Song of the Day 11/6: Michael Sembello, “Maniac”

The race for title of Craziest GOP Congresswoman is always hotly contested. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Bobert, and Anna Paulina Luna all have their moments, but nobody is as crazy as Nancy Mace, and running for governor of South Carolina has proved it.

Her now-legendary meltdown in an airport confrontation with TSA personnel last week has even the state’s senators, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, distancing themselves from her. “Too crazy for Lindsey Graham” isn’t a great slogan for the campaign flyer, even in South Carolina. Her response? She blamed her outburst on post-Charlie Kirk death threats, and is suing the airport, the airline and the state attorney general for defamation, because they’re all lying to make her look bad. Today’s song is for her.

Because its use in “Flashdance” made it a No. 1 hit in 1983, “Maniac” seems to be about a dancer, but Michael Sembello and his writing partner, inspired by a newspaper account of a serial killer, originally wrote it as a horror movie spoof. Director Adrian Lyne liked it for the siren-like urgency of the synth line, so to fit the movie they rewrote the lyrics (“He’s a maniac/ He just moved in next door” became “She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor,” for example).

The low-budget movie got poor reviews, but when it found an audience the studio cobbled together scenes from the movie into a music video. MTV was still young, and “Maniac” got heavy airplay in what amounted to a bonanza of free advertising. The film brought in $20 million in its first four weeks of release. The video dropped at that point, and the movie went on to gross more than $200 million. Hollywood took note, and for the rest of the ’80s every big-budget movie paid a rock star to sing a theme song for it, resulting in way too much Phil Collins.