America’s Youth Has Discovered Eddie Murphy’s 1985 Song ‘Party All The Time’

Eddie Murphy may be known to most young people as the star of The Adventures Of Pluto Nash guy whose parents get excited about when he’s hosting Saturday Night Live, but the actor has a lot of surprises in store for the youths of America. Including, it turns out, that the donkey from Shrek once recorded a jam.

Murphy, who most recently wowed critics in Netflix’s Dolemite Is My Name, has a long career that many teens growing up in the streaming era may not be aware of. But on Friday, Murphy became the latest in a trend online where young people discover that music made before Spotify was created was sometimes, occasionally, pretty good.

Specifically, this time it was Murphy’s hit “Party All The Time,” which was released in 1985 and produced by Rick James. The song is a surprisingly good example of a mainstream actor releasing a song. But it was enough to see Murphy’s name trend on social media as younger folks reacted to the revelation that the song not only exists, but is pretty good.

As some pointed out, the clues to Murphy’s musical skills have been elsewhere, too.

This was a very educational moment for a lot of us.

A lot of people, though, struggled with the news that this is, you know, news to people much younger than they are.

The lesson here is that time passes inexorably, and we’re all doomed to both a beginning and an end. Sometimes, though, people record bangers along the way.