The obligatory “I’m surprised nobody’s thought of this” post: Opportunities by the Pet Shop Boys.
*I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks
Let’s make lots of money
You’ve got the brawn, I’ve got the brains
Let’s make lots of money
You can tell I’m educated, I studied at the Sorbonne
Doctored in mathematics, I could have been a don
I can program a computer, choose the perfect time
If you’ve got the inclination, I have got the crime*
Geeed, crime and Reagan-like optimism as themes: check.
Synth/New Wave-ish sound with some “dreaminess”: check.
Mostly forgotten band: check.
British: check.
Hair: check.
Green Bean and Lemur866 are right about what I think is Eighties-ish; it’s a song that screams “1980s” not out of nostalgic value or because it was written in the 1980s, but rather its style. A few people mention REM, but I dismiss them as Eighties-ish; REM tunes were in heavy rotation on crunchy adult album alternative stations like KBCO and KFOG from the mid-1990s to this day.
I just found it while searching my MP3 collection. This song was released twice, once in 1983 and again in 1989. It’s from a one hit wonder band, it’s full of dreamy synth, and although it’s a New Wave song, it’s actually more Goth than anything else.
Video Killed the Radio Star - by The Buggles
Computer Games - by Mi-Sex
(Together in) Electric Dreams - by Giorgio Moroder … and that guy from Human League.
In the 80s, we were *so *in love with these new and exciting things; computers and technology and - WOW! - so many new and exciting things. Sure, computers had been around for ages, but the 80s - well, in the 80s we were obsessed with how cool they were.
Of course for me, nothing has changed. I’m totally a product of my era.
Bryan Ferry - I’m lookin’ at you. You’re solely responsible for all that was crap in the 80’s. If you hadn’t inspired a bunch of kids my age (born '61) with the stylish Roxy Music, all of that new wave crap would never have existed. The noir-film, 40’s dandy look, the hair and the crooning singing style set to rock music. The art rock we never leaqrned to play (cuz face it, there were no Manzanera or Eno available) so we had to play bubblegum pop, cover it with Yamaha DX-7 synths and Fairlight sampling, and pose as if we really had our act together. Which, of course, we didn’t.
For me, the early 80’s had a lot to do with Trevor Horn. I’m surprised no one’s menmtioned ABC, when you brought up FgtH. Or Art of Noise.
As I was working as a D.J. most of the 80’s (in clubs and in radio), I’m one of those responsible for duistributing the ferry-esque crap to the innocent youth. With this, I submit the following quintessential 80’s songs:
ABC - The Look of Love Art of Noise - Close to the Edit (for its infernal use of sampling) Yes - Owner of a lonely heart FgtH - Relax
**Grace Jones ** - Slave to the rythm
Runner ups, and not connected to Trevor Horn:
Malcolm McLaren - Buffalo Gals Kylie Minogue - I should be so lucky (though it really is a 60’s type song - but Stock-Aitken-Waterman polluted all the late 80’s)
**Prince ** - Purple Rain (or Little Red Corvette or 1999 - I still love his old stuff, but doesn’t the movie and music just scream 80’s)
**Pet Shop Boys ** - West End Girls Wham! - Young Guns
I don’t think he’s been mentioned, but as The Gaspode is mentioning producers - we have to make the early 80s the domain of Vince Clarke.
Let’s check out his CV…
[ul]
[li]early Depeche Mode[/li][li]Yaz[/li][li]Erasure[/li][li]generally naff fashion sense[/li][li]Nintendo-sounding arrangements (check out the bridge in “Just Can’t Get Enough”)[/li][li]Relatively quiet career post-decade[/li][/ul]
Hm. I was pretty embroiled in the music scene in the eighties too–record store, some club DJing–and I’m not sure I buy the universal Bryan Ferry theory. He had his influence, but I don’t see him as behind the whole thing; I see him as coming in a little later and definitely coloring one branch of it.
Gary Neuman was more a godfather of synthpop that Ferry, if you ax me. And therefore Bowie, who while not electronic, was a big influence of Neuman otherwise. But then there’s a big overlap between the universes of Bowie and Ferry. So who knows.
Also, “Video Killed the Radio Star” keeps getting mentioned. But it really was NOT a big hit in its day. It accumulated much more retroactive fame over the years as a bit of MTV trivia, but it was not a very well known song back in the day. Cuz I was all about the Buggles, but I rarely ran into anyone else who knew them. Totally anecdotal, but still.
Just had a jaw-drop moment, when I realized that–unless I missed it–nobody in this entire thread has mentioned “True” by Spandau Ballet. If any band screams '80s…
I think perhaps Gaspode’s reference to Bryan Ferry jogged my memory–there are certain stylistic similiarities between Ferry and the guys in Spandau.
lissener:
L’Oreal (1) + Bryan Ferry (2) + backlash for Punk(3) + cheaper polyphonic synths + late 70’s / early 80’s zeitgeist (4) + thin white duke (5) + gay fashion becoming mainstream (6) + end of disco fad (7) = new wave.
(1) Hair gel. It was something new and grew from punk (we used shaving cream).
(2) Who else are you gonna blame for tux shirt, dinner jacket and leather pants? Also, listen to the voice of Midge Ure, Steve Strange, Jim Kerr and Martin Fry and tell me if they’re not trying to emulate Ferry more than Bowie.
