Irene Cara — “The Dream (Hold On To Your Dreams)”

Entered Top 40:  January 28, 1984 
3  weeks  
Peaked at: 37  

A child star on Broadway, on TV soaps, and on The Electric Company, Irene Cara became a bit of a soundtrack queen. Her first pop hit (#4) was the 1980 title track to the film Fame, then in summer 1983 she topped the charts with “Flashdance… What a Feeling.” Cara and Giorgio Moroder followed that song up with Cara’s What A Feelin’ LP, then this standalone motivational poster of an end-credit song for the December 1983 film D.C. Cab.

Joel Schumacher directed (but did not write) D.C. Cab, which seems like an attempt to recapture the low-wage ensemble-comedy vibe of 1976’s Car Wash, which Schumacher wrote but did not direct. D.C. Cab has a ridiculously prominent cast for something so mid. Or at least they seem prominent now. There’s pre-motorcycle accident Gary Busey. Pre-Night Court Marsha Warfield. Adam Baldwin. Paul Rodriguez before AKA Pablo. Bill Maher before he…well, he was probably as big of a jerk as we know him to be now, just more obscure. Post-Barney Miller Max Gail, in probably the most prominent film role of anyone from that show not named Abe Vigoda. And of course Mr. T., who had just become the biggest thing going thanks to Rocky III and The A-Team, and is the main person on the movie poster.

Thing is, for how aspirational “The Dream” is, the dreams being held onto in D.C. Cab are remarkably modest. With the exception of Adam Baldwin’s character, who hitchhikes to Washington to become a cab driver, most everyone’s arc goes from being a cabbie to…being a slightly better-off cabbie. The driver obsessed with Irene Cara gets to meet her. That’s kind of it. I guess pretty much everyone in the cast I mentioned above went on to better things. Even Max Gail; he won a couple of Daytime Emmys recently on General Hospital. So that’s the dream I guess: hold on to your dreams and eventually you’ll do stuff better than D.C. Cab. Thanks Irene!

Cara would follow “The Dream” with a single from her What a Feelin’ album, “Breakdance;” which, despite Cara’s South Bronx upbringing during the rise of hip-hop, always felt like the fork being stuck in that craze. But the song was a big hit (#8) though, and her final Top 40 entry, so what do I know.