God, this reads so much like something I had totally forgotten existed back then – one of those pretentious articles in NME or Melody Maker from the 80s. I didn’t know I missed that stuff until I read this piece.
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
Before the effortless internet descended upon us, an aspiring artist or musician had to I imagine dig into his or her inner self in order to … come up with the goods. Merit came with effort. If as I think someone in the Beatles once said that a song of note relies on its creator summoning up 1% inspiration, expending 99% perspiration, then in an interfering tech-ridden world, the amount of time spent on jamming or strumming under the stars must be a lot less. Also, some artists today make their statements when they join some political fray and tweet — their business of pop effectively becomes a sideline; their heart and soul must not be in it. Coming up with the goods is no longer a worthwhile endeavour itself when fame awaits anyway because pop is now a visual rather than an audio thing. The song had always tended to carry the video back in the 80s; now, unfortunately, the video carries the song. The lyrics may be flashed up on tiny screens as a way to overcome the fact that they are indecipherable to most ears. (Indecipherable because they have nothing to really say, or there is embarrassment at their insipidity?). But take away the hand-held technologies, take away the visual medium, then budding songwriters and pop artists will have to sing out loud and clear. They would have to make an effort to hit the big time in an analogue world. Universally meaningful lyrics would have to be written. That’s why pop music wasn’t just for 16-year-olds back in the 80s. But in the internet age, pop music has struggled to stay relevant as a meaningful thing in people’s lives. It’s only now a sliver of the entertainments on offer, all jostling with each other over the airwaves. Hence the screeching and wailing and mournful warbling coming out at you everywhere at the shops and petrol station forecourts (for crying out loud!). These singers of today are poor little victims! They are tired and angry and demand people listen to THEIR problems! Yet they don’t seem to realise that they speak to nobody. In ten quick years a twenty-five year old is middle-aged. Why should he or she not raid his parents’ old records?
Equality of opportunity during the Reagan and (dare I say it) the Thatcher decade of the 80s was a big factor in black and white applying themselves in creating fantastic ballads and wonderful songs that were big enough to play their small but not insignificant part in bringing down the Iron Curtain. The West Germans lapped it up, the East Germans then wanted it to. Most of it was fun and spirited and good-natured even. Everybody did not see themselves as victims. People were really beginning to go places, cheerfully. Everybody could see that they were each an uncommon man, an uncommon woman.
Now That’s What I Call Freedom! It’s as if, though, it never really happened. You’d think. Looking at America today.
D M
2 years ago
I would say the 80’s ‘best pop music period started in 1978 and lasted to 1987. Names I think of include Blondie, Elvis Costello, The Specials, Kate Bush – too many to mention.
Oh, absolutely. Elvis Costello, The Police, The Cars, Joe Jackson – all great stuff that began when I was in college. Also, I have a different theory about why it was and remains so influential: the 80s were optimistic, we had strong, capable, brave world leaders – Reagan, Thatcher, Walesa, John Paul – who genuinely cared about freedom and prosperity, the hideous Soviet Union was a crumbling mess, and the Berlin Wall came down in ’89. It was a wonderful time to be alive for many and an example for the rest of the world. But too few took heed, so we’re living in a dystopia. Is it any wonder why young people who were born in the new millennium are looking back?
A sense of wonder about the world was transmuted through the pop music and movies way back then. The effect was like the stars sending postcards to their fans every time they pumped out the hits. ‘Wish you were here’ … they seemed to wish to say. The desire to entertain and be entertained had been strong. Unfortunately today art and music must ‘speak’ to an audience. A particular audience. It’s the bedding down of cliques. The desire to have universal appeal has thus gone. And retaining a sense of wonder in the internet age has all but disappeared. A cold curiosity about everything has set in. Part of entertaining or cheering up an audience is, or ought to be, the delivery of something comforting, some solace or consolation. Not Bacchanalian stuff like the Mamma Mia! phenomenon, say (which was much more a puerile video posting than a postcard). Music-hall provided solace in spades, although with a little pomposity its entertainment side was puffed up. Anger and resentment in pop music seem to have displaced solace as the back-up to cheer. So don’t expect another The Power Of Love anytime soon. There were two songs of that very title in the Eighties. Pop music ain’t popular anymore.
