Why was 80s Pop music so good?

KungPao

I am here listening to some songs from the Grand Theft Auto games Vice City/Vice City Stories, and I was thinking why oh why was pop music so, so good in the 1980s?

I was born in 81 so I should be more interested in 90s music I suppose, but when I think of 90s pop music I remember rubbish like 'Rhythm is a Dancer', Will Smith, Backstreet Boys etc. I can't think of many good pop songs.

What changed?

Where is todays equivalant of Toto, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Hall and Oates, Talk Talk etc?

humberklog

KungPao wrote: »

Where is todays equivalant of Toto, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Hall and Oates, Talk Talk etc?

But those bands you mention weren't exactly nail on the head Pop in their day. These would have been viewed on the meatier end on the scale of popular music. Never mind GTA's greatest hits and have a good scan of the charts to see what existed throughout the 80's and padded out the top 30 through the decade; turgid dross mostly.
90's had some cracking pop tunes, indeed the 90's was a decade where good decent pop music was reclaimed after the battering it got in the 80's. This again can be seen if you scan through the top 30's. I think you're being very selective and very rose tinted. (I was born in 1970 btw).

dceire

Because some of it was in German...

Funny you should mention GTA Vice City. I went to see A Flock of Seagulls at the picnic this year purely on what i knew of them from GTA. Anyone else who I knew that wanted to see them all knew them from GTA as well.

That game has a cracker of a soundtrack!

SarahBM

I was born in 87 yet I absolutley love 80's music! I feel you can always get up and dance to a good 80's track, compared to some of the thump thump crap they play in some clubs!!!
Some people think 80's is cheese but they are the very ones who will be first out on the floor when Wham! comes on! You gotta give credit where credit is due, like! Lots of those songs have really stood the test of time. All the best Xmas songs are from the 80's! and the Likes os Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet are still going strong!!!!
Bon Jovi are my favourite band ever. I was raised on the 70's and 80's so maybe Im a bit bias!

5Aces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnDcTy7iF2s&feature=PlayList&p=96116324BF546B72&index=0&playnext=1

this will change your life for the better

SarahBM

Im afraid I dont really like Bob Dylan. I prefer the more upbeat stuff! The Bangles, Wham! Thin Lizzy, The Eagles, Bon Jovi, U2, paul young. I love 80's movie music too. Kenny Logins! brilliant!

KungPao

humberklog wrote: »

But those bands you mention weren't exactly nail on the head Pop in their day. These would have been viewed on the meatier end on the scale of popular music. Never mind GTA's greatest hits and have a good scan of the charts to see what existed throughout the 80's and padded out the top 30 through the decade; turgid dross mostly.
90's had some cracking pop tunes, indeed the 90's was a decade where good decent pop music was reclaimed after the battering it got in the 80's. This again can be seen if you scan through the top 30's. I think you're being very selective and very rose tinted. (I was born in 1970 btw).

Yeah you're probably right about the tinted glasses, maybe more of a compliment to the compilers of the music for the GTA series.

But I think my point still stands. I think Pop was much more interesting, had more diverse sounds and had much more talented musicians and song writers, back in the 80s.

It's been downhill since....

Probably a result of the manufacturing of acts which really increased in thelate 80s, with people such as Pete Waterman and his dreadful all-about-the-money music (see Rick Astley, Kylie Minougue etc.)

I know music has always had manufacturing to some extent from Elvis to The Sex Pistols, but it's different. Elvis was a genius, the Pistols had that something, and an incredible front man. Since the 90s the way Pop acts come about frankly sickens me. Random people thrown together, they're told what to look like, and someone else writes their songs.....ALL about the green.

There are always exceptions, some rubbish in the 80s (Pete Burns/Boy George) and some good stuff since then, but overall, for me, 80s pop music was on another level to todays stuff.

KungPao

dceire wrote: »

Because some of it was in German...

Funny you should mention GTA Vice City. I went to see A Flock of Seagulls at the picnic this year purely on what i knew of them from GTA. Anyone else who I knew that wanted to see them all knew them from GTA as well.

That game has a cracker of a soundtrack!

Ah 99 luftballons what a song!....and to think Nena's modern equivalent is someone like Pink.:rolleyes:

As for AFOSG, I had a keen interest in 80s stuff before Vice City but I had never heard of them.....then I remember driving around killing pedestrians, and 'I Ran' came on....instantly loved it.....and bought a cd of theirs, and discovered many other sweet songs.

