I have to give the award to You Spin Me Round by Dead or Alive for the complete overload of 80s kitsch.
I must have been listening to less radio than I thought during the eighties.
Tears for Fears (Everybody Wants to Rule the World), Pet Shop Boys (West End Girls), Dire Straits (Sultans of Swing) would have been my nominations for quintessential eighties songs.
I wouldn’t know from videos. Music is something that comes in through my ears.
I opened this thread to suggest the same video.
Lots of things by Jim Steinman - here’s a good example: Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young from the (really lame) movie Streets of Fire.
It’s kind of a separate category, but Poison’s Talk Dirty to Me gets my vote for quintessential 80’s (fake) concert footage. Sparkles, lacy scarves, smoke, excessive instrument playing, singer practically making out with his bandmates, and hair, hair, hair.
I’m still laughing over this line.
That’s the first song I thought of.
But I’ll go with song number 2, also Duran Duran, “New Moon on Monday”. It has a “story” that makes no sense in context (pseudo-Nazis? The band as the French Resistance?), it has ridiculous hair, and lots of eyeliner.
Also, someone riding a horse through town. And fireworks.
Barring that, “Hungry Like the Wolf”, which appears to have been shot in a region that doesn’t have any wolves.
Really, Duran Duran have the eighties crazy video market sewn up.
Re-watching these videos makes me realize exactly why my parents looked at MTV like it was televising the apocalypse.
Those special effects aren’t very special. [/Beavis]
I’m laughing like a loon – I’d forgotten how horrible that video was.
I like how they advertise that they are on MOM Records. Yep, that sounds about right.
Simple Minds “Don’t You Forget About Me”.
Full-on eighties:
Conveniently, someone has already done a mix of the two ABC songs I was thinking of.
Bananarama probably has some good candidates as well.
And, of course, nothing says “WTF were we thinking?” then wondering why everyone Wang Chungs tonight.
Please.
StG, that song came on the radio this morning and I thought to myself, That is the most 80’s song ever. And that video, wow, I was laughing out of embarrassment just now.
I think there was a thread like this not too long ago – maybe Greatest 80’s song – and the consensus was Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me), which I pretty much agree with. But I’ll argue that it transcends the 80’s, so not the most Eightiesest.
Nothing says 80s like garbage-bag dresses.