I thought of this while listening to the new MGMT single. It was all 80’s synth pop. Some people loved it, some people hated - but however people felt it had mostly to do with the influence of 80’s music on the song.
So I’m starting to wonder how far this trend will go. Will MTV go back to mostly playing music videos? Will we see reruns of Family Ties ad nauseum? Will Wall Street make everyone want to be a stock broker again?Perms? Baggy sweaters? WHERE WILL THE MADNESS END?!?!
I won’t even mention that those kids aren’t old enough to remember much of anything about the 80’s.
When I was a teenager in the 90s, there was a resurgence in 70s fashion.
Supposedly when people hit their 30s and 40s, they want nostalgia for their childhood. So that creates a market demand for fashion and media that was popular 20-30 years ago. People who are bored and stressed by the responsibility of adulthood want childhood nostalgia. I’d wager the rise of the Nintendo classic, etc. is also tied to this since the NES was popular about 30 years ago.
Maybe that is what is happening. So in that case, maybe we can expect season 3 of the Chappelle show sometime around 2030.
The 80s music that has stood the test of time almost never sounds like the 80s. They are timeless, at least so far, and could fit in the modern era. Perhaps that’s because modern music hasn’t changed much, and the 80s style has maintained its presence without trying. Or maybe it’s because some songs just use fundamental principles that will never age.
I don’t think the synth styles of 80s music will ever make a true comeback except as deliberately nostalgic pieces like the soundtracks to Stranger Things or Ghosted*.
*An Adam Scott sitcom about supernatural investigators
Id say zero. Anyone who is old enough to even just barely remember the 80s is way too old to have any marketing or cultural influence on current or future trends.
As far as youth fashion, retro '80s looks have already come and gone. I work in academia, and roughly 5-10 years ago I was seeing a lot of students in skinny jeans, neon, and polo shirts with popped collars (sometimes layered polo shirts with multiple popped collars), but aside from the skinny jeans that’s mostly faded away.
What I’ve been seeing for the past two years is retro early '90s fashions: flannel shirts, choker necklaces, Doc Martens boots and Converse high tops, etc.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I noticed (80s trends from 5-10 years ago showing up, and now bleeding into early/mid 90s trends), but 80s nostalgia is at a fever pitch. We’ve got MacGyver, Fuller House, and Dynasty reboots or spin-offs, all based on 80s TV (although not set in the 80s, I think, though I haven’t watched any of them). You have the runaway success of Stranger Things, which very clearly is banking on 80s nostalgia for marketing. All that Star Wars stuff. I’m not much a fashion guy at all, but if you Google “1980s fashion revival,” there’s plenty of style and fashion magazine articles from this year and last saying the 80s are, indeed, back. Renewed interest in retrogaming, even going back as far as the Atari 2600. Plus even geopolitically, it feels like the 80s in certain ways, with a new Cold War and the first time since about 1990 that I really felt even the hint of worry about nuclear annihilation. I feel like we’re just dripping in 80s culture now.
I think 80s KIDS nostalgia is in style right now. People my age (30s) have kids and are willing to spend money on stuff we liked as a kid to share with our kids (well uh their kids. I don’t have any.)
80s kids weren’t listening to Duran Duran and wearing skinny ties, we were wearing ringer tees and playing our video games.
Full House, Ninja Turtles, My Little Pony, Ducktales, Star Wars, LEGO, Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo. My friends are hella enjoying all that stuff with their kids right now.
Retro gaming is huge. There are no fewer than three bars in the Greater Cleveland area that feature 80s arcade games and 80s themed drinks. Obviously not for the family, although one of them is somehow family oriented (it’s new, haven’t visited it yet).
And Stranger Things, for sure…I don’t know how popular it would be without the 80s kid culture.
In the early-'90s, I remember KROQ’s Rodney Bingenheimer doing a song called (IIRC) I Miss The '80s. Only heard it once, and I don’t remember much about it – even if the title is correct – other than Rodney singing 'I miss the ‘80s’, and something about going after teenaged girls.
Some of it does, and some of it doesn’t. I have to say that when one or another '80s New Wave song pops up on my iPod (Yes, I’m old.), I often think of how enjoyable it is. I also think that kids born in the '90s or later are missing out on some good music because it was before their time and it isn’t cool to listen to. (Of course they miss out on a lot of crap, too. )
That sounds more ‘Preppy’ than I remember. The '80s fashions I remember are skinny ties, and baggy suits with T-shirts. The fad seemed to be ‘well dressed’, but cooler than ‘Preppy’.
I miss the ‘casual chic’ fashions, the music that carried political messages and was still danceable, and the overall optimism in spite of Bad Things Happening that people seemed to have. (Not danceable, but my favourite protest song from the '80s is *The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum* by Fun Boy Three.)
Invislbe. Very un-influential in contemporary trends. Ask for senior discount at BK, where a “senior” is anyone who looks older than the countergirl’s mother (38).
What has FaceBook done recently to make its pages more relevant to your generation?
Completely the opposite. 80s kids are entering their prime years for both nostalgia and buying power. Marketers love that stuff.
I don’t think there’s any risk of 80s fashion coming back in style, but we’re going to be on the nostalgia train for a while. Stranger Things, as mentioned. Ready Player One, soon. 80’s synthpop, which I happen be listening to right this instant. Etc.