KungPao

SarahBM wrote: »

All the best Xmas songs are from the 80's!!

So very very true!

The Pogues, Wham, Band Aid, Jona Lewie and many more.......Classics.

These days it seems nobody is capable of writing a decent chrimbo tune.

Super-Rush

Like you op i was born in 81 and checking through my ipod i see

Joy Division - Love will tear us apart

Dire Straits - Sultans of swing

Alphaville - Forever young

10CC - Dreadlock holiday

Paul Simon- You can call me Al

Yazoo - Only you

and many more

I can't quiet put my finger on it but there is something uplifiting in the way the lyrics and music are put together.

KungPao

super-rush wrote: »

Like you op i was born in 81 and checking through my ipod i see

Joy Division - Love will tear us apart

Dire Straits - Sultans of swing

Alphaville - Forever young

10CC - Dreadlock holiday

Paul Simon- You can call me Al

Yazoo - Only you

and many more

I can't quiet put my finger on it but there is something uplifiting in the way the lyrics and music are put together.

Forever Young is one of faves, kind of sad but uplifting at the same time....and a great melody too.

humberklog

super-rush wrote: »

Joy Division - Love will tear us apart

Dire Straits - Sultans of swing



10CC - Dreadlock holiday



quote]

These were all the late 70's and very much of the late 70's.
Stock Aiken and Waterman's music and influence dominated the charts from 85 to 90. They had some hits after 90 but by then that style really was on the wane. SAW only tapped into what was shifting off the shelves and formulated it into simple business. But that's what all chart acts were about: mula. And there's nothing wrong with that. Take if you will Frankie goes; they were all about the money, as were Spandua and Duran and every band one could possibly think of that reached the charts. That doesn't mean that the music was less for it. In fact it was, for that reason, more accessable to the ears of a large market. This is what pop music is.

Take if you will one very good example of shifting sands of pop from the 80's to the 00's and that is Kylie (love her or not that's irrelevant for this point). A familiar and liked face with no voice can, in the late 80's, by pushed on the public singing typical 80's pop dross. As the decade changes and with it musical tastes and the advance of more musically skilled and artistically inclined writers and producers and measure that with her changing work through the 90's and into the early 00's. By far the less corporate and grubby tunes came as her career progressed, progressed away from the schlock kabal that was the 80's manafacturing machine.
Indeed one can pick many, many songs and bands from the 80's that are brilliant. I like a lot, but most certainly the decades that followed were by far better for pop music, pop artists and the general pop enviroment.
We are at present stuck in a 80's revival so it is more difficult to see the woods for the trees in any true descerning. Clothes and new music in the charts is licking the 80's lollipop at the moment. Nothing really to fear (other than when in a few years to come people caught in the 80's clothes fab of now look back on photos taken of themselves now in skinny jeans and spandex) but not a decade to hold up for any particular merit. If the dross of Simon Cowell's shows irk somew people today then those same peole would have torn the hair out for the full ten years of the 80's as this was as much as what you got then.

fryup

why was 80s music so good??

well i think its because there was something for everyone....electro pop, two-tone, reggae, country, heavy metal, goth rock, hip hop all sorts for all sorts

this is the ultimate 80s anthem....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyl5DlrsU90

iamhunted

from what little I can remember of the 80s it had some of the crappiest music ever. WHAM!, Freeze, Spandau Ballet and kajagogoo are just a few, nevermind all the hair metal. and, oh site, all the kyle/jason crap as well

iamhunted

FGTH were constantly slated in the 80s for not playing/writing/performing on their 'hits'.

humberklog

iamhunted wrote: »

FGTH were constantly slated in the 80s for not playing/writing/performing on their 'hits'.

Indeed they were. But Welcome to... is a great album, but it's Trevor Horn's great album. I think that says a lot about the decade. One good album by a manafactured band.
So easy to select the good from the chaff from a distance of time.

Blazer

Ah music in the 80's.

Just look at Iron Maiden...their finest music is between 1980-1987.
Same for Whitesnake and Def Leppard.
The 80's was the renaissance period for heavy metal.