Oh Allison, that is so very true, made me a bit tearful. Fantastic optimism and lust for life, today feels so drab in comparison. I am very glad I was a teen in the 80s.
Yes – and all this in spite of or perhaps because of the deep recession of the early 80’s as epitomised by Ghost Town. And I was well past my teenage years !
By 1987, a whole clutch of talented musicians probably thought to take a break after their efforts in the early 80s.
Jesper Bo Henriksen
2 years ago
A bit of survivorship bias here; easy to remember the Eighties greats while conveniently forgetting the dross of that decade. The Eighties artists who have made it through the generational curtain – and as an Eighties parent to 2022 teenagers, I know which ones have – tend to represent enduring human tropes.
Stupid drunk loud fun? Van Halen. Deep, artful, Rimbaudian despair? Joy Division. Simple cartoonish energy? The Ramones. Operatic joy and flamboyance? Queen.
Artists like Madonna and Phil Collins might be influential when it comes to contemporary music, but I rarely hear their names mentioned or their songs played at my house.
I wish I could get my kids into The Specials or early Public Image – that bass!. They couldn’t care less, though.
Absolutely agree. When BBC 4 was showing 80s totp it was mostly unwatchable. Does anyone remember the endless time that The Only Way is Up was in the charts? Ghastly song, ghastly singer
Don’t forget the Hair Metal bands – Twisted Sister, Poison, WASP. To be fair they were gloriously awful in a way that wouldn’t be possible today. I think the fact that MTV needed constant fresh content and spectacle – and had a huge audience – made these bands possible.
Good point. Although I think Guns ‘n’ Roses has stood the test of time, in part because Slash is an exceptional musician.
Martin Bollis
2 years ago
It’s not often I don’t get through an Unherd article but I couldn’t finish this one.
Perhaps it was the style or maybe just because the 70’s was clearly THE decade
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago
Utterly wrong- the 1965 to 1980 period was not only the golden age of creative, artistic popular music, it heralded so many different genres, including Mowtown, heavy rock, ballads, and country. The musicians were supremely talented, and itbis this music that I still hear at parties and dances of all generations. The 80s was a dead period of moog synthesis, and it has been downhill ever since
I think the peak was in 1978 but the earliest years in the 1980 were quite good as well. But it certainly tailed of by end of 80s In my comment I suggested 1978 to 1987 as best but the end is a bit fuzzy so I Could agree to 1978 to 1982 as peak. And pre 1978 certainly better tha post 1987.
You’ve actually been to a wedding that doesn’t play Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away” or Wham’s “Careless Whisper”?
These are the numbers that get all the generations on the dance floor.
JP Martin
2 years ago
When my upstairs neighbours were away for the weekend, their teenage daughters decided to throw a party (as teenagers should after so much misery in lockdowns). To my surprise and delight, they played nothing but 70s and 80s music. Almost exclusively English pop. Mercifully, there was no rap and no hip hop. It was interesting to me that two French girls who were not even born in the 1980s would make these choices.
Roger Inkpen
2 years ago
Yes, there is something about 80s music that has stood the test of time. Thinking back, it probably was the first half of the decade – up to Live Aid in fact. I’ve no problem with the Band Aid/Live Aid thing, but I wonder if some of the performers found themselves such worldwide stars it went to their heads. Or at least they lost much of their creativity.
Others will say the 60s, the 70s were better, but I don’t think any other decade compares for the sheer variety of pop and rock: indie, new wave, ska, reggae, new romantic, even early hip hop. Some of it was bubble gum pop like Wham, other stuff serious, even depressing like the Smiths, Joy Division.
You could say ‘the 80s’ started in the late 70s, with the offshoots of punk like Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, The Clash and PIL starting then. I was listening to Greatest Hits radio top ten the other day – in one week’s top 10 we had Blondie’s Rapture, Madness with Grey Day, Dire Straits with Romeo and Juliet, and Lynx – Intuition. All really strong singles, but totally contrasting music genres. This was 1981 when I was 16, so of course I might be biased 🙂 but I hear current music it sounds like musak. Someone warbling away on autotune, with no energy or enthusiasm!
