15-Minute 80s Music Trivia Walking Workout | Ep 51

Get 1,500 steps in 15 minutes with this fun 80s music trivia walking workout you can do indoors or outside.

If you grew up on mixtapes, MTV, and shoulder pads, come on down! We’ll "walk this way" to a steady beat while I dish out 80s music trivia and fun facts about your favorite songs and artists. We’ll have a totally awesome time… high-top sneakers or not.

You can do this low-impact walking workout on a treadmill, a walking pad, or in the fresh air. If you’re walking outside, there’s a bell at the halfway point so you know when to turn around. (There’s background walking music, too!) 

Plus I have a few power intervals (optional) to keep you livin' on a prayer. 

This 15-minute walk is totally rad if you want a fun "walk at home" workout, a quick energy boost, or just a mental break with 80s nostalgia and a little company while you move. 

I somehow end up also talking about Flock of Seagulls hair, Walkman tape disasters, MTV videos, Walking in LA, and the famous singer who got fired from Dunkin' Donuts...

Don’t forget to tap Follow so the next walk is waiting for you.

Want more special walks like this? Connect with me on Instagram and drop me a line with your suggestions. 

P.S. Head to yourwalkingpodcast.com for my free Kickstart Weight Loss or Walking for Busy People guides. 

Transcript

0:02

I am so excited and I just can't hide it. Why? Because we're doing our eighties trivia walk today, and I'm so excited. Get your shoes on. Let's go for a little spin. Let the beat pull you into an easy warmup pace like you just put on your favorite eighties track and you're walking in time without even thinking about it. You can do this walk indoors, outdoors on a treadmill, walking pad, or even marching in place. If you're walking outside, there'll be a bell at the halfway point in case you want to turn around. You can also listen while you're doing other things and you can play along with us with the trivia. Or can just save the episode for a time when you can walk. I wanted to try something different to see if we could make the time fly by. First question coming in hot, which eighties superstar secretly wrote Manic Monday for The Bangles under a fake name? And I'm Helen, and this is a Walking and Talking with Helen podcast. We'll do a warmup and some steady trivia blocks, and then we'll finish with a lightning round quiz, which should be pretty fun. Hold on to your warmup pace. Okay, that Manic Monday question, that song was written by Prince under a pseudonym and he used the name Christopher. And then gave that song to The Bangles. Now, in the early eighties, I had that Flock of Seagulls hair. You know, the one with the bangs that just kind of stick out past you, and they're stiff and they're big and they look like some kind of a landing pad. And then later I had the bob, which was short on one side, long on the other. And then I wore the beret, and I'm not sure if it was a Raspberry Beret or not. I don't know why I wore a beret because I wasn't even French, but you know those were the eighties. Unclench your jaw. Let your tongue drop from the roof of your mouth. Hands are loose. Let your shoulders slide down away from your ears A little faster pace. We're going to settle in, so just break out of that warmup speed. Question two, before streaming and playlists, what little portable box changed everything by letting us take our music on walks? We no longer had to put big boom boxes on our shoulders. That was a Walkman. And if you ever had one, you knew the pain of when your tape got chewed up and you had to try to pull it out and break it, and you worked so hard to buy a tape and you had to mangle it to get it out of the Walkman so you could put another tape in. Of course, you could have guessed a Discman, but probably you're more likely a nineties kid if you did that. Now in early eighties, in 1981, MTV just came on the scene and suddenly music became more alive because we had music videos and they were like mini movies and they were so creative and we just got to see all our bands in ways we'd never seen them before. The first video they ever played on MTV? Video kill the Radio Star. That was the absolute perfect song for that. The Buggles or Buggles. I never know exactly which way to say it. And with MTV is when I first fell in love with my pretend husband, Billy Idol, and I remember the very first video I saw him in that cemented our love forever: Dancing with Myself and it had zombies in it. It's super awesome. Here's a little quick nerd fact. The band Level 42, I don't know if you remember them. They had that song, Lessons in Love. They took their name from the book, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The premise of the book is they were searching for the answer to life and the universe and everything. And after the three book series, they finally found the meaning of life. And it was the number 