(3) Punk was new and exciting, but not something you’d wanna play in a disco /club. See (7)
(4) Village People recorded an awful song in '79: Ready for the 80’s*. The change to a new decade was a pretty big deal. We were gonna leave the dreary, sepia colored, crazy leftist, organic earth shoe 70’s behind and have some fun, dammit.
(5) Bowie casts a long shadow, but the TWD era, which culminated with Heroes only produced one album. DB did so much more and many people were really confused with Bowie after Young Americans (disco?) and even more so with Heroes.
(6) It took me more than 15 years to realize that the fashion ‘all the young dudes’ was sporting during the era really had a foundation in the gay community. This might be the first instance of metro-sexuality. Suddenly it was ok for men to groom and care about fashion.
(7) Disco was despised from the start, maybe because so many jumped on the bandwagon and discofied themselves (Stones, Kiss), and the market got saturated, even for the fans, in about two years.
Another thing that was very much 80’s sound, reversed gated drums (is it called that in English?).
Ooh, five songs to encapsulate the 80’s? A challenge, indeed. Okay, my five:
Simple Minds - (Don’t You) Forget About Me
Michael Jackson - Thriller (that of course could be a three-way-tie between Thriller, Billie Jean and Beat It)
Prince - Purple Rain
Madonna - Like A Virgin
Flock of Seagulls - I Ran
the simple minds song gets thrown out because it’s almost TOO easy. i think a big part of its eightiesish-ness (yes, it’s MY word now, dammit) is because it was in the breakfast club. remove the breakfast club, and i think you also remove that song as well…at the very least, you dethrone it.
madonna was so strong into the 90s, though. that song may have been pretty 80s, but she certainly wasn’t. also, if you point at madonna as being 80s, you must also turn the finger at cindi lauper. i’m not prepared to make that leap, so i choose to exclude it.
prince goes in…somewhere. i’m not sure what song. that’s the question that irks me. “electric avenue” really screams 80s to me. it’s hard to discount the power of “when doves cry” mostly of how influential it is and how many times it’s been remade in various forms.
as far as michael jackson is concerned, it’s GOT to be thriller. that song is impossible to separate from the video, more than ANY other song ever. any list without michael in it just doesn’t feel complete. (by the way, was “don’t stop til you get enough” in '79?)
Yeah, no, I know all that. Just, having been there (not that you weren’t also)–that was my musical time, man; I was obsessed with music, day and night, from about 1978 through, well, maybe started to notice other things around 1997,98–my gut is that Bowie was just so much more present in the musical zeitgeist. His flavor permeated. But yeah, I don’t got no math to back it up, just that I smelled more Bowie in the New Wave air than Ferry/Roxy, and that still feels more right to me. I just don’t feel Ferry as that looming a presense. Could definitely be wrong though, and then there’s the unanswerable question regarding the cross-pollination between Ferry and Bowie–and Iggy and Neuman and all that.
Forever Young by Alphagene is a totally 80s song for me. In my grade 10 yearbook about 50% of the graduating class had some portion of that song quoted in their blurby (and there were about 1,000 in the graduating class).
As is just about anything by:
New Order
Depeche Mode
The Smiths
The The
The Cure
Morrisey
etc, etc.
Escape was an 80s song? I always thought it was a 70s staple.
Can’t name just one song or just one category…but since it’s the 80s, I’m limiting myself to songs I would have seen on MTV, and to acts primarily known for their 80s output. Note: “Representative” does not necessarily equal my favorite.
Representative 80s New Wave Crooning
*Spandau Ballet: True
*ABC: Poison Arrow
*Ultravox: Reap the Wild Wind
Representative 80s Pop Metal
*Def Leppard: Rock of Ages
*Motley Crue: Girls, Girls, Girls
*Ratt: Round and Round
Representative 80s Overblown Arena Rock
*REO Speedwagon: Keep on Loving You
*Loverboy: Working for the Weekend (Real surprised that no one’s mentioned this as it just screams 80s. Everyone still have their headbands?)
*Saga: On the Loose
Covers, 80s Style:
*Soft Cell: Tainted Love (Took the innocuous original and made it sound creepy and twisted)
*After the Fire: Der Komissar (What’s more 80s than a remake of an 80s song?)
*Bow Wow Wow: I Want Candy
Songs that Could Only Have Been Hits in the 80s
*Nena: 99 Luftballoons
*Rockwell: Somebody’s Watching Me
*Come on Eileen: Dexy’s Midnight Runners
Video Killed the Radio Star (Striking 80s video visuals)
Eurythmyics: Sweet Dreams
Duran Duran: Hungry Like the Wolf
Toni Basil: Micjy
After 3 pages, I can’t believe we’re still coming up with iconic 80’s songs. My wife and I were playing darts the other night, and she was in an 80’s mood (I rarely get them. I generally can’t stand to listen to the crap.) I popped on a tape (yes, tape) a friend of mine made for me years and years ago, and the first song on it instantly sent me back into a 1980’s fugue state. It occurred to me that this song was so 80’s it actually made my hair hurt.
“Forever Live and Die” - Orchestral Manoeoeoeoeoeoeuvres in the Dark.
