I honestly can not believe there are people who disliked that INXS tune earlier- it was a classic 80’s New Wave pop song, and it really wasn’t bad music and it had a catchy tune. So, for the haters, suck on this:
There was some fun music then… I’ll take this over looking at the camel toe of the spawn of Billy Ray Cyrus any fucking day of the week.
Linda Featheringill
You think the music of the 1980s was good overall?
Oh, my.
ruemara
Shut your hater mouths. 80’s music was amazing.
Belafon
Some of the music was OK, but the amount of money it would take me to relive that part of my life (I’m roughly John’s age) would end world hunger.
EriktheRed
Hell, I love the song, Don’t Change. It’s a fun, easy bass line to play, too.
EriktheRed
Hell, I love the song, Don’t Change. It’s a fun, easy bass line to play, too.
Diana
So how’s the snow? First real snow of the year here in the northeast. Rest of you?
jo6pac
Left the 80s and back to some Great Jazz, CW done by the real Stars during that time and Blues.
DougJ
Hate ’80s music — unless you include late Clash — and am sick of people bashing Miley Cyrus.
trollhattan
Somebody give you a ration off-line? because only one verified douche hated on INXS in that thread, which is a vote for per my decoder ring.
Listened to some XTC, loud, this a.m. FWIW. Bestest Band Evah.
Joseph Nobles
Here I go again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3MXiTeH_Pg
BGinCHI
Saw the Fixx open up for the Go-Gos. Back when Belinda was on coke and at the top of her game.
cathyx
Sorry, but the 80s suck musically. It’s sucktitude is more pronounced since it followed the fantastic 70’s.
MikeJ
@DougJ:
REM, The Replacements, Hüsker Dü. Plenty of good stuff in the 80s. Just not on the radio, except at the left end of the dial.
But I’m with you on Miley. Who really gives a shit? Nobody who was ever going to buy one of her songs on itunes ever cared about what the bluenoses thought of her performance anyway.
wasabi gasp
;-Q
MikeJ
@BGinCHI:
I saw INXS open for the Go-gos.
Cassidy
God knows we would be culturally deficient without Boston, Kansas, and disco.
NotMax
Musical equivalent of this.
Seriously, though, I don’t hate the tune(s) you posted, just find them of no interest.
Speaking of the 80s, relieved you didn’t throw on a pair of parachute pants to go check on the car the other night.
jeffreyw
Hasn’t been any real music made since Duane Allman died.
burnspbesq
Only four artists that were active in the 1980s are still making music that matters: Los Lobos, Richard Thompson, John Hiatt, and Rodney Crowell (and yes, the omission of Bruce Springsteen was deliberate). All the rest is nostalgia.
Cassidy
80’s was good, the only good thing about the 70’s was punk, Miley Cyrus has more balls than 99% of the music out there.
Cassidy
@burnspbesq: Man, you love being wrong about music. Of course, “relevant” is one of those qualifier terms people use to make their own personal taste sound more important.
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: Do you think the music of the 1960s was good overall? Sturgeon’s Law.
@cathyx: Sturgeon’s Law again.
I could go to YouTube and find unbelievable crap from any decade.
trollhattan
@MikeJ:
Saw U2 open for Ambrosia.
burnspbesq
@DougJ:
Here’s a wastebasket for you to puke in. Miley Cyrus has even less talent than TayTay. Why I should listen to either of them when I can listen to Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, Ashley Monroe, Kacey Musgraves, or Sierra Hull is a mystery to me.
Not Adding Much To The Community
Indeed, that is one of Inxs’s best songs. Fuck the haters sideways with a rusty garden spade.
Disco
Pop music peaked in 1984. Nothing since then has been original. Now, there has been countless good songs made, but nothing original.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Do you know the exact date you became a curmudgeon, or was it a gradual process?