42, and that's where Level 42 got their name from. And I read that book series in the mid eighties when I worked for Walden Books, and that was such a great job. I love that job. Hold on to your speed. Not too fast. Not too slow. Just like Goldilocks. And the band Missing Persons, they had that hit song Walking in LA. I still remember that album cover. They did really well on MTV and they actually helped bring about that saying, nobody walks in LA and today we're going to prove them wrong. Because no matter what city you're in, you're walking. Let your steps find a rhythm like you're walking on sunshine, gliding toward a place where the vibes are totally awesome. Arms are swinging by your sides, not glued to your ribs. Now if you want, you can go faster. If you're in the mood, give it a little bit of push. You're holding a mid-tempo groove where you could still talk. Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. That was such a fun video. It was pure joy, wild colors, and the best of everything in the eighties. But where did Cyndi Lauper get the title for Time After Time? Well, Cindy co-wrote the song with Rob Hyman from The Hooters. I think their big hit was, And They Danced and he also sings a harmony line. Cyndi happened to be flipping through a TV Guide and she saw the title of a sci-fi movie and it was Time After Time. She used it as a working title for a song, and then she ended up liking it so much that she kept it. I was obsessed with TV Guide back in the day and I just remember how fun it was to get the TV Guide every week. Here's a little bonus fact. Cyndi didn't even stop after the eighties. She wrote the music for a Broadway show called Kinky Boots, and then she actually got a Tony Award for that. My daughter did see that. I wish I could have seen it, but she saw it and she thought it was really awesome. Just breathe, settle in, hold onto your pace. Another little eighties fact. So Pat Benatar before she was, you know, our favorite rock woman of the eighties, actually was trained as an opera singer and that explains, I guess, why she can hit all those super high notes that most of us mere humans cannot. Light lift through the top of your head. Like someone just fluffed your eighties hair, you're trying not to crush it. Now with this next artist, I wore fingerless gloves just like she did and also the big belts. Madonna. Madonna was hustling in New York all the time. She was doing anything she could, playing drums, singing, playing guitar, dancing, whatever she could do to get noticed. But this is a funny story I did not know. She worked at a Dunkin Donuts in Times Square and she lasted exactly one day because she got fired for squirting jelly filling all over a customer. I guess she just wasn't meant to take orders. So before she became the Queen of Pop though, she played drums in a band and then she played guitar, and then she got to the vocals. But what was the name of that band she played in? Going to bring your pace up a little bit while we think about it. Shorter. Quicker steps, like the chorus just hit you just can't help but move. It's a short effort. If today isn't a push day for you, just at your regular pace. So you live to tell. Maybe even open your heart so you can get into the groove. You see what I did there? Here's an interesting little tidbit that I discovered. When Madonna did her like a Virgin performance at that very first MTV Awards, she was rolling around on the floor in a wedding dress. Well, that was actually an accident. She was supposed to be walking down a giant wedding cake, and then her shoe fell off, and so she went to grab the shoe. Her dress flipped up, and then she just decided to roll with it. And instead of ruining her career, it actually made her a legend. So I guess the moral of the story is if you trip on this walk, just pretend it's a cool dance move. Take the edge off that pace. Strong, steady walk. Not a sprint. And the name of the band that Madonna was in, The Breakfast Club, like the movie, but not in any way related. Here's another fun fact. There was a boy band in the eighties that had three Taylors in it, and none of them were related. That band was Duran Duran, my favorite eighties boy band, and they're still touring this year actually. The Taylors are John, Roger, and Andy.. Let your breathing settle back down. Shake up your hands, relax your jaw again, keeping your feet moving. Question number four. This, I had no idea, and I don't know why I had no idea. Berlin's lead singer, Terri Nunn, once screen tested for a big sci-fi movie before she became a famous singer. Hmm. What movie was that? Most people know Berlin from Top Gun and the Song Take My Breath Away, which is not my favorite Berlin song, but they had great tracks before that, like The Metro and No More Words. Terri had that amazing cool look and just huge voice. But she almost went down a totally different path as an actress. She screen tested