Was the 1980's the decade where music underwent massive change?

[GoodOmens]

@Son_of_a_Rich

Did it have the auto- reverse (or whatever it was called) or did you have to take the cassette out and flip it over? My first player was a Sanyo, and it was built like a camera- all metal and pretty expensive for the time. It had a control for adjusting the playback speed as the batteries went dead.

Back in high school (so, early 90’s) I had a Walkman with an auto-reverse feature. And then I dropped it on the sidewalk, and it broke, but in a very interesting way. It would still auto-reverse, but it wouldn’t change the side of the cassette, which meant that it would play one side of the cassette backwards.

This came as quite a surprise, but it was actually kind of cool, because around this time bands had started intentionally putting in backwards messages in songs as a means of making fun of the whole “OMG SATAN!” morale panic. One album (I can’t remember who now) had a recipe for cornbread hidden backwards across several songs.

[pulykamell]

@Dr_Paprika

Musically, the 1950s were more revolutionary. I’d make the case hip hop and EDM started in the 80s (The Message by Grandmaster Flash; Kraftwerk started 1975 or so but picked up speed later). With Walkman, videos, synthesizer music and its antidotes – Jesus and Mary Chain, etc. you could make a strong case for the 1980s though not all genres were mainstream.

For me, the big popular music revolutions in the 21st century are, broadly, jazz, rock, and hip hop.

[Robot_Arm]

The '80s were the decade where music underwent massive change. And so were all the others.

[pulykamell]

@Robot_Arm

The '80s were the decade where music underwent massive change. And so were all the others.

Well, I really do believe some decades were bigger than others in terms of the amount of change and how much they influenced the music to follow.