Cassidy
@burnspbesq: She has a better set of pipes than almost every other female singer. You’re a poor judge of talent, dude.
burnspbesq
@Cassidy:
I’ll bet my half century as a performer against whatever you got.
burnspbesq
@Cassidy:
Please. The narrowness of your experience is showing.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Conflating Ohio Express and 1910 Fruitgum Company?
max
it was a classic 80′s New Wave pop song, and it really wasn’t bad music and it had a catchy tune.
Man, you’re like a human VH1.
@Omnes Omnibus: I could go to YouTube and find unbelievable crap from any decade.
This is 100% correct. And unfortunately, Cole the Craphound is going to root up every single piece of crud from every decade.
max
[‘His mustard has to be in there somewhere.’]
trollhattan
@Cassidy:
“She has a better set of pipes than almost every other female singer.”
Holy shit. Do you know of any other female singers? Holy shit.
FWIW I don’t hate MC but don’t consider her to have any more talent than anybody else out of the Disney Kidstar machine. She do know publicity, though.
Ash Can
AFAIC, 70s music had its moments (although if you’ve heard one pre-pubescent-sounding male 70s rock singer, you’ve heard them all). Nineteen-eighties New Wave, however, broke clean out of the old pop/rock mold. It was fresh and imaginative and inventive, and some of it was pretty darned smart too (“We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang,” e.g.). I’ll always love New Wave for being quirky and topical and defiantly unique.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I am of the opinion that a person’s taste in pop music is formed between 14-25 years of age – that is, high school and college age. One can like things from before or after, but the music of that time ends up as one’s base.
cathyx
@Omnes Omnibus: Not Sturgeon’s law, but Cathyx’s law.
One prefers the music of the era one spent ones teens in.
PIGL
@Cassidy: she does. I listened to a piece where is actually singing in an idiom I can judge, and she is amazing.
Omnes Omnibus
Miley Cyrus is a talented as most mainstream pop singers and in her own way she seems to be trying to push boundaries – something that can’t be said about every pop tart.
NotMax
@cathyx
As my preference has always been to the classical and baroque, must be older than I look. :)
Mike in Oly
The Fixx were amazing. They had a long career and did many, many excellent albums. One of the most underrated and overlooked bands of the 80’s, IMO.
Omnes Omnibus
@cathyx: See this above. That doesn’t mean that the music of other decades sucks; it just means you prefer something else.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: If you hit anything hard enough with a hammer, it will break. That’s from a critic who works in a genre of my particular interest (bronydom) but it’s true for anything. If you’re disinclined to like something, you’re not going to like it, and vice versa. Every era had something that appealed to one segment of the population but another hated, and so on. Music is subjective.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I limit that preference formation theory to pop music.
hildebrand
Midnight Oil put on the best live show I have ever seen – and I have seen an amazing number of great shows. It was a flat-out amazing, unbelievable show. Great band, great music, great politics.
Omnes Omnibus
@hildebrand: Plus the eclectic dance stylings of Peter Garrett.
SiubhanDuinne
@Diana:
No snow in Atlanta.
Not Adding Much To The Community
@cathyx: Sorry, I was a teen in the ’80s and found most of it to be shite. The ’90s were much better to me, in that respect.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Classical and baroque was the pop music of its time. But I get what you mean. Even though in terms of modern pop stuff, tunes and groups from the 40s, 30s and 20s always attracted me more than stuff from my era. (Nobody can truly hate the Mills Brothers.)
Porco Rosso
Speaking of the eighties:
Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCQ6DLwV9CI
Gun club Sex Beat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DheFFTmuyu4
Television Personalities King and Country
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JguOaf7ugQ
Monochrome Set Jet Set Junta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ouBnu9AQcU
hildebrand
@Omnes Omnibus: That is easily the most polite description of his dancing that I have ever read. That said, it was a stunning show.
eemom
Most of the music I like is from the latter half of the 1960s, the 1970s, or the 1980s up to ’86.
Can’t we all just get along?
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I actually loathe much of the top 40 stuff from that period in my life, but the late punk and post-punk of college radio/alternative left of the dial stations from ’77- 89 are still my thing. Plus their antecedents and descendants.
scav
@NotMax: Lucky you, I’m showing every inch of my age but Palestrina opening for Gluck was magic.