N T
2 years ago
Pop really, sort-of starts a little earlier, sometime in the late 60’s or early 70’s with Queen, Led, Black Sabbath, etc. but it gained momentum through the 80’s. The only reason I know that is because even though we never tried to convince our kids that those groups were great (by that time, we had moved on to other things), they found them on their own, and they and their friends all jive to the same tunes we did.
It has been a weird, kind-of alarming reliving of all the things that happened during that time, and thinking “My parents were right, this IS the devil’s music, and these damn kids are doing the same things while listening to it that we did.”
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
As a child, I can recall being captivated by the sounds of the 70s. Before I was a teenager, like. The Carpenters, I liked.
Can we say as much about today’s music in relation to the very young as they go about the shops with their parents? Or into town with the car radio on? Are you captivated?
Iranian refugees to Britain who escaped the Islamic Revolution there, must have gained some solace from encountering the fun pop music back in the early-to-mid 80s. It’s possible, is it not? I don’t know what happy encounters to do with music today’s refugees make. It’s now a screeching wall of noise no doubt.
Once again the West shoots itself in the foot. You could swan around for the next fifty years with Elvis at your fingertips and never encounter the guy.
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago
Could the editor have not helpfully reduced this article to just this bit: “the Eighties is when everything goes garishly awry”
Prince but no Huey Lewis; Depeche Mode but no Howard Jones This is a good point. Hindsight filters out the tripe. My idea of a “legendary” band/act is one where either 1/ everyone likes at least one of their songs, or 2/ they’re still acquiring new fans today. There can’t be anyone who is today newly getting into Huey Lewis, or Whitney Houston, or Phil Collins, or Talking Heads, or The Jam, or Johnny Hates Jazz, or Bad Manners, or the Specials, or UB40, or Five Star. Yet if you want a moment of Proustian recall of times past 40 years ago, it can often be had by listening to such tat, exactly because it’s the first time you’ve heard it since you last heard it, on the radio, 40 years ago. After a few listens the effect fades, and you have to find new forgotten tat to listen to, in order to evoke the past again.
I attended a Specials concert a few years ago that attracted a good number of young Rude Boys. Too many, in my opinion, as their energetic dancing pushed us older fans off the floor.
The greatest disappearing act, in my opinion, has been performed by U2. Biggest band in the world at one point. My teenagers don’t know them and don’t want to know them. I tried “New Year’s Day” one recent Jan 1 and they made me turn it off.
SIMON WOLF
2 years ago
The early 80’s pop acts were overall better than the 70’s ones although arguably 80’s pop started with Abba’s videos partly because the 80’s singers tended to contribute to their own songs and videos whilst the 70’s ones had Svengalis figures.Abba are an example the 2 photogenic ladies rarely contributed to the songwriting but without the Ladies would anybody still playing their music.
However the 80’s rock groups are not a patch on their 60’s and 70’s influences.Take the Echo & The Bunnymen/Simple Minds/U2 brigade and compare them to their obvious influences The Clash The Doors, Genesis or Roxy Music.
SIMON WOLF
2 years ago
The early 80’s pop acts were overall better than the 70’s ones although arguably 80’s pop started with Abba’s videos partly because the 80’s singers tended to contribute to their own songs and videos whilst the 70’s ones had Svengalis figures.Abba are an example the 2 photogenic ladies rarely contributed to the songwriting but without the Ladies would anybody still playing their music.
However the 80’s rock groups are not a patch on their 60’s and 70’s influences.Take the Echo & The Bunnymen/Simple Minds/U2 brigade and compare them to their obvious influences The Clash The Doors, Genesis or Roxy Music.
Ed Cameron
2 years ago
If this is the music (and I was there, I heard) from which current artists draw inspiration, our culture will continue its slide into the vanilla cream greased abyss.
Who knows what I mean by “our” culture, but “my” seemed delusional in its grandiosity.
DM might have some of my record collection, which went missing in ’83. Were you in a share house in Glebe?
Give it back, mate.
Mikey Mike
2 years ago
“I Think We’re Alone Now” was released in 1967 by Tommy James and the Shondells. Proof that 60’s pop music is the best pop music.
