'Foolish Heart' by Steve Perry: 'The Head and Heart Conflict Everybody Goes Through'

‘100 Greatest 80s Pop Songs’ Book Excerpt

Frank Mastropolo

Sony Music Entertainment

Lyricist Randy Goodrum had written the hits “You Needed Me” and “Bluer Than Blue” when Steve Perry asked him to collaborate on new songs for his first solo album.

“I thought maybe he’d made a mistake asking me to write with him,” Goodrum told Songfacts.

“Why would a rocker want to write with a guy who writes the kind of songs I’ve had hits with, which were mostly poignant ballads? But anyway, the first song that we wrote was ‘Foolish Heart’ when we got together to co-write.

“I had this little vamp idea which I said, ‘Well, Steve is calling me probably because he wants a certain thing that I do, so I will give him a piece of what I do.’

“I played him that little start, and he liked it right away, and he started jamming some melodies. My style from starting out in Nashville was to write lyrics and music simultaneously. That’s really the style I prefer, because the music is sort of telling you what it’s about from the get-go, and I don’t think he was used to that style, because we started about eleven in the morning, and about eleven that night we had the song done and demoed.”

Perry included “Foolish Heart” on his 1984 album Street Talk, and it reached №18.

“The feeling was just basically one of being confused about falling back in love again,” Perry explained to Dick Clark, “because your heart wants to so bad, but your head says, ‘Wait a minute, you’ve done that before and it doesn’t feel good.’

“But your heart says, ‘I don’t care, I need it. Your head says, ‘Yeah, but I can’t take it.’ And one goes back and forth, back and forth, and it’s just that real teeter-totter of the head and heart conflict that just everybody goes through. To the point where your heart is one of very serious foolishness.”

Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Greatest 80s Pop Songs, part of the Greatest Performances series, and Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.