Botsplainer
I actually paid money to see Power Station somewhere in the 80s.
cathyx
I grew up in the 70’s with the hard core rock and roll but I think todays music is fantastic. I love the originality and danceability of all of it. I love how some artists are taking older songs and modernizing them. I listen to an independent station here also and they are always introducing new artists who have incredible talent. There is no shortage of great creative minds out there.
NotMax
@scav
The audience, as one, raising and waving lit torches was unforgettable.
Forget the movie the quote is from, but it went along the lines of “Music hasn’t been worth a damn since they started writing it down.”
Omnes Omnibus
@hildebrand: An Aussie friend once taught me how to dance like Garrett. It required mastering three basic moves. The Box – hold arms straight out; make clapping motions without making contact; repeat several times; turn palms parallel to ground; make clapping motions without making contact; repeat several times. The Scissors: hold arms straight out; make scissor motions. The Spaz: self-explanatory.
cathyx
@Not Adding Much To The Community: There are always exceptions to every rule.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Ramones saved the world.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: No, you once confused Soft Cell and The Clash. There can be no forgiveness. The best that can be done is to try to ignore it – which I am apparently unable to do.
goblue72
@burnspbesq: God you have awful taste in music. Not subjectively awful. But objectively awful.
NotMax
50s meets 80s.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman:
I once asked my dad about those. His best explanation was “I don’t know; I never could stand them.”
Omnes Omnibus
@cathyx:
I often listen to the local college radio station in the car just to make sure my ears continue to get exposed to new stuff.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: But that was an audience that got its kicks above the waistline, sunshine.
NotMax
@efgoldman
James Dean fallout?
PIGL
@goblue72: He’s not wrong about those particular musicians being good and in some cases still relevant. It is very difficult to sustain artistic creativity at a high level for four decades…..almost nobody in history has succeeded in doing it. So the fact that a few 80s musicians are still performing and playing at a high level is no evidence that no others 80s musicians or groups were any good.
Anyway, the fact that burnsie left out Mekons proves he’s full of sh*t
scav
@efgoldman: They got it utterly wrong of course, his continuo lines were fairly vanilla. Bach was the one to listen to backwards. En Fugal.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: Funny thing is this thread is relating to the previous one about ICP. At some point, an artist gets some attention from an executive with money and has to choose to pursue that ambition but lose the struggling artist cred. Every singer who has made it big in music has made that choice, even at the expense of compromise of artistic vision. Just a thought.
Bob
For what it’s worth here is Pitchfork’s 100 best albums of the eighties.
http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/5882-top-100-albums-of-the-1980s/
—————————-
From the British perspective, New Musical Express, 50 best albums of the eighties.
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/westcausse/the_nme_greatest_albums_of_the_80s/
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: So the question isn’t whether to sell out or not, but rather how much selling out can one live with?
Tommy
I am of the age where I listened to INXS. Mayre the why I was grow up from a musical point of view..Oh and maybe the Cure. Just saying.
PaulW
I SURVIVED THE 80S AND YOU CAN TOO.
Plimsouls “A Million Miles Away”
Missing Persons “Mental Hopscotch”
Laura Branigan “Self Control”
Sigue Sigue Sputnik “Atari Baby”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Two Tribes”
Nena “99 LuftBalloons”
Soundtrack “Risky Business”
Soundtrack “Valley Girl”
Smithereens “Behind the Wall of Sleep”
Siouxsie and the Banshees “Cities in Dust” (most of Tinderbox itself is one of the best albums ever)
U2 for most of the decade, fuck you haters 90 percent of the band’s songs between 1981-1993 kicked ass.
REM for most of it too, especially “Something Something LEONARD BERNSTEIN”
Bruce Springsteen for half of it, Nebraska had some good bits, Born In the USA a bit overrated, Tunnel of Love surprisingly good after all these years.