alongside Harrison Ford and it was the Star Wars movie. She auditioned for Princess Leia before the role went to Carrie Fisher. Wouldn't that be weird and awesome? I saw Berlin and Terri Nunn at a concert in the 2000s, and she still had such great energy and just a big smile and came right out into the audience. I also was lucky enough back in my day as a concert photographer and a music writer to interview Terry Nunn. She's just amazing all the way around. And here's a little fun fact about another 80s artist. Sting was in The Police and before he was Sting, he was Mr. Sumner. I think it was Gordon Sumner. And he was actually a school teacher. And the experience of being a school teacher is what inspired the song Don't Stand So Close to Me. Which is about a teacher trying to keep his distance from a student crush, and he wrote it from experience, but he swears nothing ever happened, so we'll have to believe him. And Sting got his nickname because he wore a black and yellow striped sweater that made him look like a bee. Every Breath You Take, it sounds super romantic, but Sting wrote it as a stalker song after a breakup. He gets creeped out when people play it at weddings. And so do I now that I know the real meaning behind it and Every Breath You Take is not a good wedding song. Okay, now we're going to pick it up a little bit. Going to take one deep breath in first through your nose, and exhale through your mouth. The last little challenge, which legendary guitarist played the solo on Michael Jackson's Beat It? We're going to do one push while you think about it. It's going to be about 60 seconds. If you don't want to do the push, don't worry. You don't have to. You can do whatever you feel like today. You're going to bring up your pace, quick light steps. This is your eighties movie training montage moment bec ause all those eighties movies had those training montages, running up the stairs, boxing, pulling a car. Feel that push. And if that's not working for you right now, just stay at that regular pace. But if you're feeling it..... get your heart rate up. If you're doing this at home, you're marching, just bring your arms above your head. Don't try faster if you're driving though, because that could be bad. Stay with that push, nice and strong and hard. We got 10 more seconds. Stay with it and slow it down a little bit. Going to drop back to a strong, steady walk. Let your breathing settle. The solo on Beat It was Eddie Van Halen. I had no idea. Going to do a lightning round while we start to ease our pace a little bit. See how many of these you can get. Which eighties hit song was written in just 30 minutes? Because the producer needed one more track to finish the album. It starts with a very, very famous guitar intro. Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N Roses. I really love Africa by Toto, but what are they really singing about? It's a mythological version of Africa. The songwriter had never actually been there when he wrote it, so he just kind of made something up. Eye The Tiger is the theme song for Rocky III and that was the first Rocky movie I ever saw. But actually that wasn't the first choice. What song did Sylvester Stallone want to use? Another One Bites the Dust by Queen. Queen said no. So we got Eye of the Tiger instead. And I think actually that was a better choice as much as I love Another One Bites the Dust. Which Huey Lewis song was written for Back to the Future? The Power of Love. And yes, that is Huey Lewis judging the band audition in the movie. In Bon Jovi's Livin' On a Prayer who used to work on the docks? I think we all know that one. Tommy used to work on the docks. Let your pace slide down now one more notch while we finish up. Let your arms hang a little heavier. Fingers are relaxed. Big inhale through your nose. Slow exhale like you're fogging up an old cassette case. Gentle shoulder rolls. Go forward and backward. Get those creaks out of there. I'm so glad you joined me for this eighties trivia walk. You can connect with me on Instagram at yourwalkingpodcast. You can DM me if you have any suggestions for future walks. If you want more eighties trivia, you want nineties trivia. You want pop culture trivia. Let me know if you thought this was fun and different. Sometimes we just want to lose ourselves in something. Make sure you stretch a little bit when you're done. Calves, front of your thighs. Let's take another deep breath in, settle in. We've got a little eighties trivia walk in, got some steps in, had some fun, had a little bit of nostalgia. Hit follow, whatever app you're listening on so that way you'll be notified of my next episode. Slow it down a little bit more. Take another deep breath in through your nose, why not? Really fill up those lungs. Relax your stomach and exhale through your mouth. Feel all that tension leave your body. Feel how much help you feel now than when you started. And I'll see your next time.