“I Melt With You” by Modern English is about as Eighties as it gets.
He’s even called Corey FFS:
Side note: The Swiss duo know as Yello has been consistently active for the past 40 years and actually just released their 14th studio album today.
More seriously I go for the historical “ark” or “time capsule” musical events like “We are the world” (1985) but for sheer energy and one of the best protest songs with a big cast of 80’s singers I go for “Sun City”
Not long after Band Aid and We Are The World focused musical attention on poverty and famine, a collection of artists took a similar approach in the struggle against apartheid. The initiator was Steven van Zandt - erstwhile guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band - who whipped up dozens of musicians to work on the project. They included Peter Gabriel, members of U2, Springsteen himself, Hall and Oates, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Run DMC, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne and Keith Richards. Van Zandt wrote and produced the song and it reached the top 40 in several European nations, though not in the US.
Sun City is a large casino resort in the north-west of South Africa. During the apartheid years it was located in ‘independent’ state of Bophuthatswana, a phoney political entity that enabled white South Africans to visit a casino, gamble and attend strip shows, even though these activities were illegal within South Africa itself. The United Nations placed a cultural ban on artists touring or performing in South Africa - however many notable American and European acts ignored this
In a sign of things to come, many radio stations in the USA banned the song.
It’s clearly this:
Born in the USA.
Big, synthy, and bombastic, with massive drums and equally massive vocals. Goes on probably a minute more than it needs to. Everything about it is excessive, and everything about it is great.
I’ve have to agree with this analysis. Although there might be a song that also incorporates the synth side of New Wave as well, it can’t have been as iconic as this or we’d have thought of it already.
Blasphemous Rumors Depeche Mode
Oh, and Welcome to the Pleasuredome but Frankie Hoes to Hollywood
Good one. It was released in '82, and it was still getting a lot of airplay when I started seriously dating a girl in late '87-- I remember us goofily singing it to each other in the car whenever it came on the radio. So it had some longevity throughout the 80’s for sure.
The two eightiesest instruments are obviously the drum machine and the saxophone. So my candidate is “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins (drum machine throughout, wailing sax at the end, and that’s not even counting some sweet sweet synth licks).
I would also add a requirement for either Yamaha DX-7’s glassy electric piano sound or the bass (and “Danger Zone” satisfies the latter.)
That is quite a hat-trick of 80’s cultural touchstones. MTV played the ever-loving crap out of that video.
“Take on Me” by A-Ha. Iconic video, too.
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics is what first popped into my head.
“Send Me an Angel” by Real Life. This is the version that got a lot of play on Empty-Vee. Cheesy synthesizer. Not bad guitar. Lead singer trying way too hard to look sexy for the camera.
This is the “Extended Dance Video”. All of the above, plus egregious 80’s hairstyles.
Some great suggestions so far, and don’t forget that the 80s lasted 10 years and the music changed a lot in those years. But for me, synth-pop dominated at least the first half of the decade, and the two I propose are so very 80s:
ETA: and this, Ultravox must have a place in this thread:
Love Tears for Fears. My nominees would be:
Mad World
And
Everybody Wants to Rule the World
The Warrior - Scandal
In what other decade could you pull off that post-apocalyptic, Cirque du Soleil aesthetic? That and this video made me fall profoundly and deeply in love with Patty Smyth.
