Michael Bay's Transformers movies were hardly the first in the franchise to go over the top. In 1986, the animated film The Transformers: The Movie soundtracked an intense battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron with the gloriously ‘80s power ballad "The Touch," by Stan Bush. It's an absolutely ridiculous and impressively generic song that was designed solely for the purpose of getting it into a movie, according to Vulture. And for better or worse, it's turned up a few other places too, including in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights.

Over at Vulture, Abraham Riesman tracks the long history of Bush and "The Touch," from the song's creation to its modern remake. It's more information than you'd ever imagine wanting to know about a song off of a Transformers soundtrack, but it's all as strangely compelling as Bush's arena rock shouts.