The 80s brought me My Bloody Valentine and the Pixies–that’s almost enough to solidify it as my favorite decade just based on that alone. Plus hip-hop (particularly De La Soul, The Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy.) And thrash metal. Really hard to get any better than this–given my personal tastes, and I’m not going to get into any argument about objectivity in something as subjective as art-- although if I had to narrow down a particular 10-year period of music that is my sweet spot, it would be about 1977-1986, give or take a year on either side.
I love Wall of Voodoo. Saw them at Spit. Very strange band.
Talking heads and Cars: I saw both of them at the paradise. Great 70s music.
I’ve seen Gabriel. a little histrionic. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to genesis. I prefer the 70s tunes.
Saw the police at the same venue.
I was at the show were they recorded the B-side of the second U2 single, at the paradise too.
I got no problems with Kate Bush or whoever. I love the Wipers, and the Mats. I’m trying to get at the overview. not anecdotally. Nobody has to get upset.
If you dig the 80s great but you can’t be protected from what a lot of people saw in it. How could that be a shock. it was MTV era cheesy. I can’t see why have a thread where you don’t want to hear the OP discussed?
Oh Yeah: The Stone Roses 1st LP. !!
Oh, good. So you’re not completely nuts. 
You know the context is that I’m responding to ones persons post. I’m not yelling at you.
Hey i’m open to ideas. I only today discovered that Ariana Grande is both talented and attractive. (Via her SNL celebrity impressions…and her being 22 now and all.) I doubt I’ll ever like a song by her, but I can’t deny she does a great Jennifer Lawrence impression.
(editing and bolding mine)
And with that, I’m pretty much done talking with you on the subject.
The point is: why yell at anybody?
The OP asked a question and we have been discussing good music from the 80’s. If you have specific opinions - Stone Roses: yay!! - let’s hear them. And we can discuss examples of 80’s music that we don’t like without coming across as dismissive.
C’mon man. I’m discussing the OP to the letter. Isn’t this a problem with the OP that you’re having and not me?
You only want to hear good thoughts? Why? That’s not the OP. Everybody doesn’t get a medal. This is rock criticism here. I was answering a specific poster. EOS.
No, its you. Your snarky tone to legitimate discussion points (“stay with me Blofeld” or whatever you wrote), your claim that the 80s is somehow “more posey” and MTV’s influence made things worse, or that one can walk past Hip Hop and not miss anything.
You “pronounce” with a dismissive tone and are surprised when folks don’t want to talk. How is that “discussing the OP to the letter.”
I will say it again: you have some interesting points of view that would be fun to discuss. But not with someone who acts like a jerk.
I just heard that they are on the verge of releasing their 3rd album…
Let’s get back to the OP and end the squabbling, you two. It’s starting to get heated.
I’m OK with saying my piece, and letting others say theirs, if that’s your issue. I am not surprised, or disappointed if someone doesn’t want to discuss. You can make your case for or against any aspect of 80s music. But there is no case against me contributing. That’s outside the OP.
Look at the OP. It it asking for someone to have an opinion. And I am in agreement with it. You are the contrarian. Nobody else wants to do it, I will. OP doesn’t say “who do we all like.” I think you are taking this personally in a way that I don’t intend.
MTV had no influence on musicians posing? How can that even be a discussion? How is that not at the heart of the 80s music industry? What?
I made a thoughtful question of this religious assertion about hiphop that is constantly stated here. Totally valid to do here. I lived with the 80s. I suffered with it. I can't have an opinion? That's what the thread is. You don't have to converse. But it's not rational to be upset about one voice. Can't you just move on?Yep, sorry.
drad dog, enjoy the thread. Of course MTV influenced posing - that is an interesting discussion. Madonna did an amazing job exploiting MTV as a tool and made some fun, great music, too.
As for hip hop - if you don’t acknowledge the profound influence hip hop had on music in the 80’s, I don’t know where to start. You are welcome to say that you don’t like it, but to say it can be disregarded as an influence makes no sense.
I still think a discussion of the influence of hip hop on modern music would make a good thread of its own but… Yeah. There seems to be a bit of a lack of objectivity in this thread that gets hand waved away with “art is subjective”. It’s not. Taste is subjective, but art criticism or analysis of any type should really strive for objectivity.
I hate My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. That doesn’t stop me from being able to appreciate the things they did well or the importance of their music. Just because I don’t like them I’m not going to say that they made no contribution because their shadow is huge and you can’t understand how we got to music today without them in the conversation.