Cassidy
@burnspbesq: That’s why you have a day job.
@trollhattan: Yup. Quite a few. It’s the truth. The girl can sing. Her dancing is barely passable, but she can stick with choreography enough to get through a song. Here’s the reality, most people think it shows they have some sort of class or taste to not like Miley Cyrus or whatever pop flavor of the week is in the headlines. Then they name off some female singer that most people have never heard of (sound familiar burnsie) just to try and bolster their cred as some sort of music connoisseur. What’s funny is that to everyone else it sounds as fake as it actually is and it’s an easy shtick to peg. I don’t like pop music. I get stuck listening to it when the kids are in the car. Despite my dislike for pop music, I can recognize the girl has talent. Now, I’m preferable to Lizzy Hale (Halestorm), Emily Armstrong (Dead Sarah), and Kim Deal, it doesn’t mean I can’t recognize a truly good singer.
cathyx
@Omnes Omnibus: My local station was voted best rock station in 2012 National Association of Broadcasters’ Marconi Radio Awards.
http://www.kink.fm/
rea
There was far, far worse in the 89s than anything John has posted, e. g.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpfWORQWhU
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob: Jebus. I own over 40 of the British list and about 75% of the American (noting there is some overlap).
Redshift
@hildebrand: I agree. Still the best show I’ve ever seen.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Pretty much seems to be what Yutsy is saying. And he can certainly distinguish the Clash from Soft Cell. Apparently I’m unable to ignore that particular event as well.
goblue72
I wouldn’t exactly call INXS “New Wave” – their style had New Wave/synth pop elements, but they were far more an Australian pub rock band than anything. Tailor made as a mainstream MTV pop band.
But yes, there was a lot of great bands/albums to come out of the 80s, they fools on this thread notwithstanding –
Eurythmics / Annie Lennox
The Cure
Bauhaus
The Sisters of Mercy
late Roxy Music
Soft Cell
Depeche MOde
New Order
The Human League
Thomas Dolby
Pet Shop Boys
Art of Noise
Ultravox
REM
Prince
Michael Jackson (before he went insane)
The Feelies
Violent Femmes
Husker Du
The Replacements
They Might Be Giants
Big Country
Sonic Youth
early Pixies
Jane’s Addiction
Motley Crue
Van Halen
Iron Maiden
Judas Priest
Run DMC
Beastie Boys
Public Enemy
NWA
Eric B & Rakim
KRS-One/Boogie Down Productions
Grandmaster Flash
Afrika Bambaataa
Jamey
The Fixx? Really? Can one troll his own site?
FlipYrWhig
@MikeJ: I saw Public Image Ltd. open for INXS in 1988. Also the Oils in 1990. Also Pixies opening for U2 in 1992. Anyone who doesn’t like it can dive head first into a barrel of suck.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig:
Well said.
goblue72
@PIGL: Richard Thompson, John Hiatt, and Rodney Crowell? Guitar music for lame white people. And Los Lobos were never any good. His list is puke-worthy. Objectively.
I completely agree with you about the Mekons.
Cassidy
@efgoldman: I get that. I also understand the transformation to “entertainer” as the shows got bigger. Hell, Pink’s live performance is huge.
gbear
I’ve got a lot of 80’s records in my collection and when I go back to them I realize they haven’t aged very well. I actually think that INXS ‘ albums hold up pretty well (my much younger sister turned me on to them). Favorites of the time for me that really hold up are The (English) Beat and Pretenders first albums and almost anything by XTC. Another obscure favorite is David and David. I like 70’s Richard Thompson better than 80’s-present and of course I HAVE to mention that mid-60’s Kinks RULE!
goblue72
@Bob: Good lists. I forgot about the Cocteau Twins, Talk Talk, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Nurse with Wound, Spacemen 3, Mission of Burma, XTC, The Fall, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus & Mary Chain.
