Listening to Brit boyband A1’s gawd-awful cover version of ‘Take On Me’ sent me screaming to the CD store in search of A-ha’s original. While I was there I picked up the Pet Shop Boys and Tears for Fears. Now I’m in an 80s loop (playing OMD ad nauseum, for f-sakes) and I love it!
I know I’m not alone. What’s your favourite 80s band?
Just one???
If I must: Japan.
But that would not be fair on U2, Talking Heads, Fischer Z, Simple Minds, Depeche Mode, China Crisis, Eurythmics, Pretenders and so many others…
I could listen to Modern English’s “I Melt With You” ad nauseum. I love that song. I still remember the first time I saw the movie “Valley Girl” and they had the Plimsoul’s “A Million Miles Away” song. They sound similar. I also remember listening to REM’s Life’s Rich Pageant album a whole bunch of times. Ah, those were the days.
Just one? Gah! You might as well ask me to eat a bowl of potato chips, because I can’t stop at one. 
[ul]
Culture Club
Duran Duran
Madonna (anything before 1990)
Janet Jackson
Prince and the Revolution
Van Halen
[/ul]
And it goes on…
Robin
And let’s not forget Alphaville, famous (?) for “Forever Young”, but authors of one of my all-time favorite epics, an intensely beautiful piece called “Lassie Come Home”.
ABC. The Human League. Flock of Seagulls.
But also, Billy Bragg, Jane Siberry, Michelle Shocked, and Suzanne Vega.
It was a great decade. But this one’s better.
I’m really a 70’s kinda gal, but I did get into the “big hair” era. Also, I was a disco lunatic. Well, the term “disco” wasn’t coined yet…but never mind…
I loved:
**38 Special
Twisted Sister
Van Halen** (sorta, but David Lee Roth kinda belonged by himself)
Eurythmics (go Annie Lennox, you red-headed VIXEN!)
**Survivor
Men Without Hats
DeVo
Cheap Trick **(I waaaaannnnt youuu to waaaant meeeeee…)
**Meat Loaf **(I tremble at the mere hint of his voice)
And an assortment of one hit wonders that made my endless evenings on the dance floor worth every stiletto step…
Ah, youth…too bad it’s wasted on the young. [insert wistful smiley here]
Since when does “80s band” mean “throwaway 80s pop”?
The greatest band of the 1980s, IMHO, was:
The Replacements.
For me, nobody else came close all decade; I still think Paul Westerberg is one of the greatest songwriters of the last 30 years.
Honourable mentions to REM (up to and including Document) and Hüsker Dü (hope those umlauts show up right)
Scorpions and Def Leppard kicked some serious butt in their heydays.
I believe both bands are still around, but I’ve not been particularly impressed with any of their offerings in the past 10-15 years or so. Love at First Sting and Hysteria were the apices[sup]*[/sup] of their respective careers, IMHO.
[sup]*[/sup]I so wanted to use the plural of “apex.” According to M-W, that’s one of the two correct forms.
Hey timchick,
Is your nick a replacements reference? Great album. Tim I mean.
Timchik said:
*The greatest band of the 1980s, IMHO, was:
The Replacements.
For me, nobody else came close all decade; I still think Paul Westerberg is one of the greatest songwriters of the last 30 years*
My opinion is:
The greatest band of the 1980s, IMHO, was:
XTC.
For me, nobody else came close all decade; I still think Andy Partridge is one of the greatest songwriters of the last 30 years
Damn straight. There was a lot of great stuff in the 80s beyond the poofy-hair-synth-pop groups. I mean, I like “Melt with You” as much as the next guy (after all, it was the first song I ever danced with my future wife when we were in college), but that kind of stuff can’t hold a candle to anything put out by the Replacements. They get my vote for best band of the 80s, with second place a tie between:
The Pogues
REM
The Primitives
U2
Husker Du
I knew then that I wasn’t as progressive as most folks, and I see from the earlier posts that I’m still not with it.
To this day, I rarely go a month without putting my Power Station CD in and air-guitaring around the house.
Hmm, let’s see what cd’s I brought to work this week - 30 years of music, a compilation cd with The Buggles, Lipps Inc., Squeeze, Soft Cell, and Animotion on it, for one, then there’s my Classic Rock of the 80’s cd (another compilation), and Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits cd (which I highly recommend, btw - I haven’t stopped playing it in the six months since I bought it). Yup, I guess I qualify for an 80’s music fan.
My fiance and I are looking for romantic 80’s love songs for our wedding. Anybody got any suggestions?
I guess the 80s lurve song must be True by Spandau Ballet. Last record at the disco … still a much requested dedication on radio stations everywhere
This much is tru-hu, this much is tru-hu-hu …
I do so love 80’s music…reminiscence of my misspent youth, ah. I still have a thing for Adam Ant; all my friends agree with me that he is one ssssexy mofo.
Nah, it’s a failure of imagination on my part when registering. My name actually is Tim, but “Timchik” is the diminutive/affectionate form that my (Russian) wife uses (along with Timochka, Timulya, etc.etc.)
but Tim is a great great album…
[sub]goes off humming “one foot in the door/the other one in the gutter…”[/sub]
Ooo. Love 80s music.
Favorite bands:
The Smiths
Ultravox
New Order
Wham! (Yes, I know.)
Erasure
Depeche Mode (All their best stuff came out during the 80s, or in 1990.)
Thomas Dolby
And, finally, the great god of goth, Peter Murphy.
With the caveat that “favorite” does not necessarily equal “best”:
Translator: They never quite fit in any of the convenient categories of 80s bands, though a decade before, in a less fragmented time, they might have been superstars. They weren’t pop-ish enough for the power pop crowd, didn’t go in for metal noise, hair and clothes, and while they had tendencies that way weren’t as self-consciously arty as the Athens bands. The drifted more toward neo-psychedelia as the decade wore on, but never quite fit with the L.A. neo-psych bunch either. They were just what they were: a tight, solid rock band with a couple of decent songwriters. None of their albums were uniformly great, though all of them had several excellent songs and fine performances. I think I liked them so much because they sounded a lot like I’d have wanted to sound if I’d ever seriously pursued playing.
Honorable mention in the “favorites” category: The Three O’Clock, Dream Syndicate, The Raybeats, The Connells, Rain Parade, The dBs, Love Tractor, Felt, and (what the hell) The Stray Cats.
As for the “greatest” band of the 80s, you’d almost have to go with R.E.M., with XTC coming in a close second and the Replacements a solid third (no disrespect intended to earlier opinions). R.E.M.'s popular success in the mid- to late-80s marked the first time in almost twenty years (since the heyday of the Beatles and Stones) that rock critics and the mass of the radio-listening, record-buying public found so much to agree on.
I was living first in Denver and later in SoCal in the early '80’s, and still find myself listening to a lot of what I heard on alternative radio back then. Just can’t seem to shake the memories of tooling up 101 on a Friday evening with “Walking in LA” or “Mexican Radio” blasting from all four mighty 3-inch speakers.
I’d probably reorder rackensack’s list of the best to XTC, Replacements and then REM, but, like, whatever.
Here are a few more '80’s faves that haven’t been mentioned yet:
Missing Persons, Spring Session M
Divinyls, What a Life!
Wall of Voodoo, Call of the West
The Specials, The Specials
Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues
Although i wasn’t old enough to appriciate most of the bands in the 80’s…i still like quite a few:
Depeche Mode
New Order
The Cure
Front 242
Information Society
Kraftwerk
Billy Idol
Skinny Puppy
Einsturzende Neubauten
Human League
Swans