Nowadays it's all a load of bollix and ****e.
I'm trying to recall one good artist with their own songs and holding their fans through their albums...
hmm..can't think of any..:(

KungPao

SAW only tapped into what was shifting off the shelves and formulated it into simple business. But that's what all chart acts were about: mula. And there's nothing wrong with that. Take if you will Frankie goes; they were all about the money, as were Spandua and Duran

While there's no doubt that the likes of FGTH, Duran Duran and Spandaut Ballet were motivated by money, I think it unfair to compare them to the SAW brand of bubblegum childish 'music'. The bands I mentioned have/had talent, personality and they generally wrote their own songs. Hell, even Oasis were driven by the cash. But they did things their own way, wrote some genuine classics (can Rick Astley or New kids on the block say that?) and didn't have a puppetmaster pulling the strings, telling when they can and can't take a dump.

I agree that the fashion was a little off! but hey people didn't dress much better in the 90s either, remember Kriss Kross! or Vanilla Ice! and presently we have the blandness of Coldplay and James blunt's attire...

...which brings me to my next point...personality seems to have gone out the window in modern pop. Either we have Robbie Williams with his utterly transparent persona or Fat Boy Slim hiding behind his turntables and getting actors to star in his videos or barely animated blocks of wood sitting on stools and pulling out the predictable key-change.

Pop these days is just dull.

KungPao

humberklog wrote: »

Indeed they were. But Welcome to... is a great album, but it's Trevor Horn's great album. I think that says a lot about the decade. One good album by a manafactured band.
So easy to select the good from the chaff from a distance of time.

The band pretty much imploded though, not unlike the Sex Pistols, who were technically manufactured also. Perhaps victims of their own success?

But look at their legacy......decades later and people are still in awe of their music.

iamhunted

humberklog wrote: »

So easy to select the good from the chaff from a distance of time.

so true.

The 80s destroyed the cure (they saved themselves with disintegration towards the end) Bowie (took him til the mid 90s to get back again with something decent) and The Damned (who never recovered). The early 80s saw the damned's 'strawberries' which was class but then they ruined it all with the whole MCA thing and the whole vampire/goth thing

fryup

iamhunted wrote: »

The 80s destroyed the cure

wha??????

Super-Rush

KungPao wrote: »

Forever Young is one of faves, kind of sad but uplifting at the same time....and a great melody too.

Mine too i absolutely love it.

The 80's had a wide variety of genres compared to now where you have pop and rnb. Look at the top ten in Ireland and 7 out of 10 songs are all rnb. There was a lot more choice in the 80's.

humberklog

fryup wrote: »

why was 80s music so good??

well i think its because there was something for everyone....electro pop, two-tone, reggae, country, heavy metal, goth rock, hip hop all sorts for all sorts

Few things on this good thread but I'm not good at multiquoting.
This is a disingenuous post, cock rock was well catered for but again it did take a lot of it's strands from the 70's it's just that the hair and concert riders grew to astronomical levels. But that was the antithesis to what was happening in the pop world. The 80's charts gave little to the flip side, it was big hair and big guitars or it was big hair and big production (in all that entails). Of course there were exceptions but these exceptions railed against the common fodder of the charts at the time (the Smiths for e.g spring to mind).
Electro pop for all it's good and bad really did find it's roots of general acceptance in the 80's.
Two Tone? No. Sure the label came about in the very late 70's (by J Dammers) but that was to cater for the large amount of bands bringing in the type of music suited to it: ska. But Ska was slaughtered in the 80's. Take Dammers' band The Specials, there last record Ghost Town came out in 81. Ghost town wasn't Ska, it was good, decent general pop and to take that band as an example. Dammers went on to form Special AKA and released one song of note "Free Nelson Mandella", it doffed the hat to an older (70's) style and J.Hall, the other half of The Specials started Fun By Three. A good decent pop outfit backed by the singers that became Bananarama who in turn had their biggest chart succes under Stock.A.W. J.Hall is a great songwriter to this day but in the 80's he struggled to get proper recognition. FBT were brief, as were most in the 80's. Good or bad. The Selector, The Beat et al didn't survive well or long into the 80's and what success they did have at the beginning had its roots in the 70's.