Tellingly, a lot of these lists are VERY light on music by and for Black folks. Even leaving aside the rich mine of 80s R&B, the single most important popular music to come out of the 80s came not from the warbly voiced, synth driven white people music but from a bass-driven scream of revolutionary anger & joy from black folks – Hip-hop. The 80s saw the birth of hip-hop, which would go on to be one of the most globally culturally relevant & influential popular music movements of the late 20th century. A popular music sound & style which is still being heard around the globe today, on every street corner on the planet where an oppressed minority or social class lives.
And you can dance to it.
Gravenstone
@DougJ: I don’t feel compelled to bash her. But I am sick beyond reason of hearing about every. single. fucking thing. she does.
PIGL
@goblue72: I suppose most of Richard Thompson’s audience is white because, hey icon of british folk music, and yes, he plays guitar and in fact is widely appreciated as the greatest guitarists ever. How that qualifes as “lame” I don’t quite follow you. Much the same could be said for Rodney Crowell, who I know as the writer of some of my favourite songs sung by Emmylou Harris. I suppose she counts as guitar music for lame white people as well, if one is nurturing some race-based definition of acceptable hipness. I got new for you, 99% of all Mekons fans are white.
Bob
@goblue72: In defense of the lists lacking black artists they are geared to rock and roll.
PIGL
@Bob: Odd that Miss America made the list, but I would agree it is a cosmicly unknown record by a staggering genius.
Here’s the official vid of “Body’s in Trouble”.
Joseph Nobles
@Jamey: Trolling his own site is John Cole’s MO. Readers don’t capture themselves.
Renie
Freddie Mercury – enough said.
Omnes Omnibus
@goblue72: The lists that Bob linked had 10% and 12% albums by black artists. Not a huge percentage by any means, but those albums were extraordinarily influential.
Cassidy
These conversations always remind me of the kids in the 90’s who got into the goth scene. You caould always count on them wearing a Type O Negative, Joy Division, or Siouxsie and the Banshees shirt. And they didn’t like The Cure, too mainstream, and only liked NIN until they had a hit, then they started wearing Ministry shirts. Then, KMFDM, etc, etc., etc. It was all fashion, though, a visible identity to wear so everyone could see. They’d never heard of The Church or This Mortal Coil or Pop Will Eat Itself and they didn’t care.
@Burnsie, I love your musical tastes, btw. You’ve pointed me to some stuff I normally wouldn’t have sought out. You don’t have to trash other music to push your’s though. I learned very early on that there is no such thing as good music or bad music; there is only music you like and music you don’t.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Jeezus Q. Kee-riiist…..I thought we’d, like, moved ON from that finally…..after, what — FIVE years? Sheeyit.
Statute of fucking limitations, anyone?
‘sides…..I DID have a perfectly good explanation.
eta: That said….I always LMAO when Soft Cell comes on my XM radio.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Guessing none of the dreck which prided itself on making the lyrics unintelligible (seeming more prevalent during the nineties and oughties).
StringOnAStick
@efgoldman:
My experience exactly. Thanks for saying that.
goblue72
@Omnes Omnibus: I read the lists. They barely skim the surface of black music of the 80s compared to the white albums they cover. But the first list is from Pitchfork, so its not that surprising. Being the “music for white hipsters” website and all.
And the “hey 10% of the albums are by black musicians” is right up there with the “I have a black friend”
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Yeah, that Jackson Pollock guy who just throws paint at a canvas, his stuff will never hold up. Art should be pictures where you can recognize stuff, dammit.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@eemom: It’s just hard to have a perfectly good explanation for that confusion other than chronic use of hallucinogens during the pertinent period. You graduate and professional career suggest that is an unlikely explanation. It seems I haven’t gotten past it either.
Omnes Omnibus
@goblue72:
Dude, I was quantifying your observation.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Songs which have the lyrics made unintelligible kind of defeat the purpose of the artform.
Pollock, a visual artist, didn’t just splatter white paint onto a white canvas.
goblue72
@PIGL: Jeez, butthurt much? I’m sorry, but Thompson and Crowell play the kind of bland, unobjectionable music most suited to falling asleep to or changing the channel.