Especially when you look at how, yes, MTV evolved over the 80’s going from gasp including Michael Jackson in heavy rotation, to having Yo! MTV Raps for 30 minutes every day, to having a stronger rotation of hip hop - all when MTV played videos and had staked out its position as a tastemaker of the day. By the time you get to RunDMC Walk this Way and PE/Anthrax Bring the Noice, and the Beasties Big Dumb Rock off Ill Communication (they got better!) - the cross-pollination got fun and interesting.
ETA: hate MBV? Oh man…I know, we all have our tastes. I love the two albums I have - Isn’t Anything and of course Loveless.
ETAA: a band I never cottoned to was The Pixies. I like some of Kim Deal’s stuff, and I like their soft-LOUD approach, but their songs never really did it for me. In the 80’s I was more of a Social Distortion and Prince guy. And Peter Gabriel.
Serious question: Can somebody help me understand what exactly is meant by “posing” in the context of this discussion and how it’s different from what Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, The New York Dolls, etc. did in the 70s? Or the Who? Or the Rolling Stones? I gather it has something to do with the theatrical nature of rock, but I’m not sure. Is it like “mugging for the camera?” I grew up in the 80s, and we used the term “poseurs,” but that was just a proto-hipster bullshit term for music that wasn’t “metal enough” or something.
I don’t think the '80s produced bad music. It just produced music that I wasn’t particularly in to.
I do acknowledge that we wouldn’t have had the great music of the '90s that I did like without a lot of what happened in the '80s, so there’s that.
But as I recall it, the '80s was mostly a time of heavily electronic synthesized music, where it was more about what you could do to the sound than it was about playing the music. Being a musician myself, I found it interesting but not very compelling. I was never fond of dance music, just as I hadn’t cared for disco, and the Europeanization of dance music didn’t make me like it any better. I didn’t care for hip hop at all and while I acknowledged his popularity, I wasn’t a Michael Jackson fan. Hair metal didn’t move me.
That’s not to say there weren’t bands I enjoyed during this period - Warren Zevon, SRV, Springsteen, Peter Gabriel (“So” is one of my favorite '80s albums), The Police, Dire Straits, The Outfield, for a few. But it was when R.E.M. , Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction and the incipient grunge movement came along that I started getting excited about their sound.
If I were to rank the decades - 60s to present - I’d likely put the 80s at the bottom. But that’s just personal preference, as always.
Yeah, the 90s were when I really started to get into music (I was 15 at the beginning of that decade), but from today’s perspective, it’s somewhere lower mid-tier for me. Except for hip-hop and some electronic forms, a lot of it sounded like a rehash of what had already been done. That said, as far as individual artists, a few of my favorite albums came from that decade, Loveless, Exile in Guyville, Siamese Dream, OK Computer and Mezzanine. Eh, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. 
I just remember a lot of that mid-90s Sugar Ray and Offspring type stuff that maybe it overwhelms my memories. Oh, and all those early 90s slow jams.
Yeah, I know. I lose all kinds of music nerd cred because I don’t like them. I appreciate what they did, but you could not pay me to listen to Loveless again. Doesn’t mean they weren’t great, they just weren’t for me.
The Pixies on the other hand are one of my favorites. I have all their albums and like 25 bootleg live recordings and a bunch of solo project stuff from both Kim and Frank. Different strokes. That’s why we should all try for a bit of objectivity. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t make it bad. And even bad stuff can be important.
It’s okay, we all have some black holes “music cred” wise. Mine is Husker Du. They’re kind of a defining band of an era, but I just can’t get into them. Love Mould’s other work, though. I can’t deny that they were a great band–they just never clicked with me for whatever reason. MBV I can totally understand being an acquired taste. Took me three or four listens of Loveless over the span of a year or two before it just clicked and became my favorite album (tied with Pet Sounds.) The first couple listens I just thought I got a bad rip of the album off Napster. Didn’t realize Shields was going for that undulating in-and-out of tune sound. I really thought it was a cassette tape that was being played back on a player that was not keeping a constant playback speed. It was only when I realized that everything else was in constant tune that I realized, no, this was right and listened to it, full blast, lights out, and just lost myself in the music and sounds that I’ve never quite heard before. And then it just clicked. But I can certainly understand it not being everyone’s cup of tea.