# The music of the '70s vs. the music of the '80s **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 18, 2010, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115 "2010-07-18T12:04:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lobot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@Lobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobot)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/21 "2010-07-19T04:48:12Z")
I’m a child of the '80s. I’ll gladly listen to the pop of '80-'85 over most '70s pop, which is infested with terrible glurge. While the late '80s were pretty dire for pop as well, so many great albums were released in the decade overall that, on balance, the '80s wins: _Peter Gabriel_ (1980) _Zenyatta Mondatta_ (1980) - The Police _Remain in Light_ (1980) - Talking Heads _10…1_ (1982) - Midnight Oil _Hounds of Love_ (1985) - Kate Bush _Brothers in Arms_ (1985) - Dire Straits _Rain Dogs_ (1985) - Tom Waits _Graceland_ (1986) - Paul Simon _Sign ‘O’ the Times_ (1987) - Prince _Full Moon Fever_ (1989) - Tom Petty IMHO, both decades had great music and great, classic albums, but the '80s was less one-sided. In truth, I probably listen more to '70s rock than anything else, but really, it bears repeating: so much '70s pop was just terrible. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/22 "2010-07-19T05:24:33Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > It’s such a stigma that contemporary artists like Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga, Scissor Sisters, and who knows how many others are doing their damnedest to put '70s disco flavor into their new recordings. And _that_ is supposed to make me treat disco with newfound respect? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/23 "2010-07-19T05:41:58Z")
70’s is mostly schlock IMO. (I do have a sneaking fondness for some disco!) 80’s has the Police, Talking Heads, The Cure, Peter Gabriel, and Oingo Boingo, which band alone makes the decade awesome. I mean…Oingo Boingo! ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/24 "2010-07-19T05:59:02Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > And _that_ is supposed to make me treat disco with newfound respect? 😛 No, not at all… just pointing out that the stigma attached to disco exists only in _your_ mind. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/25 "2010-07-19T05:59:17Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > Oh hellz yeah, disco was _awesome_! > > “Everybody was dancing…_yeah_!” I thought everybody was kung-fu fighting! 😕 😛 ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/26 "2010-07-19T06:16:04Z")
The poll should include “Neither. Both decades were crap.” ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/27 "2010-07-19T06:31:04Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > It’s such a stigma that contemporary artists like Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga, Scissor Sisters, and who knows how many others are doing their damnedest to put '70s disco flavor into their new recordings. Shoot, most all dance music _since_ the '70s is more or less directly indebted to disco, if not literally disco itself under a new name. There were more great _different_ things happening musically in the '70s than in the '80s. Most '80s stuff I like relates to something I like from the '70s, but the reverse is not true. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2010, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/28 "2010-07-19T06:36:01Z")
It’s almost too close to choose. 60- the 90s had some incredible music. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/29 "2010-07-22T18:12:55Z")
I vote for the '80’s, largely because of the four P’s: Prince, the Police, the Pretenders, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. All are awesome acts. Although I wouldn’t call them a great band, I love the Go-Go’s. Bananarama and the Bangles weren’t bad either. Springsteen put out some pretty good stuff. Michael Jackson’s _Thriller_ is the most influential album of the last 30 years. The '80’s also had a lot of great one-hit wonders like Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science,” the Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Stars,” and Big Country’s “In a Big Country.” It was the decade of MTV, also. Those videos changed the entire music industry. As for the '70’s, the period 1970-1972 is part of what people think of as Sixties music (my own personal definition is the period the Sixties is the span from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Stairway to Heaven”). After 1972, there were some good acts – Steely Dan, the Boss, outlaw country, Jackson Browne – but there was way too much shit played on the radio. “Seasons in the Sun,” “Afternoon Delight,” “Muskrat Love,” etc. I wish I coud selectively target my brain cells with brandy so I could expunge the memory of that shite. Disco and punk both sucked canal water. ---
**Author:** ![MTCicero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a4c791/32.png) [@MTCicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MTCicero)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/30 "2010-07-22T19:02:15Z")
> [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](#): > > Disco and **punk** both sucked canal water. You must detest early Police recordings then, correct? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/31 "2010-07-22T19:04:47Z")
No. MtCicero, I never considered the Police to be a punk band. ---
**Author:** ![MTCicero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a4c791/32.png) [@MTCicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MTCicero)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/32 "2010-07-22T19:13:53Z")
[They sound quite punk-ish to my ears here.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41ZNiIDE8yc) Also, I’ve read (though I have no cite) before that at the beginning of their career, in order to get gigs, they had to dumb down their instrumental prowess, because punk rock was all the rage then, especially in England. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/33 "2010-07-22T19:35:21Z")