Death Panel Truck
@Cassidy:
Parliament.
Funkadelic.
‘Nuff said.
goblue72
@Omnes Omnibus: Misunderstood your point then. My apologies.
Anne Laurie
@burnspbesq: What the fvck is
Pretentious Hipster Chick Sarah Jarosz doing in with all those fine women singers?
(MCyrus is right there too, you just don’t like her current production mode. Come back in twenty years, admit that I was right..)
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax:
Disagree. I would suggest that the point of the technique is for vocals simply to be another instrument. The sound of the words rather then their meaning being important. Nonrepresentational, as it were.
goblue72
@Death Panel Truck: Agreed. Anyone who says “the only good thing about X decades music is Y” is generally spouting complete jibberish.
Omnes Omnibus
@goblue72: No problem. One can’t always recognize tone from text.
Cassidy
@Death Panel Truck: I’m sure there is more than that. I like poking the olds.
goblue72
@Omnes Omnibus: I mean, that scat music isn’t real music, amIright?
Omnes Omnibus
@goblue72: Good example.
Death Panel Truck
@goblue72: There’s been lots of good music in every decade…and lots of garbage. Unfortunately, too many people insist on liking the garbage. I thought the eighties were a low point musically, so I looked backward and discovered people like Howlin’ Wolf, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and John Lee Hooker, to name just a few. And then Sonic Youth and Mother Love Bone showed up to escort me into the nineties.
Omnes Omnibus
The interesting question is whose musical heroes could win in a bar fight against the heroes of others. Assume said heroes are in their prime.*
*Mine would probably be drunk or otherwise wasted. They would lose but probably do the Cool Hand Luke thing of not staying down.
Cassidy
I think it’s interesting how people will claim to hate something, usually a genre of music, but then it comes out how narrow the listening has been. I used to say I hate country music. I still despise Nashville pop music, but I love that old outlaw country. And cowpunk/ alt country, 500 Miles to Memphis, Two Cow Garage, Drag the River…damn it’s some good stuff.
A lot of the people I work with, all them good country Georgia boys, hate hip hop, “It’s all bitches and ho’s and gold teeth and sizzurp..” I feel sad for them. They won’t be mesmerized by B.O.B. or sucked in by Kid Cudi or Lupe Fiasco. There is so much good music to miss when you decide you hate something.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: Modern country is basically soft rock with steel guitars.
Steve in the ATL
I’m a big XTC fan, but I would probably be a huge XTC fan if someone other than Andy Partridge were their lead singer.
And it’s hard to admit this, but Mandy Moore did a great cover of “Senses Working Overtime.” It sounds like she really gets the song, which I did not expect..
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: You are right about the Moore cover.
Also, the concept of a biscuit shaped world intrigues me.
Seanly
People probably hated the INXS song because they were a terrible, terrible band. The Fixx wasn’t a terrible band.
goblue72
@Death Panel Truck: Good ones. And I’d just say beyond Parliament/Funkadelic, there’s just funk in general as some great music to come out of the 1970s. As well as some great arena rock/hard rock – that regardless of how somewhat cliche they can seem at times, as still great tunes for when you are of a certain age (teens/early 20s, full of hormones, ready to party) – Led Zep, Black Sabbath, & KISS being the most immediate/well-known that come to mind. Alice Cooper, Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple.
There’s also the singer-songwriter “genre” of the 70s – Randy Newman, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Jim Croce. Ok, maybe not the last one.
And also glam – Bowie, Roxy Music, T-Rex, New York Dolls.
Omnes Omnibus
@goblue72: From the New York Dolls it was a “straight” line to this.
h/t Cassidy for causing people to dig this up a month or so ago.
goblue72
@Death Panel Truck: Here’s the other thing. People forget that for the most part, this is all pop music. This is NOT art music – not in the sense that classical or jazz is art music. And it is not by-and-large roots music either – at least in the way traditional blues or old Americana is roots music.