Howard Ahmanson
2 years ago
The eighties? A great come down from the Golden Age of 1965-79!
Howard Ahmanson
2 years ago
The eighties? A great come down from the Golden Age of 1965-79!
God, this reads so much like something I had totally forgotten existed back then – one of those pretentious articles in NME or Melody Maker from the 80s. I didn’t know I missed that stuff until I read this piece.
Before the effortless internet descended upon us, an aspiring artist or musician had to I imagine dig into his or her inner self in order to … come up with the goods. Merit came with effort. If as I think someone in the Beatles once said that a song of note relies on its creator summoning up 1% inspiration, expending 99% perspiration, then in an interfering tech-ridden world, the amount of time spent on jamming or strumming under the stars must be a lot less. Also, some artists today make their statements when they join some political fray and tweet — their business of pop effectively becomes a sideline; their heart and soul must not be in it. Coming up with the goods is no longer a worthwhile endeavour itself when fame awaits anyway because pop is now a visual rather than an audio thing. The song had always tended to carry the video back in the 80s; now, unfortunately, the video carries the song. The lyrics may be flashed up on tiny screens as a way to overcome the fact that they are indecipherable to most ears. (Indecipherable because they have nothing to really say, or there is embarrassment at their insipidity?). But take away the hand-held technologies, take away the visual medium, then budding songwriters and pop artists will have to sing out loud and clear. They would have to make an effort to hit the big time in an analogue world. Universally meaningful lyrics would have to be written. That’s why pop music wasn’t just for 16-year-olds back in the 80s. But in the internet age, pop music has struggled to stay relevant as a meaningful thing in people’s lives. It’s only now a sliver of the entertainments on offer, all jostling with each other over the airwaves. Hence the screeching and wailing and mournful warbling coming out at you everywhere at the shops and petrol station forecourts (for crying out loud!). These singers of today are poor little victims! They are tired and angry and demand people listen to THEIR problems! Yet they don’t seem to realise that they speak to nobody. In ten quick years a twenty-five year old is middle-aged. Why should he or she not raid his parents’ old records?
Equality of opportunity during the Reagan and (dare I say it) the Thatcher decade of the 80s was a big factor in black and white applying themselves in creating fantastic ballads and wonderful songs that were big enough to play their small but not insignificant part in bringing down the Iron Curtain. The West Germans lapped it up, the East Germans then wanted it to. Most of it was fun and spirited and good-natured even. Everybody did not see themselves as victims. People were really beginning to go places, cheerfully. Everybody could see that they were each an uncommon man, an uncommon woman.
Now That’s What I Call Freedom! It’s as if, though, it never really happened. You’d think. Looking at America today.
I would say the 80’s ‘best pop music period started in 1978 and lasted to 1987. Names I think of include Blondie, Elvis Costello, The Specials, Kate Bush – too many to mention.
Blondie’s music didn’t age well, in my opinion.
Oh, absolutely. Elvis Costello, The Police, The Cars, Joe Jackson – all great stuff that began when I was in college. Also, I have a different theory about why it was and remains so influential: the 80s were optimistic, we had strong, capable, brave world leaders – Reagan, Thatcher, Walesa, John Paul – who genuinely cared about freedom and prosperity, the hideous Soviet Union was a crumbling mess, and the Berlin Wall came down in ’89. It was a wonderful time to be alive for many and an example for the rest of the world. But too few took heed, so we’re living in a dystopia. Is it any wonder why young people who were born in the new millennium are looking back?
A sense of wonder about the world was transmuted through the pop music and movies way back then. The effect was like the stars sending postcards to their fans every time they pumped out the hits. ‘Wish you were here’ … they seemed to wish to say. The desire to entertain and be entertained had been strong. Unfortunately today art and music must ‘speak’ to an audience. A particular audience. It’s the bedding down of cliques. The desire to have universal appeal has thus gone. And retaining a sense of wonder in the internet age has all but disappeared. A cold curiosity about everything has set in. Part of entertaining or cheering up an audience is, or ought to be, the delivery of something comforting, some solace or consolation. Not Bacchanalian stuff like the Mamma Mia! phenomenon, say (which was much more a puerile video posting than a postcard). Music-hall provided solace in spades, although with a little pomposity its entertainment side was puffed up. Anger and resentment in pop music seem to have displaced solace as the back-up to cheer. So don’t expect another The Power Of Love anytime soon. There were two songs of that very title in the Eighties. Pop music ain’t popular anymore.
