'80s? Music? I wasn't all silly pop.

[jarit]

The Eighties is often thought as a decade of really poor and easily forgettable pop. There were some really great bands, however.
The last of these three songs I listened to when I was driving a van that I didn't own,from Guerrero Mexico, to Chiapas. I was nineteen years old, didn't have drivers license even in home country. Frank, the van owner from Thunder Bay Canada had the Billy Idol song on a loop on a casette. Good Times!
Killing Joke: eighties!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD2oVEn0evE
British Godfothers tell us how the world works: - Birth, School, Work, Death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO5dcW0P75M
The Cult - Not the cherry tobacco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I8mWG6HlmU
Billy Idol - Eyes without a face - this gets me every time!, hypnotic.

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

 

[andrew]

I would say the 80's was the last decade where there was actually good pop. 2000-2010 was probably the worst music in history off the top of my head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDFeZb2f9wg

 

[voorhees]

I am a child of the 70's and as a teen in the 80's I pretty much embrace all of the things it produced. If you like it, good for you.

 

[pitchfork]

I was a child of the 80s, but as a teen in the early 90s I sort of rediscovered all the great punk and new wave stuff from the 80s that I had only heard snippets of here and there as a kid.
But it's true, there was a lot of silly pop stuff from that decade. And yet, I agree with Andy, 2000-2010 produced some of the worst pop music ever. I grew up listening to 70s and early 80s country with my dad (Waylon, Willie, George Jones), but to me even country music of the last 15 years or so is mostly corporate pop with a twang.

 

[dustmite]

https://youtu.be/6j7E7pvLxmI
I'm a sucker for late 80's hair bands.

 

[voorhees]

+1 dust mite.

 

[pitchfork]

LOL, I had to explain to my 13-year old the other day what a "hair band" was.

 

[andrew]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCChxBSRo1Y
Well some of it was silly, but it was epic in an over the top way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM
Then you have just downright killer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4nCy5CITc8
The 80's rocked.

 

[lordofthepiperings]

I think the best way to sum up the 80s is everyone was on coke lol. That's why the music was synthed out and pretty bad, the hair was huge and really bad, and the clothes were neon and even worse.
I was born in '85 and grew up a child of the grunge/alternative of the 90s.

 

[voorhees]

Hey no dissing the eighties piperings. It was a great ride, in the 90's everybody became so emotional and hateful.

 

[bulldogbriar89]

I think the 80's had some of the best music I was born in 88, but got to catch the tale end of the 80's styles in the early 90's other then the Pop Music you had greats like Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, George Strait, Willie Nelson, George Jones........

 

[wyfbane]

80's was the pinnacle of pop music. The advent of New Wave was just a great thing to experience first hand.
Rock was great too, Idol leaving X and going Rock, Journey, Boston, Scorpions, Iron Maiden, The Cult.
Metal came into it's own. Mettalica, Megadeth, Slayer, Ozzy hitting a whole 'nother level.
Hair bands: Def Leppard, Poison, Ratt, Skid Row.
But I always had a deep affinity for punk. The 80's were the golden age of Punk:
Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Minutemen, The Clash, The Exploited, The Dead Milkmen, 7 Seconds, Mojo Nixon, Misfits, Minor Threat, D.O.A., Suicidal Tendencies, Minor Threat, Sonic Youth, G.B.H. Such a rich musical era!!

 

[mso489]

As bulldogbriar89 suggests, during the 80s country music came out of its long back-country isolation and became a real force in pop music with a much younger demographic than before. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and their tribe took over a significant segment of the pop music scene. Hank Williams was revived as more than just a cowboy hat oddity and was appreciated for his earlier powerful contributions to American music. Bob Dylan took a serious detour into country, as did other former rock and folk musicians. An odd footnote: I discovered country music for myself in the 50's on a local Chicago area show, a sort of a.m. radio Grand Ole Opry locally produced called "Suppertime Frolicks" which played country music for a lot of blue collar folks arriving from the South for work in the Chicago area where they claimed whole neighborhoods for their own.

 

[conlejm]

Some of the great music from AC/DC, Dire Straits, U2, Bruce Springsteen, The Police, The Clash, REM, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Jaco Pastorius, Dwight Yoakam, Los Lobos, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, John Prine, Anita Baker, Sade, and many, many others came out in the 80s. Heck, even Bob Dylan, David Bowie and the Rolling Sones put out some great music in the 80s. And while this music may not resonate with some, it inspired many. I was a teenager in the 80s, and while I wasted many hours listening to (what is now, in retrospect) crappy hair band music, I still think of that era as a period of great music. It was like a musical "pre-Cambrian explosion" of sorts; so many new styles of music evolved. Some good, some not so good. I was never into the real heavy stuff like Metallica, but even a lot of that music came about in the 80s.

 

[andrew]

I think the best way to sum up the 80s is everyone was on coke lol.

Totally true in most cases. I've come to find the 80's had a cocaine fueled sound. I guess you just have to know that feeling of rushing out on coke and feeling that riff.
Funny thing is I hated the 80's mostly and then the late 90's made me realize what a wicked time it was.

 

[phil67]

I had to explain to my 13-year old the other day what a "hair band" was.

Then maybe you could do the same for me? I guess I'm on the opposite end of the pole here being 68. To me the late 60's and early to mid 70's had the best bands, i.e., Led Zeppelin, Sly and the family Stone, Chicago (whom I used to see in a State St. lounge called Beavers when they were called the CTA),Santana and a plethora of others. When it got to the 80's I was totally turned off to the music coming out.

 

[pitchfork]

Hair bands are 80s metal bands who, for whatever reason, wore their hair like 17th-century aristocrats.

Charles II:

His brother, James II:

 

[racerx]

Echo and the Bunnymen, The Clash, XTC, Talking Heads, The Cure, The Jam, The Smiths, Joy Division, I could go on all night. What's not to like? There were some GREAT bands in the '80s.

 

[darthcider]

There is good music being made all the time, you just have to look a bit harder sometimes.

+1 for new wave, The Smiths, The Cramps etc.

 

[yaddy306]

Racerx, now you are speaking my language. Add in the Pixies, Stone Roses, Ministry, Sisters of Mercy...