The 1980s File Feature
Remo's Theme (What If)
Remo's Theme (What If): Tommy Shaw Steps Outside the BandAutumn of 1985 had a particular quality in American pop culture: the blockbuster logic of the summer…
01 The Story
Remo's Theme (What If): Tommy Shaw Steps Outside the Band
Autumn of 1985 had a particular quality in American pop culture: the blockbuster logic of the summer was fading, the Christmas season had not yet cranked up, and there was a brief, open window in which something unexpected could find its way onto the radio. It was into this transitional moment that Tommy Shaw brought a soundtrack contribution that sat somewhat outside the usual arc of his career, a piece of music tied to one of the stranger cinematic productions of that year.
A Guitarist Taking His Moment
Tommy Shaw had spent the better part of a decade as the lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist of Styx, contributing some of the band's most commercially successful material. Songs he wrote or co-wrote had driven Styx through their peak arena rock years, and his melodic guitar work was central to the band's sound. By 1984, however, Styx had effectively disbanded amid the tensions that had accompanied the Kilroy Was Here tour. Shaw used the interlude to establish a solo identity, releasing his debut album Girls with Guns in 1984, which produced a modest chart success with the title track. Remo's Theme (What If) arrived as part of the soundtrack to the film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, an action-adventure production based on the long-running The Destroyer pulp novel series.
Soundtrack Work as Creative Space
Film soundtrack contributions in the mid-1980s occupied a peculiar niche in the pop economy. The enormous success of Footloose, the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, and the Top Gun album had transformed the movie tie-in single into one of the most reliable vehicles for radio exposure. Labels and artists were eager to participate; a film with decent promotional backing could give a song access to an audience that standard album promotion could not always reach. Shaw's association with Remo Williams was logical: the film needed a propulsive, guitar-driven theme that could work both inside the movie and on rock radio. The resulting track combines his facility with melodic hard rock and the broader production palette of the era, synthesizers and drums mixed with the guitar work that was his natural language.
The Chart Arithmetic
The Billboard Hot 100 data for Remo's Theme (What If) tells the story of a record that found a solid but limited audience. Debuting at number 90 on October 5, 1985, it climbed methodically through its first three weeks, reaching its peak position of number 81 on October 19, 1985. The single then held that position for a second week before sliding back to 92 and departing after five weeks total on the chart. The peak position and duration suggest the kind of performance typical for a well-crafted mid-decade rock soundtrack single: enough radio support to register nationally, not enough crossover appeal to crack the higher reaches of the Hot 100.
The Film's Fate and the Song's Footprint
The film itself, despite solid production values and a charming performance from Fred Ward in the lead role, did not perform well enough at the box office to launch the franchise its producers had envisioned. The planned sequel never materialized, which left the soundtrack in the position of being attached to a cultural property that quickly faded from conversation. Shaw's contribution was not without merit, but its chart life was necessarily tied to the film's promotional window, and once that window closed, the single's moment had passed.
A Professional's Side Project
What Remo's Theme (What If) reveals, in retrospect, is Shaw's range as a working musician: the ability to take a brief, a sonic context supplied by someone else's creative project, and produce something that functions both within that context and as a standalone piece of mid-1980s rock radio fare. The song holds up as a period piece with genuine energy. Put it on and feel the specific tempo and texture of fall 1985 rock radio, the last season before the decade's pop landscape shifted decisively again.
“Remo's Theme (What If)” — Tommy Shaw's singular moment on the 1980s charts.
02 Song Meaning
Remo's Theme (What If): Action, Identity, and the Hypothetical Life
Soundtrack songs occupy a special territory in the emotional landscape of pop music. They exist at the intersection of two narrative frames: the story told in the film and the feeling the song produces on its own, without the images. Remo's Theme (What If) works in both registers, and the lyric's central question is one that extends well beyond the specific fictional character it was written to accompany.
The "What If" as Existential Engine
The subtitle of the song is doing significant work. "What if" is the grammatical form of hypothesis, of imagined alternatives, and in the context of the film it gestures toward the central premise of the story: an ordinary man is stripped of his old identity and rebuilt as something he never expected to become. The question in the title is both specific to the narrative and immediately recognizable as something larger. What if you could begin again? What if the life you have is not the only one available to you? These are questions that exist in everyone's interior monologue at certain moments, and a song that puts them at its center can travel well beyond the film's specific fictional occasion.
The Guitar as Confidence
Shaw's instrumental identity as a guitarist is embedded in the track's emotional message. The guitar work throughout communicates something that the lyrics alone cannot fully carry: a sense of propulsion, of someone moving forward with purpose rather than looking backward with regret. Hard rock guitar in the mid-1980s carried cultural associations with autonomy and decisive action, and those associations are deliberately activated here. The sound of the track is part of its meaning.
Action Heroes and Self-Reinvention
The 1980s were obsessed with a particular fantasy of self-transformation, and the action film genre was one of its primary vehicles. Characters in these films were frequently shown shedding their old selves and emerging as something harder, more capable, and more clearly purposeful. Remo's Theme taps into that fantasy without being naive about its costs. The "what if" at the center of the title acknowledges that reinvention is always a question, never a certainty; it is something considered and chosen, not simply given.
Beyond the Film's Frame
The song has survived its source material by carrying something portable in its lyric: the recognition that identity is not fixed, that the person you are today is partly the product of choices you made, which means the person you could become is still, in some measure, open. That idea resonates well beyond any single film or decade. Shaw understood that a good soundtrack song has to mean something after the movie has left the theater, and Remo's Theme (What If) earns that kind of extended life.
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