Oh Allison, that is so very true, made me a bit tearful. Fantastic optimism and lust for life, today feels so drab in comparison. I am very glad I was a teen in the 80s.
Yes – and all this in spite of or perhaps because of the deep recession of the early 80’s as epitomised by Ghost Town. And I was well past my teenage years !
By 1987, a whole clutch of talented musicians probably thought to take a break after their efforts in the early 80s.
A bit of survivorship bias here; easy to remember the Eighties greats while conveniently forgetting the dross of that decade. The Eighties artists who have made it through the generational curtain – and as an Eighties parent to 2022 teenagers, I know which ones have – tend to represent enduring human tropes.
Stupid drunk loud fun? Van Halen. Deep, artful, Rimbaudian despair? Joy Division. Simple cartoonish energy? The Ramones. Operatic joy and flamboyance? Queen.
Artists like Madonna and Phil Collins might be influential when it comes to contemporary music, but I rarely hear their names mentioned or their songs played at my house.
I wish I could get my kids into The Specials or early Public Image – that bass!. They couldn’t care less, though.
Absolutely agree. When BBC 4 was showing 80s totp it was mostly unwatchable. Does anyone remember the endless time that The Only Way is Up was in the charts? Ghastly song, ghastly singer
Don’t forget the Hair Metal bands – Twisted Sister, Poison, WASP. To be fair they were gloriously awful in a way that wouldn’t be possible today. I think the fact that MTV needed constant fresh content and spectacle – and had a huge audience – made these bands possible.
Good point. Although I think Guns ‘n’ Roses has stood the test of time, in part because Slash is an exceptional musician.
It’s not often I don’t get through an Unherd article but I couldn’t finish this one.
Perhaps it was the style or maybe just because the 70’s was clearly THE decade
Utterly wrong- the 1965 to 1980 period was not only the golden age of creative, artistic popular music, it heralded so many different genres, including Mowtown, heavy rock, ballads, and country. The musicians were supremely talented, and itbis this music that I still hear at parties and dances of all generations. The 80s was a dead period of moog synthesis, and it has been downhill ever since
I think the peak was in 1978 but the earliest years in the 1980 were quite good as well. But it certainly tailed of by end of 80s In my comment I suggested 1978 to 1987 as best but the end is a bit fuzzy so I Could agree to 1978 to 1982 as peak. And pre 1978 certainly better tha post 1987.
You’ve actually been to a wedding that doesn’t play Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away” or Wham’s “Careless Whisper”?
These are the numbers that get all the generations on the dance floor.
When my upstairs neighbours were away for the weekend, their teenage daughters decided to throw a party (as teenagers should after so much misery in lockdowns). To my surprise and delight, they played nothing but 70s and 80s music. Almost exclusively English pop. Mercifully, there was no rap and no hip hop. It was interesting to me that two French girls who were not even born in the 1980s would make these choices.
Yes, there is something about 80s music that has stood the test of time. Thinking back, it probably was the first half of the decade – up to Live Aid in fact. I’ve no problem with the Band Aid/Live Aid thing, but I wonder if some of the performers found themselves such worldwide stars it went to their heads. Or at least they lost much of their creativity.
Others will say the 60s, the 70s were better, but I don’t think any other decade compares for the sheer variety of pop and rock: indie, new wave, ska, reggae, new romantic, even early hip hop. Some of it was bubble gum pop like Wham, other stuff serious, even depressing like the Smiths, Joy Division.
You could say ‘the 80s’ started in the late 70s, with the offshoots of punk like Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, The Clash and PIL starting then. I was listening to Greatest Hits radio top ten the other day – in one week’s top 10 we had Blondie’s Rapture, Madness with Grey Day, Dire Straits with Romeo and Juliet, and Lynx – Intuition. All really strong singles, but totally contrasting music genres. This was 1981 when I was 16, so of course I might be biased 🙂 but I hear current music it sounds like musak. Someone warbling away on autotune, with no energy or enthusiasm!