There was a reggae revival in the early to mid 80's mostly due to the death (and re-release of his back catalogue and the release of one of the best ever compilations (legend)) of B.Marley. On his back was also a revisit to for e.g Aswad and Maxi Priest. But all these were rooted firmly in the 70's. UB40 don't count as by their own admission they are and were shoight.
Heavy and Goth struggled for wide acceptance and found it hard to get general air play and therefore a broader community. You would never hear Napalm Death on any station at the time. This is of course pre down load so introduction to new music was harder to find.
Hip Hop (thankfully) rebounded well in the late 80's but this was from a whole different current. Again like deathmetal it was something to be sourced or at best played as a novelty. Sugar Hill, Grand Master (Ice Tea ffs had great albums then too), NWA were not on the mainstream and again a lot took there script from the 70's culture that spawned the like of Gil S Heron.
Sure, sure as said previously it's easy to pick and mix the good but when it comes to the 80's a lot of what's held to be decent had in fact got its root firmly in the previous decade and for the most part went against what was dished up in the general fauna of the charts of its day.


KungPao I do get what your saying but disagree and agree. FGTH had no talent and yet their name goes with one of the finest albums ever made: Welcome to... But that was Trevor Horn's album. Nothing wrong with a good album released under a catchy name but the band FGTH were not musically talented. Trevor Horn on the other hand...

Personality on the other hand is far bigger now. It's been brilliant since the 80's when artists were held so under the thumb by record companies it was akin to listening the present day soccer players reading off the script of the manager. Afraid to put a foot wrong in case a shirt and tie in head office didn't like what they said. These days artists are allowed far more freedom of speech than ever before. Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Oasis and throw in whoever you want wouldn't (and didn't) get away with such behaviour back then. They lived in fear of being ditched and blackballed by record companies. Be japers even Elton John got married in the 80's and to a WOMAN!!?? Now that's what I call playing it safe. And that's how you got ahead in the music industry in the 80's. Is that the way music and its artist should be? Like fukc it should. But that is how it was. Safe.

bush Baby

Poverty = great music. Always did, always will!

oldyouth

80's music was no better or worse than any decade. What makes it different, to you (and me) is the memories that you associate with the music such as independance, rebellion, romance etc.

humberklog

bush Baby wrote: »

Poverty = great music. Always did, always will!

But most of the bands mentioned so far are British. Britain started out shakey early in the decade but generally prospered in the 80's. A flood of money was in the country and for many of the acts mentioned their music was a celebration of conspicuous wealth.

Spandau, Heaven 17, Duran and their like would always be seen in sharp suits, reflecting the wealth and zeitgeist of the time.

KungPao

humberklog wrote: »

But most of the bands mentioned so far are British. Britain started out shakey early in the decade but generally prospered in the 80's. A flood of money was in the country and for many of the acts mentioned their music was a celebration of conspicuous wealth.

Spandau, Heaven 17, Duran and their like would always be seen in sharp suits, reflecting the wealth and zeitgeist of the time.

Sharp suits paid for by the record companies, it was all an illusion of wealth and superiority, they were probably living on a pittance at the time.

You made some good points humberklog but you said that people like Amy Winehouse have personality...really? She is just a pathetic junkie. That does not equal personality imho.

humberklog

KungPao wrote: »

Sharp suits paid for by the record companies, it was all an illusion of wealth and superiority, they were probably living on a pittance at the time.

You made some good points humberklog but you said that people like Amy Winehouse have personality...really? She is just a pathetic junkie. That does not equal personality imho.

Yeah a lot of bands were shafted in a big way by managers and companies again this goes to underline the corporate nature of involvement in the music industry in the 80's.

Well I had to pick someone and whoever that's going to be then someone will have an issue with so I picked Amy as she is very nutty, off her head on drugs but is talented. She can bobble about in this state of car crash and still get invited to sing at festivals and awards and make new music with whoever she wants. In the 80's the suits would have moved against her and she'd be black balled. Again this is an example of how a lot of artistic talent was not willing to rock the boat and plat it safe. In the 80's George Michael was straight?!

grenache

80s music is so popular becos it makes for easy listening. The advent of the systhsiser and electronic remixing took the music industry down a whole new route. Also most of the music made back then, you could actually dance to. Todays music, the likes of La Roux and Lily Allen, you would have difficulty in shuffling your feet to.

I was born in 1984 and my favourite bands all come from the 70s/80s.

Duran Duran
Roxy Music
INXS
A Ha
ELO
Simple Minds
Queen
The Police


There is very little music made today to equal any of the stuff produced by the above bands. Kings of Leon V The Police?? There's no contest there.