"Rainforest" (Paul Hardcastle)

In the age of satellite radio and apps like Shazam, where you can find out a song's title and who's performing it almost instantly, the phenomenon of what I call "Holy Grail songs" doesn't really exist anymore.  What I mean is, years ago, if you heard a song on the radio that you really liked, but the DJ didn't bother to announce the title of the record, you were kind of screwed if you wanted to go buy a copy of it.  Apart from swallowing your pride and humming its tune to a disinterested record store clerk, there just was no way to find out what something was called; you were forever left to search for that song.
Back in early 1985, my mom was driving me to a doctor's appointment, and this thumping, yet surprisingly melodic, freestyle instrumental came on the radio just as we were pulling into the parking lot of the office.  I wanted to keep listening, but we were running late, so I heard maybe four bars of the song before we had to turn it off.
I only heard it again once or twice after that.  But there was just something about its groove, which felt like an amalgam of Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" and Herbie Hancock's "Rockit," that stuck in my brain.  In fact, I searched for it for years on 80s music compilations and then online to no avail.  I even wrote and recorded a song inspired by it in 2006 for a music-savvy client's commercial, thinking that she might say, "Oh, Mike, that sounds like _____ by _____."  But, no.
It wasn't until 2013, when I was scrolling through the "Genius Recommendations" on iTunes, that I saw a track called "Rainforest" by Paul Hardcastle in my queue—suggested to me because I'd recently downloaded a number of old breakdancing songs from the early 80s.  And there it was: those synth bells and dreamy chords over that insistent electro-funk groove.  It whisked me right back to 1985 (for better or worse).
Reading a bit about British musician/producer Paul Hardcastle, it makes sense why I couldn't find the song all those years.  Although he's had a number of hits internationally (his biggest hit being a song called "19," which used a collage of documentary-style audio clips about the Vietnam War over a dance track), he seems to enjoy being out of the limelight, preferring to write, produce, and remix music under various pseudonyms (Jazzmasters, Beeps International, Def Boys).
He originally composed "Rainforest" as the theme to a 1984 BBC documentary about the British hip-hop/breakdancing scene (hence its freestyle/pop-and-lock kind of vibe).  Released as a single in the U.K. that same year, the song fared pretty well, but it really took off as a dance hit when it was released here in the U.S. in 1985.