How "old" is 80s music?

Funny thing about the difference between music and visual art. Nobody looks at a painting and goes "I don't like it... it looks really old!"

 

I don't like the term dated as it tends to get used. I hear music from just 10 or 15 years ago and it sounds....old or of its time. Hits of 5 years ago can be... relatively .... 'old.' But so what.

Rather, I hear that music tends to be steeped in its own time or era. The mainstream 80's sound is what it is and washes across the borders of the popular genres. Thus 80's music sounds (to me)....... like music of the 80's.

 

They never stopped playing 80s music on the radio which, oddly enough, made it always seem contemporary to whatever new music was being played along side it. In a sense, everyone who's grown up since the 80s has grown up on the same music.

 

And that's exactly my point. It's all good for what it has to offer. Even with the gated snares.

 

The 80s a decade when popular music became the most banal it had ever been - pretty much forgettable for me.

 

There was a lot of great music that came out in the 80s, but because it wasn't mainstream radio/MTV friendly most people don't think of it when they think of that era. There was more to the decade than gated snares...

 

I really got into a lot of newer music in the 80's and still like a lot of it. The stuff that doesn't hold up so well has mostly to do with production. I'm not real big into that drum machine (or drumming drummers playing like drum machines) or all that whip cracking stuff.

 

^^^ although Devo, "Whip It", that's cool!

 

I am.

 

Similarly, no one listens to a symphony and says, "I don't like it... it sounds really old." However, some visual and musical things can be similarly dated. Velvet paintings and blacklight posters from the 70's surely look more "dated" than Matisse or Van Gogh. When you're talking pop music, there's a lot more velvet paintings than Van Goghs out there.

However, I hit upon an idea that seems to make sense: Much of the music that I really consider "dated" is music that I can actually remember being "new." In other words, I remember it being released for the first time during a period of my life when I was purchasing music habitually. When I hear such music, I recall how young I was at the time, and sense instantly how distant that time is. Music that appeared before I was born or before I was about 14 and really started to be interested in music seems less "dated" to me because in a sense, it's out of my time frame. To put it in another context, recently when The Breakfast Club was re-released on Blu-ray and there was that brief interest in the deleted scenes and whatever, I found that looking at the famous images from that film filled me with a sense of how awfully long ago that was. I was 21 years old when that movie came out, so I well remember it being new, and because I remember it being new, it seems actually older and more dated to me than something like Rear Window, which was released ten years before I was born. My context for Rear Window just isn't as concrete as my context for The Breakfast Club, therefore one seems "older" to me when in fact it is far "newer."

 

The Killers were hugely influenced by Duran Duran. And on and on..

Yeah the 90's were the last hurrah for progression. Radiohead were very original and had a defined sound. But 2000 onwards nothing much has happened.

Perhaps because you grew up on it. Play New Order and The Eagles to a younger person and I know which one they will think is dated. Some 70's sound modern such as stuff like Donna Summer or late 70's Bowie/Roxy. But overall the 80's sound more fresh these days.

 

A fair enough point, although the other side of that coin is a lot of artists weren't intending to do throwaway music, even if that's what some of it amounted to in the end. For every Debbie Gibson, there was also a New Order.

 

I grew up on The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles then later Hendrix, Cream, the Doors etc, but when I think of 80's music I think of The Clash, Fripp and Eno, R.E.M., Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Talking Heads, U2, The Psychedelic Furs, Gary Numan, The Bongos among others. I still like a lot of that stuff quite a bit.

 

Talking only about pre-00s music with other people who only really like pre-00s music would certainly make it seem that way, at least.

There hasn't been much new under the sun for quite some time now, but to say "nothing much has happened" in the progression of popular music since 2000 is quite false.

Oh, and Radiohead? Very original!

Nothing new under the sun.

 

Metal in all its glorious forms exploded in the Eighties. Most of it still holds up today and in many cases has never been bettered.