This is pop music – in its many forms. Its is predominantly low-middlebrow music, for mass(ish) consumption. For dancing to, to drinking to, to hanging out with your friends to, to partying to, to pineing for lost loves to, to knocking boots to. Its supposed to be fun. And digestible. Which also means much of it is somewhat throw-away and one-hit-wonder-ish. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily “bad” or garbage.
Omnes Omnibus
@goblue72: Actually, when one goes back to these lists, one is looking at people who, to a large extent, did see themselves or were seen to be producing art music. It wasn’t really a list of pop albums.
FlipYrWhig
@Omnes Omnibus: I also like how the line “the world is football-shaped” means something different in UK English.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: Look mate, biscuit shaped is central to my cosmology.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Does it include the Einstein-Rosen croissant?
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: No, you fucking heretic! Die! Die! Die!!!1111Eleven!!!
GregB
I went to a concert at Sullivan Stadium, now Kraft, and saw the Fixx open, Flock of Seagulls feature and The Police headline.
Pretty good show.
Omnes Omnibus
@GregB: I am sure that FoS blew everyone away with “Space Age Love Song.”
ruemara
Frankly I love music from the Baroque period to new stuff now, but some of y’all are drowning in haterade. 80’s music was awesome, so sayeth I and that’s pretty much a thumb of the nose to others. You don’t have to listen to it with me, so go soak your head in some-yech- celine dion.
danielx
Thanks, Cole. That’s an image I could have happily spent the rest of my life without.
There’s always good music around no matter what year it is, although you may have to look harder for it. I did feel like a crabby old man the other day when I saw one of those end-of-the-year lists about the top one hundred songs of 2013 and I knew about five of the songs and artists on the list. I consoled myself with that famous line about how…
I’m not old, your music really does suck.
Petorado
The 80’s were a great time for music because people were still buying CDs, there were still radio stations not owned by Clear Channel, and MTV added the visual intrigue. Being different was cool and the diversity of musical styles was expanding in all directions. By the next decade corporate-induced contraction seemed to stifle the energy of the 80’s. The cool thing about today is that musicians can record music without the necessity of studios and publicize and distribute music without need for a record label. That energy that flourished in the 80’s seems to be returning again.
Petorado
@danielx: I remember a 70’s British rocker once being asked to define what rock ‘n roll music was. His answer: “It’s whatever music your parents can’t stand.” It’s the same for every generation.
Omnes Omnibus
@Petorado: If rock music is art it is going to respond to what went before it by adopting the best elements or by rejecting what went before. Inevitably though, it is responding to its predecessors – taking something from them even if it is by rejecting what they did. It is how art works.
bago
From a trash 80 to a black Mercedes.
I was tellin apple deuces where they could peek and poke.
Petorado
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s true about music as art. But sometimes it’s also just social commentary between generations. So when the oldsters say, “your music sucks,” the youngsters retort back, “it’s supposed to.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Petorado: True about any art. Ain’t it?
I referenced Jackson Pollock in a comment earlier. His art makes no sense at all except in reference and response to what earlier artists had done.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus:
With all understanding that you’re snarking: Pollock will probably stay on the Artists list (Rothko certainly will), but Jeff Koons — for all anyone can recognize his objects — will get moved to the Grifters file right next to Bernie Madoff as soon as the current MFA art students, the nextgen museum directors, are dead. (Andy Warhol will probably stay in the galleries, as a pioneer/exemplar, but Damien Hirsch may not outlast even his own death.)
Wag
@Omnes Omnibus: @ruemara:
I see a pretty direct line between the polyphony of the Baroque and the polyphonic melodies of Kraftwerk.
recurvata
Better song. Worse video.
Wag
@goblue72:
This.
Keith G
As a youngster in 1983, in a four month stretch, I saw Adam and the Ants, INXS, Billy Idol, and The Fixx in concerts.
INXS, who at that time were just openers, put on the best show. The Fixx had the best venue – a cave ish dance club where I was 20 ft from the band.
