Theres a show on VH1 now called ‘one hit wonders’. The #8 song has taken me right back to my visceral hate of nearly all ‘music’ released in the 80’s.
AHA: Take on me.
Right along with the dipshit video of the girl jumping into the piece of paper and dancing with the band.
That song, the sound of it, makes me wretch… as it seemed like every song released in that decade sounded just like it.
Thanks, VH1.
I agree, the hell with them. The way people have become nostalgia-obsessed, something doesn’t have to be good and it hardly even has to be over before it becomes trendy/retro/ironic again.
Hear, hear. The 1980s were when I lost interest in current music, because what was current then was so abysmally bad. And I’m a musician! New stuff on the radio was my raison d’etre! After a certain point, I had to turn it off. And a lot of stuff happened to me in the '80s that even brain bleach won’t erase. The whole decade sucked harder than the vacuum of outer space.
None of the really good stuff in the 80s was even on mainstream radio. YMMV.
OH GOD.
Soft Sell: Tainted Love, 1981
WHY AM I NOT TURNING THE FUCKING CHANNELL I DONT KNOW MATT WHY ARENT YOU OH FUCK IM DYING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Oh screw you.
By which I mean, I agree entirerly.
By which I mean, I agree with pitting the music you seem to be pittingbut for fuck sake there was a hell of a lot more going on in the eighties than what VH1 is going to tell you about.
Like…oh…Husker Du? The Replacements? Sonic Youth? The Meat Puppets? Public Image? Lydia Lunch? The Fall? The Butthole Surfers? The Dead Kennedys? The Pixies?
Or in the words of one of the best bands of the '80’s (that would be X):
the facts we hate youll never hear us i hear the radio its finally gonna play new music you know the british invasion but what about the minutemen fleasheaters doa big boys and the black flag will the last american bands to get played on the radio please bring the flag?
Just off the top of my head.
Music was only crap if you only ate the crap they handed to you.
I’ll go against you and defend the 80s. As ggurl says, the best stuff wasn’t on the radio. But even if you just look at what was on the charts, its beats the hell out of the pap that occupies the top 40 today. Pop music today is at an all-time low. I’d hope that wasn’t a contentious statement… to everyone over the age of, say, 15 years…?
Ah but I didn’t eat it.
Instead, I chose to starve.
A pox on you. I love 80s music, and will now, just to spurn you all, play Vice City.
Then you missed a lot 
. My sympathies.
I ::insert long steam of obscenties hear::ing loved the 80’s.
Besides, I can not think of any 90’s pop song that has any redeeming quality what-so-ever.
I like Aha’s “Take on Me”. Blow me.
Thats EXACTLY what someone who likes that song would request.
Interesting. The 80s was when I parted company with rock/pop music. I kind of assumed we’d drifted apart; I never realized the music itself was offically bad.
Never even heard of most of the groups mentioned so far in this thread.
I spent the 80s listening to jazz … Pat Metheny, Miles Davis, Paul Winter, Oregon; a lot of the “New Age” stuff before it was called that & before it turned to pap. And of course, *none *of it was on the radio …
If you hate stupid bullshit crappy music why are you watching VH1?
. . . not that there’s anything wrong with that.
(BTW, matt . . . welcome to the SDMB and all. Be advised that most folks 'round these parts tend to prefer insults that don’t involve calling someone a fag. MattMcL hires trained killers, and Gobear is a trained killer. Just FYI.)
Now then . . . the 1980s.
I loved Britpop and Nuuave. Still do. Blondie, the Police, D’Mode, Naked Truth, Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Scritti Politti, the Furs, the Communards, Pet Shop Boys, ABC, Flock of Seagulls, Yaz, Erasure . . . hell, that’s just what I have in my car for og’s sake.
But I equally loved and love the off-radio stuff. PiL, Kennedys, the Damned, Skinny Puppy, Bauhaus, This Mortal Coil, Thrill Kill Kult, KMFDM, Pixies, the 'Mats, Black Flag, Devo, Wall of Voodoo, They Might Be Giants, Elvis Costello, Art of Noise, Siouxsie (whom I still hope to sleep with some day), Killing Joke, Camper Van Beethoven, REM, Circle Jerks, The The, Suicidal Tendencies, Misfits, Ministry (and Revolting Cocks), the Dead Milkmen, the motherfucking Ramones . . .
Damn, there was a lot of great fucking music in the 1980s, even discounting every single radio track ever.
That’s not even counting RunDMC, the Beasties, Metallica, Van Halen, Ozzy, NWA, INXS, Public Enemy, Talking Heads, Prince, U2, Dire Straits . . .
With the exception of Van Halen, that looks like my Winamp playlist. All of it.
…Iron Maiden, Celtic Frost, Helloween, Bathory, Slayer…
I’m with betenoir and andros, even if I don’t agree with all the selections. Don’t pit 80’s music. Pit yourself for listening to crap and not bothering to find the tasty stuff.
It was the decade of Fear, Thomas Dolby, Foetus, The Crucifucks, Los Lobos, Timbuk 3, Captain Beefheart, The Church, Nanci Griffith, The Residents, Echo & the Bunnymen, Tracy Chapman, Siouxie and the Banshees, Tom Tom Club, English Beat, Big Country, Oingo Boingo, and countless other kick-ass bands in addition to the ones already mentioned.
As Pink said, “Bugger off, you bloody sod.”