Posted By Nicole on Feb 24, 2016 | 1 comment

Not to make you feel old… but today marks the 35th anniversary of Rick Springfield’s release of his fifth studio album- Working Class Dog, which included his biggest career hit Jessie’s Girl as the lead single.

In honor of the 35th anniversary of Springfield’s biggest hits and one of the defining songs of the 80s that still gets played continuously today, we’ve compiled ten surprising facts about Rick Springfield.

• He met the girl that inspired “Jessie’s Girl” during a stained glass class (how rock n’ roll), but her buzz-kill boyfriend’s name was actually Gary, not Jessie. Springfield made the name change since Gary is not nearly as melodic.

• In the 70s, Springfield voiced an animated version of himself for the cartoon “Mission:Magic!,” which Quentin Tarantino was reportedly a fan of.

• Springfield started acting on 80s soap opera classic General Hospital just as it began its “decade of dominance,” helping Springfield to reach a level of celebrity beyond his music career.

• When MTV launched on August 1, 1981, Jessie’s Girl was the number one song in the U.S. 

• He played a hilarious “twisted” version of himself on Season 3 of Showtime’s Californication

• An avid dog-lover, Working Class Dog’s album art is a picture of Springfield’s former dog; he had to fight the record company to make it happen, and a number of reverse album covers without the dog are in circulation.

• While Jessie’s Girl is Springfield’s most well-known song, he had 17 other Top 40 singles.

• Last year, he starred alongside Meryl Streep in the film Ricki and the Flash, for which he received generally positive reviews.

• He’s still making music. He recently released his 18th studio album, Rocket Science– which is rock-and-roll with some country elements.

• He’s also an accomplished author. His book Late, Late At Night was voted by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top 25 rock memoirs of all-time.