Kind of a wide-open question, really, answerable in so many ways. We'll start by stating something important: This was the era of Casey Kasem and Rick Dees, of massive record labels, lateral marketing and payola on a truly grand scale. The artificial rock stars pushed so hard upon the public ring out for me. Corey Hart's Sunglasses at Night.. Harold Faltermeyer's Axel F. Ray Parker Jr's Ghostbusters. Force-fed pop predestined to be huge whether we liked it or not. Fat, shitty basslines, preposterous lyrics, inoffensive pop bullshit. The countercultural explosions that took over anyway and outlasted the premanufactured crap. Duran Duran's Rio - the Roland Jupiter 8 and saturated vocals. Born in the USA by the boss - one of his hardest-rockin' tunes EVAR and it's a fuckin' synth anthem. Dire Straits want their MTV. How many toms are there in that drumset? The ascendancy of the 70s monsters, adapting and dominating the 80s landscape - Don Henley's Boys of Summer. Journey somehow having a game on the Atari and not being mocked into oblivion. David Gilmour turning Pink Floyd into a lounge act and still rocking. Entire new genres - Run DMC exposing rap to white kids. Ratt standing at the apex of hair metal (HOLY SHIT MILTON BERLE). Paul Hardcastle attempting to create techno with one hand tied behind his back. But fuck, the paranoia. Land of Confusion telling us we'd die in a fireball because our leaders were stupid puppets. Nena blaming helium. Sting hoping the Russians weren't that stupid. In the end, though, it was the age of the rock star, and the age of excess. The King of Pop at the absolute pinnacle of his game. Prince, not caring if Boy George called him "a dwarf dipped in a bucket of pubic hair." Madonna at the cusp of her 30-year reign. Which, really, gives us two choices: - retarded British excess or - retarded American excess. The 90s were inevitable, really - I mean, look at this shit.
My first thought was "We Are The World." Normally I'd write a big old music post on this question, but I think you said enough. Paul Hardcastle might be a little bit fringe but otherwise your whole song collection is a museum of awesome 80's ridiculousness. How long did it take you to think of this list?
I read it, sat back and did a mental slow clap. "Rock Lobster" is a song that while recorded in 1979 gets played at every 80's night. Watching people party down to it makes me yearn for sharia law.
the Hardcastle song is, best I can determine, "Patient Zero" for '90s techno. Consider: Industrial was off on its own thread and had been since the '70s; it evolved from Kraftwerk and Throbbing Gristle and hit the '80s in stride - Skinny Puppy's Cleanse, Fold, Manipulate actually tracked as an album and Front 242's Headhunter tracked as a single. But the industrial thread blitzed through Ministry and Front Line Assembly without hitting a popular nerve until Nine Inch Nails (which, for most people, is "Closer", which might as well be David Bowie, not "Head like a Hole". Nineteen, by way of comparison, has none of the latent anger of the Industrial scene. It has the requisite sampler abuse and paucity of content. It has no lyrics, effectively, yet isn't a grandiose byzantine construction like Axel F. And it tracked. It made it into the top 20 on Billboard, something that didn't happen again with this "genre" of music until M.A.R.R.S, which led directly to 2 Unlimited. Read the question before heading out of work at 1am. Rode 30 minutes home. Realized I'd misread it and was thinking of music VIDEOs, decided to post anyway, went to bed at 2. Probably 20 minutes. When you grow up in New Mexico in the '80s, you either listen to a lot of Country music or you wait slavishly for Casey Kasem every Sunday night. That's your culture. '80s nights are, however, a product of the coasts and necessarily revisionist. Songs that never made it anywhere become seminal simply because they're dance-able and the rights are available cheaply. Madonna tracked. I think there's an element of nostalgia from a "dance night" perspective that requires the band to be archaic; "it's '80s because we no longer listen to it." So you don't get your ZZ top. You don't get your Springsteen. You get your Depeche Mode, you get your Culture Club, you get your Dead or Alive, and you get, yes, Rock Lobster.Paul Hardcastle might be a little bit fringe but otherwise your whole song collection is a museum of awesome 80's ridiculousness.
How long did it take you to think of this list? I read it, sat back and did a mental slow clap.
"Rock Lobster" is a song that while recorded in 1979 gets played at every 80's night. Watching people party down to it makes me yearn for sharia law.
I don't think I ever heard Paul Hardcastle on the radio in the 80's, but it might be a symptom of Detroit popular radio. Newcleus - Jam On It, The Egyptian Lover - Egypt, Egypt and Afrika Bambaataa - Planet Rock all got played next to Ah Ha - Take on Me on the local pop radio stations. You don't get ZZtop or Springsteen on an 80's night because it isn't dancy. I don't think people stopped listening to Depeche Mode or B52's, hell I know they didn't, I hear my neighbors and my wife play that stuff somewhat frequently. My wife randomly has my Paul Hardcastle LP in a small window that shoots slight right onto coffee table dimming her macbooks screen.