On production values alone, the '70s in a landslide for me. I like a lot of stuff from the 80s, but I cannot stand the fake handclap/reverby drums/artificial-sounding effects that were so common then. Throw in the foofy hair and retarded videos and it’s a lead pipe cinch. ---
**Author:** ![Mllz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Mllz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mllz)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/34 "2010-07-22T19:58:13Z")
70’s for me. Close call, but ultimately most of my favorite music coming out of the 80’s was rooted thoroughly in either the punk/post-punk stuff of the late 70’s or the country rock of the early 70’s. Another vote against 80’s production values, too. > [@dangermom](#): > > 80’s has the Police, Talking Heads, The Cure, Peter Gabriel, and Oingo Boingo, which band alone makes the decade awesome. I mean…Oingo Boingo! Ah, but to counter that: the 70’s had… the Police, Talking Heads, The Cure, Peter Gabriel, and Oingo Boingo! > [@panache45](#): > > The poll should include “Neither. Both decades were crap.” To be sure, the 60’s and 90’s have it all over both decades in both style and execution! ---
**Author:** ![Lobot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@Lobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobot)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/35 "2010-07-22T21:27:13Z")
> [@Mllz](#): > > To be sure, the 60’s and 90’s have it all over both decades in both style and execution! Wait, the '90s beat the '70s? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/36 "2010-07-22T21:42:45Z")
The 80’s was my coming of age wheelhouse, but I did not listen to much of what was popular at the time. I was into the hard rock and metal of the era. Not the cheesy hair bands, but stuff like Maiden, Priest, Rush, AC/DC, Ozzy, Sabbath, and towards the end of the 80’s, the advent of thrash. I also got into the neoclassical shred guitar genre for a few years. I have warm memories of the music of the 80’s, but very little of it was on MTV (except for Headbanger’s Ball). I love good, 70’s guitar rock too – Clapton, Zep, Ozzy era Sabbath, Skynnard, Queen. It was kind of the glory years for rock in a lot of ways, but don’t think the 70’s didn’t have its share of utter crap, and high charting crap at that. It wasn’t Led Zeppelin topping the Billboard top 100, it was bilge like Debbie Boone and the Partridge Family. The worst of the 70’s was every bit as wretched as the 80’s, 90’s or any other decade. I can still remember “You Light Up My Life,” and “Afternoon Delight” dominating the airwaves. ---
**Author:** ![woodstockbirdybird](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/woodstockbirdybird/32/7905_2.png) [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/37 "2010-07-22T21:53:23Z")
'80s. R.E.M., Husker Du, The Replacements, Prince (his 2 70s albums were merely OK), The Housemartins, New Order, The Pogues, The Smiths, Violent Femmes, Sonic Youth, Billy Bragg, The Feelies, The Go-Betweens, Robyn Hitchcock, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Pixies, The Primitives, U2 (before they sucked), The Wedding Present, X, not to mention the first albums of '90s-identified artists like Pavement, Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine… ETA: Also when some '70s acts did (arguably) their best work: Rush, Talking Heads, The Police, The Pretenders, The Cure, Peter Gabriel… ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/38 "2010-07-22T22:01:34Z")
John Denver was an icon of 70s music. I hereby vote for the 1970s. ---
**Author:** ![palindromemordnilap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/db5fbb/32.png) [@palindromemordnilap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/palindromemordnilap)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/39 "2010-07-22T22:26:15Z")
The 1970s had some truly awful hits, like “Seasons in the Sun” and “Billy Don’t Be a Hero”, as well as the abomination that was the disco craze. But the bad stuff doesn’t matter–the timeless music now known as classic rock really blossomed in the 1970s. Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen, Jethro Tull, Rush, Supertramp, Yes, Genesis and a slew of other inventive and dare-I-say progressive bands all did their best work in the '70s. A lot of great straight-up rock and roll too–Tom Petty, Boston, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles and a slew of others. And acoustic rock froms the likes of Cat Stevens and James Taylor was in its heyday. A lot of these bands broke up or just got bad in the late 70s or early 80s. A few new or carryover bands put out good work–The Cars, Dire Straits, the Police, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, U2, Elvis Costello–but the overall trend of the '80s was dance-oriented music, computerized drums, rap and miscellaneous dreck. If I put together a list of 100 best albums, at least half of them were released between 1970 and 1979, and a bunch more would be early '80s which I consider part of the '70s era (to be fair, “Let It Be,” early Zeppelin and some other great albums from the '70s should really be considered 1960s music holdovers.) Maybe 6 or 8 albums from the 1980s would make the list (definitely “So” and “Joshua Tree,” maybe a couple of Kate Bush and Police albums.) 1970s, no contest. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115/40 "2010-07-22T23:48:12Z")
So much of the 80’s stuff percolated under the radar (in the US at least); American rock radio was a complete wasteland by then. This makes any comparisons where I can point at this or that 80’s artist as a point of reference problematic (as few may have ever heard them anywhere). I’m partial to the UK postpunk/psychedelic scene: Echo & the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes (+ Julian Cope’s solo albums), The Sound, Cabaret Voltaire, Comsat Angels, and allies in other countries like Australia’s The Church. I might be more partial to the 70’s stuff if most of it wasn’t so frikkin’ overplayed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-of-the-70s-vs-the-music-of-the-80s/547115.md?page=3)