Memories of My Misguided Youth: Don Johnson's "Heartbeat"

When America's hottest cop "rocked out" to a wet noodle love song.

(Memories of My Misguided Youth is a new feature in which I reflect on a pop culture moment that insists on occupying space in my brain even decades later)

Courtesy of The Kisstorian on X

By the time the mid-80s rolled around, TV cops were no longer cool. Starsky & Hutch had long ended, and CHiPs, acknowledging that it was popular mostly with children, became wholesome to the point of corny. Beyond that was either the bleak realness of Hill Street Blues, or William Shatner letting his stuntman do all the running and rolling across a car hood scenes in T.J. Hooker, and not much else.

Then, Michael Mann and writer Anthony Yerkovich came along to shake up the genre in ways that are still seen forty years later. Miami Vice was allegedly inspired by Brandon Tartikoff’s suggestion of “MTV cops,” and even if that might be apocryphal, there was no description of the show’s look and feel more accurate than that. Though it was a gritty thriller about undercover cops investigating crimes along the Florida Gold Coast, every single aspect of Miami Vice was designed for maximum coolness, right down to star Don Johnson’s carefully cultivated chin stubble.

We now apply the word “iconic” to everything from a small child talking excitedly about corn to a $45 water bottle, but it cannot be overstated how virtually everything about Miami Vice was iconic. Its slick, new-wave vibe influenced cop dramas for years to come (including Mann’s own Manhunter, released two years after Miami Vice’s 1984 premiere). Men everywhere adopted Johnson’s unshaven look (even though it made most of them just look like they overslept) and the pastel suits with t-shirts both he and co-star Philip Michael Thomas wore. Both Jan Hammer’s absolutely slamming theme song, and the show’s soundtrack, featuring everyone from Devo to Pink Floyd to Depeche Mode, became huge hits¹. It was puzzling how a pair of honest cops could afford Rolexes, Armani wardrobes, custom-built Ferraris, and a fleet of speedboats, but it didn’t matter: audiences loved that more than they ever loved 53 year-old William Shatner huffing and puffing in a patrolman’s uniform.

Riding the show’s popularity straight to the moon was Johnson, the breakaway star despite the fact that it was sold as a buddy drama with Thomas. Race undoubtedly played a significant role in that, but it was also simply because Thomas both lacked Johnson’s natural charisma, and did such things as compare himself to Mahatma Gandhi in interviews and wear a gold EGOT medallion, insisting that he would win all four awards within five years². Johnson, however, managed to combine dangerous sexiness with old-fashioned boyish charm, speaking often of his humble beginnings, born to teenage parents and raised in poverty. Though he was already in his mid-30s, Miami Vice was his big break, and his appeal crossed over to both middle-aged moms, and their teenage daughters³.

So, naturally he parlayed that success into a short-lived musical career.

One of these days, when I have ample free time, I plan to do a deep dive into the brief, inglorious trend of adult male TV stars of the 70s and 80s dipping their toes into the recording industry pool, whether they showed any discernible musical talent or not. Whether it was John Travolta, David Soul, or the less successful Scott Baio or John Schneider, album deals just used to be given out as perks, along with personal assistants and engraved coke spoons.

To be fair, Don Johnson’s attempt at music stardom was less embarrassing than his contemporaries, especially when compared to Baio singing the theme song to Joanie Loves Chachi as if he was being held at gunpoint, or Bruce Willis wailing on the harmonica as if the spirit of Muddy Waters himself personally selected him to possess. On the other hand, it still wasn’t very good either. The sensual charm he exhibited on Miami Vice was watered down for the adult contemporary music audience he was trying to appeal to, and though he was an adequate singer, it gave the whole thing a touching-but-clumsy “Dad takes a turn on the karaoke machine” feel.