 

80s are the new 1960s.
Ancient in other words.
Speaking to a young guy while buying cinema ticket. Somehow I mentioned 1960s tunes, and he said he sometimes listens them and smiled. Dunno, felt he thought they were to busy ie intro verses /chorus /bridge /verse etc, maybe from his perspective the verse in the song was alright ( just have that as a song base)no need for bridge or chorus.

 

Oh, intent often has nothing to do with it. There's probably thousands of Serious Artists who were appalled to see their careers become disposable. And a lot of artists weirdly have their biggest hits with something they intended to throw away.

 

I was born in 1998 and I grew up with primarily 60's music with a good amount of 50's, 70's and some 80's and barely any 90's mixed in. I couldn't care for anything released in the 2000's and 2010's, but since it was contemporary I couldn't escape it. When I was 5, I considered 50's and 60's music oldies since K-Earth 101 branded themselves as an oldies station and that's what they usually played. I can remember hearing "Yes I'm Ready" by Barbara Mason on the way to school on the first day of 1st grade.

Besides that pretext, I wouldn't consider 80's to be "oldies" yet even though that's the main decade of music for K-Earth 101 now. No more 60's and they are starting to leave the 70's behind. But 80's music is getting there to being oldies and it doesn't help since most of the 80's recording techniques have been considered dated with the drum sound and synthesizer sound being left behind at the end of the decade.

But that's the opinion of a young adult who grew up with old music already. I have friends who grew up listening to music mainly released as they were growing up so going back in time to listen to music I bet they'll consider 80's to be oldies music. Hell, songs released 5 years ago are considered "throwbacks" to us because it brings back memories. And of course there's some of us going back to the 70's in their music choice. I have a few friends who love ABBA, Queen and David Bowie. When I DJ'ed my close friend's parties, I tend to bring a lot of my 7" singles and I bring nearly all of my well-known 70's and 80's because I know that's what more people are going to recognize and of course I bring my selections of my huge 60's singles which include Beatles, Herman's Hermits, Zombies, Dave Clark Five, Hollies, Buckinghams, Temptations, etc. I even have friends who know 60's music too outside of Beatles and other well known songs from the decade like "My Girl", but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who's heard of groups like Gary Lewis and The Playboys, The Intruders, Count Five, The Neon Philharmonic and Freddie & The Dreamers. The closest friend I got who knows 60's groups told me she's heard of the Electric Prunes when I mentioned them once

Point is, the majority of them know 80's music primarily and consider them oldies, but they love that kind of stuff. I don't think I ever been to a party in the last year that played 80's music and didn't play "Take On Me" or "Let's Dance" or "Under Pressure". Last time I DJ'ed, I got requests for New Wave or Bowie and I swiftly put on a Bowie record next and it was "Last Dance".

So, bottom line, 80's music isn't old to me, but to others around my age, it can be considered "oldies" to them depending if they grew up with modern music instead of music their parents may have listened to. There's this post I've seen countless amount of times where us young adults think 2007 was only three years ago, then we realize that it's actually been however many years its been since (This time it's 11 years) and wonder "where's the time gone". Speaking of which, it's hard to imagine that the 80's began 38 years ago.

 

Talking about 80s top 40 music - popular music for the masses.

 

In the 1980s, I heard 50s and 60s music a lot more then I do now. The same goes for TV shows. I remember several radio stations here that only played 50s and 60s rock. Now I don't hear any of them anymore unless it's satellite radio. I was bombarded with it more then country and I live in TN.

From my point of view, the 70s and 80s have taken the place of 50s and 60s music in regards to what I hear regarded as "classic". My guess is, in the next 20 years the 80s retro thing will be replaced with the late 90s and early 2000s. Of course I could be wrong.

 

Well great music no matter what decade doesn't age. Born in 93 so I've heard a variety of 80's music that I still love. If you dig it, than you dig it.

 

No, no no.....80s girls fashion was BAD and unfortunately, that was when I was in my prime....

 

80s needs to go away. it was awful at the time and its worse now

 

90s Music is the last 'era' of music that I can identify knowledgeably----most everything since then sounds interchangeable to me---something POP in 2001 could be brand-new today and I wouldn't notice it as being 'old' or 'retro'.