Pop really, sort-of starts a little earlier, sometime in the late 60’s or early 70’s with Queen, Led, Black Sabbath, etc. but it gained momentum through the 80’s. The only reason I know that is because even though we never tried to convince our kids that those groups were great (by that time, we had moved on to other things), they found them on their own, and they and their friends all jive to the same tunes we did.
It has been a weird, kind-of alarming reliving of all the things that happened during that time, and thinking “My parents were right, this IS the devil’s music, and these damn kids are doing the same things while listening to it that we did.”
As a child, I can recall being captivated by the sounds of the 70s. Before I was a teenager, like. The Carpenters, I liked.
Can we say as much about today’s music in relation to the very young as they go about the shops with their parents? Or into town with the car radio on? Are you captivated?
Iranian refugees to Britain who escaped the Islamic Revolution there, must have gained some solace from encountering the fun pop music back in the early-to-mid 80s. It’s possible, is it not? I don’t know what happy encounters to do with music today’s refugees make. It’s now a screeching wall of noise no doubt.
Once again the West shoots itself in the foot. You could swan around for the next fifty years with Elvis at your fingertips and never encounter the guy.
Could the editor have not helpfully reduced this article to just this bit: “the Eighties is when everything goes garishly awry”
We had bores like you in the Eighties as well.
Prince but no Huey Lewis; Depeche Mode but no Howard Jones
This is a good point. Hindsight filters out the tripe. My idea of a “legendary” band/act is one where either
1/ everyone likes at least one of their songs, or
2/ they’re still acquiring new fans today.
There can’t be anyone who is today newly getting into Huey Lewis, or Whitney Houston, or Phil Collins, or Talking Heads, or The Jam, or Johnny Hates Jazz, or Bad Manners, or the Specials, or UB40, or Five Star. Yet if you want a moment of Proustian recall of times past 40 years ago, it can often be had by listening to such tat, exactly because it’s the first time you’ve heard it since you last heard it, on the radio, 40 years ago. After a few listens the effect fades, and you have to find new forgotten tat to listen to, in order to evoke the past again.
Eric Clapton.
I attended a Specials concert a few years ago that attracted a good number of young Rude Boys. Too many, in my opinion, as their energetic dancing pushed us older fans off the floor.
The greatest disappearing act, in my opinion, has been performed by U2. Biggest band in the world at one point. My teenagers don’t know them and don’t want to know them. I tried “New Year’s Day” one recent Jan 1 and they made me turn it off.
The early 80’s pop acts were overall better than the 70’s ones although arguably 80’s pop started with Abba’s videos partly because the 80’s singers tended to contribute to their own songs and videos whilst the 70’s ones had Svengalis figures.Abba are an example the 2 photogenic ladies rarely contributed to the songwriting but without the Ladies would anybody still playing their music.
However the 80’s rock groups are not a patch on their 60’s and 70’s influences.Take the Echo & The Bunnymen/Simple Minds/U2 brigade and compare them to their obvious influences The Clash The Doors, Genesis or Roxy Music.
The early 80’s pop acts were overall better than the 70’s ones although arguably 80’s pop started with Abba’s videos partly because the 80’s singers tended to contribute to their own songs and videos whilst the 70’s ones had Svengalis figures.Abba are an example the 2 photogenic ladies rarely contributed to the songwriting but without the Ladies would anybody still playing their music.
However the 80’s rock groups are not a patch on their 60’s and 70’s influences.Take the Echo & The Bunnymen/Simple Minds/U2 brigade and compare them to their obvious influences The Clash The Doors, Genesis or Roxy Music.
If this is the music (and I was there, I heard) from which current artists draw inspiration, our culture will continue its slide into the vanilla cream greased abyss.
Who knows what I mean by “our” culture, but “my” seemed delusional in its grandiosity.
DM might have some of my record collection, which went missing in ’83. Were you in a share house in Glebe?
Give it back, mate.
“I Think We’re Alone Now” was released in 1967 by Tommy James and the Shondells. Proof that 60’s pop music is the best pop music.
The eighties? A great come down from the Golden Age of 1965-79!
The eighties? A great come down from the Golden Age of 1965-79!