“Heartbeat,” Johnson’s sole single, was a cover, initially recorded by both its co-writer Wendy Waldman and Helen Reddy back in 1982. Though both of those versions flopped, they fit in perfectly with the state of mainstream radio at the time, when Barry Manilow still ruled the airwaves. Lyrically the song reads like it was written in about ten minutes on a cocktail napkin, in dedication to someone the writer was maybe mildly interested in, but perfectly okay if things didn’t work out. The most passionate it gets is the line “Tell me what you feel now, we’ve got a heartbeat,” which could have also been heard on an episode of St. Elsewhere.

It wasn’t exactly “Sexual Healing,” which made it an odd choice for Johnson’s debut as a singer, especially considering he claimed in interviews that he intended his album to have a hard “modern” sound. Judging solely by the video, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s a lot more going on here than there actually is. There’s a lot of fist-pumping, a lot of grimacing, a lot of gesturing towards the heavens as if Johnson is demanding to know what kind of cruel God would allow a mortal man to fall so hopelessly in love.

Like a lot of music videos of the post-”Thriller” era, "Heartbeat” looks like it’s promoting clips from a movie that was never actually made. Half of it is performance footage of Johnson, wearing what looks like a black satin karate gi, some bored backup singers, and Dweezil Zappa, who just looks happy to be there. In the other, more cinematic half, Johnson plays a photojournalist documenting political protests and gang violence, and if you don’t blink you’ll catch a very young Giancarlo Esposito as one of the gang members (which is almost certainly the most interesting part of this thing).

While hard at work jumping over walls and avoiding explosions, Johnson is immediately entranced with a mysterious woman who might be either a revolutionary, or a model pretending to be a revolutionary, it’s not entirely clear. She disappears (literally: she fades away, as if suggesting that she might be a ghost), and Johnson, despite appearing to be in the middle of a war, becomes obsessed with finding her, even at one point enlisting the help of Late Night With David Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer, for some reason.

Does he find the mysterious woman? Well, I’m really not sure. The video ends with the same initial shot of her looking impassively into the camera, only this time superimposed over an exploding car, so maybe she did die, and that was her ghost. As previously mentioned, this is all very dramatic, far more dramatic than the tepid lyrics would have you believe. More like this song is looking for a heartbeat, am I right, folks?

Despite that, “Heartbeat” did become a genuine hit, charting as high as number 5 on the Billboard Top 100, and earning Johnson breathless write-ups as the next big thing in music in both the L.A. Times and Rolling Stone. And then…nothing happened. There were no further singles released from the album of the same name, and none at all from Johnson’s 1989 follow-up album, which failed to chart anywhere except Germany and Switzerland. The closest he would get to recreating his success with “Heartbeat” was “Till I Loved You,” a 1988 duet with then-girlfriend Barbra Streisand that seemed to be recorded solely to be played at wedding anniversary dinners, right when they’re bringing out the HAPPY 30th JANET & HARRY sheet cake.

But give Don Johnson credit, he knew when to quit, retiring his side gig after that second album flopped and sticking with just acting, enjoying a career renaissance over the past decade with memorable supporting roles in Knives Out and HBO’s Watchmen. He’s doing okay. He’s doing fine. 

Frankly, “Heartbeat” sounds a lot better when you compare it to Philip Michael Thomas’s own attempt at musical stardom. He may have beaten Johnson by putting out his debut album Living the Book of My Life a year earlier, but Johnson beat him in musical competence, natural talent, and, most crucially, not attempting a Jamaican accent. I don’t know that I remember that so much as I blocked it out, but either way, not every pop culture event of the past cries out for a reexamination.

1. In contrast, the punk rock episode of CHiPs ended with Erik Estrada singing a cover of Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.”

2. Reader, he did not. He did, however, eventually become the spokesman for America’s premier telephone psychic service, until he was replaced by Miss Cleo.

3. Indeed, Don Johnson’s sexiness was one of the few things my mother and I agreed on, though she was not impressed by my “Miami Mice” parody t-shirt.