Dream About You got even more exposure to a new generation 2006 when it appeared in the popular video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.

If you’ve read this far, I’ll let you in on a little secret…

This song, having always been one of my favorites, is one I’m working on doing a cover of right now.  It should be ready to be released very soon.  I’ll be making it available as a limited-time, free download at DanWrightMusic.net.  It’ll be my debut release so…please be kind.  🙂  If you do like it, I hope you will recommend my download site to others so they can download it too while its available (I’ll be replacing it with another free download at a later date if this first one is well-received).  And if you really, really like my cover, call your favorite radio station and request it – but please make sure you specify my last name since Mr. Hartman and I both share the same first name!  🙂

Seriously, any support I can get will help me create more covers as well as new, original songs.  More on that later.  For now, I just want to say upfront that I don’t believe it’s possible to “top” any of these original songs (that is, the versions that originally became popular – sometimes those were covers themselves such as Manfred Mann’s cover of Blinded By the Light, Blondie’s cover of The Tide is High, etc).  They were simply amazing in their original form and that’s why they are worthy of paying tribute to.  So my intent is never to try to improve upon any song, but merely to pay homage to it as best I can.  That’s all I or anyone can really do imho.  So if you hate my cover, well, thanks for listening anyway.  🙂  And remember that I said right here I don’t believe it’s possible to top the original so that is not my intention or expectation.

The song’s video is still one of my all time favorites.  Thank you so much, Dan Hartman, for giving us all this wonderful song…

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