None of the above can hold a candle to Tom Odell who I got a chance to see in a few months ago concert then meet in person (a real cool dude) and Jake Bugg who we are going to see next month. Both are new artist but born of the same pub rock scene (some 30 years later) that nurtured Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, and Bryan Ferry.
To Linda up top:
Which 80s music? There were so many genres and sub genres. Those Brits who took American R&B and Soul and melded it with a post-punk pub rock vibe produced some very good music. Even those who came a step later with what essentially was synthpop and the new romantic genres (Spandau Ballet, Culture Club) still showed strong R&B/Soul connections.
Yup there was good music. And if you did the work to see it live (skip the MTV treatment) you had a chance to groove with some good shit.
Support live music. It’s a great way to feel good and to get money almost directly into the hands of the artists you like.
Keith G
@Petorado:
Exactly. As I noted above, I love live music and I stay away from big name acts booking arenas (except for Elton John and Billy Joel).
Youtube has allowed a lot of crap to leech into the public consciousness, but it has also allowed polished musicians to connect to a wider audience than they could have before. Importantly, now these acts are finding it easier to book small venue tours throughout the US.
The energy does remind me of the early 80s when so many “new” faces were able to bypass gatekeepers and show us what they could do.
Support live music.
ice weasel
The Fixx were a brilliant band live.
Goblue72
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m sure they thought that. But it’s not high art. That’s not a normative judgment. But it is what it is.
The Dude
Don’t nobody be dissing ‘Don’t Change’, one of the greatest songs of the 80s. Love that falsetto vocal at the end.
PIGL
@goblue72: My butt is not hurting at all. Seems like yours may be a little out of joint, though. Richard Thompson? It’s OK not to like him, but his stature as a musician among musicians is not subject for debate among reasonable informed people.
Something to recall: “I don’t like it” does not imply “it sucks”.
Rudi
What’s wrong with a good camel toe?
MarkusOfarkus
I like at 1:54 when he starts cross-country skiing through the tunnel. Good song. Haven’t heard it in a very long time.
MC Simon Milligan
@Bob: Both pretty good lists. The only glaring omissions IMO are Metallica’s Ride The Lightning and Bad Brains’ I Against I.
There’s always good music. It’s just that occasionally it gets on the radio.
Jimmy 2 Times
Thanks for posting “Don’t Change”. By far the best INXS tune, and a classic new wave pop song that has held up very well over the years.
Don’t forget Guns n Roses…
Talentless Hack
@cathyx: Rock was never better than in the 70s, but by ’79 or so, it really started going downhill, right about the time Aykroyd and Belushi left SNL. You could just feel it, as if just because nobody could top what they did in ’77 and ’78, they didn’t bother. Just crank out another album that sounds like the last two and hope people don’t notice that they’re phoning it in.
There are exceptions, of course. Led Zeppelin’s final album, In Through The Out Door being one of them.
Now, as for 80s music? I don’t really hate it as much as I find it harder to sift through the detritus to find the good stuff. Tears For Fears, for instance. I could never really get into hair metal; found it gave off a lot more heat than light. But I liked the Scorpions, probably because they were from Frankfurt, Germany, and had their own interpretation of hair metal.
But this whole “let’s dress like parakeets and act really gay and make this plink plinka plink kind of music with keytars and soprano saxophones was something that never grabbed me at all.
NobodySpecial
Elvis Costello, The Police, and The Fixx alone make the 80’s a decent decade for music, everything else is a bonus.
Paul in KY
That ‘spawn’ is a proud Democrat who probably gives some nice donations to help defeat Repubs.
Paul in KY
@hildebrand: Midnight Oil is/was.a hell of a band. Wish I’d got to see them live.
Did see The Cult the other night.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Think those had something to do with Vietnam. Lots of younguns getting killed still in early 70s.
Paul in KY
@NobodySpecial: Looked at Pitchfork rating list of 80s albums & Police albums were way too low (IMO). Had ‘Joshua Tree’ at 31 or so. That’s fucked up…