What were white male jocks listening to in Minnesota, summer 1980?

I recently visited my parents and found an old program for the "Mr. Minnesota Teen" contest from the summer of 1980. I was a fish out of water at this event as it was mostly jocks with a few nerds like me sprinkled in. I ran cross country and was therefore deemed athletic enough.

As part of the program, they had us put on Phy Ed clothes and perform a goofy kind of dance while "YMCA" played over the intercom. We used our arms to spell Y-M-C-A . . . clever. This was rather humiliating since the event took place in my hometown. Morris, MN population ~5000. I have pictures that really should be destroyed and thankfully, no one made a video. (It would've been a home movie in those days.)

In the program, each participant listed their favorite food, movie, etc. including music. When asked for "most admired", nearly every person listed an athlete. Below is the list of artists mentioned along with the frequency that they appeared. Please note that these questions were asked in the late spring of 1980 to a bunch of white jocks around 18 years old from various Minnesota High Schools.

Some class clown put "Cheese & The Slicers". About a dozen participants couldn't be bothered to write anything at all.

FWIW, my vote was for The Beatles.

Artist - Votes
Styx 16
Boston 12
ELO 11
The Cars 10
Eagles 7
Kenny Rogers 7
Bob Seger 6
The Doobie Brothers 6
Barry Manilow 5
Abba 4
Billy Joel 4
Meatloaf 4
Supertramp 4
The Beatles 4
Blondie 3
Little River Band 3
Van Halen 3
Cheap Trick 2
Donna Summer 2
Earth Wind & Fire 2
Lynyrd Skynyrd 2
Neil Diamond 2
Pink Floyd 2
REO Speedwagon 2
The Imperials 2
Aerosmith
Bad Company
Bee Gees
Cheese & The Slicers
Donna Summer
Elton John
England Dan & John Ford Coly
George Thorogood
Harry Chapin
James Taylor
Led Zeppelin
Melissa Manchester
Michael Johnson
Molly Hatchet
Neil Young
Pilot
Queen
Rod Stewart
Rush
Seals & Crofts
Simon & Garfunkel
Ted Nugent
The Bay City Rollers
The Carpenters
The Commodores
The Dirt Band
The Marshall Tucker Band
The Oak Ridge Boys
The Rolling Stones
Tom Petty & Heartbreakers
Toto

 

No one listened to Springsteen? Hard to believe.....

 

Ok ....I see. It was a bunch of jocks. Explains Kenny Rogers and Manilow....

 

Definitely not a college audience at the time which would have had a much different list. Surprised Heart aren't mentioned...

 

Two votes for REO Speedwagon pre-Hi Infidelity, interesting.

 

Interesting. I see a lot of high school sports yearbooks and these days I don't see nearly as much diversity. About 60% answer Drake, about 30% Kenny Chesney, and about one in ten have an interesting answer.

 

Survivor, Rush, Styx, Yes, Journey, Joan Jett

 

Plasmatics. Duh.

 

The Stones only got one vote? Yet the Beatles who were long broken up got 4.

Interesting list, thanks for sharing.

 

No one will admit listening to Kiss in 1980? Not one?

 

Wow, thanks for sharing your interesting story. Out of genuine curiosity, what was the favorite food and favorite movie?

 

I have to say that I think that you have won the most specific thread title ever. At first, I thought you were asking if someone had this information. I was only 7 in 1980 living in New Ulm, Minnesota and already collecting vinyl. At that time I had yet to discover my musical obsessions: Prince, The Beatles, Mozart, and many others. But I had quite the Barry Manilow collection already. I would love to have met the 5 jocks that were Fanilows! I am quite shocked that Barry edged out, well, anyone on this list.

 

Some of us in the Midwest were late to the Springsteen wave.

In Central Illinois REO would have had many more votes—Live and Tuna Fish were 8-track essentials back then. And Van Halen.

 

Cheese and the Slicers????

 

1980...

Take a look at the cover to Loverboy’s Get Lucky.
Says everything about the early 80’s

 

No Sabbath?!

 

I’m surprised Pilot garnered a vote as late as 1980.

 

I can't believe Fleetwood Mac aren't.

It's like rock and roll never happened.

Never heard of them. Doubted it was Little Anthony's group so I checked wiki. They were/are a Christian band.

Michael Jackson?

Punks and stoners.

Completely incomprehensible.

No, you don't.

 

Wasn't alive in the summer of 1980 but the summer of 2000 was Eminem's. I still remember returning to school on the first day of class after summer break and practically every other kid was wearing a white shirt with bleach blonde hair. His influence around that time was massive.

 

And I was wondering why you needed it... Writing a novel set during the period?

 

It was embarrassing to admit you liked Kiss in 1980. If it was 1976 you would probably see about 30 votes!

 

True.

 

No Dead? Where I was in 1980 it seemed like everyone was listening to the Dead. Everyone but me that is.

 

By the time of Unmasked they’d most definitely hit their sell-by date.

What surprises me a bit is that Styx were #1. Styx?!? Sure they were popular, but #1? What kind of jocks were these?

 

Rock in The East was a bit different from what we experience as our reality in the Midwest. It's not the Jerseyesque identification that caused Eastern fans to exclusively bond with Springsteen, as much as, that they were also much more aware of the comings and goings of the Rock scene in general, compared to the casual fandom in the flyover states. Out here in the farmlands, your bigger cities were a palpable distance further away than in your NYC/Boston/Philly/Baltimore metroplex.

And of course, when we get Way Out West, well that's a whole other kettle of pop culture separated between the cities by in some cases, nearly a day's drive.

And now remember, we had a couple of years before Born In The U.S.A., and Bryan Adams and Mellencamp were both morphing into a juggernaut (soon to be joined by Brooooooce) of testosterone-tinged pop, that would move through the Radio world, approximately as fast as a doe being digested by a large snake. MTv was yet to attach its' neon-colored tentacles onto American youth's brainstems. But, that actually happened first, and was really somewhat dulled in effect by the Adams/Springsteen/Mellencamp influence, as American record companies and radio stations leery of losing their status as Tastemaker to some cable tv channel, cause them to scour the scene for "the next 'Jack & Diane'", et al.

And, then so what does Clive Davis bring us? Whitney freakin' Houston! And the Pop wars were on again...Cyndi Lauper...Michael Jackson...Madonna...Prince...Go-Go's/Bangles (wait, they weren't the same band... ). But, America's lock on Rock had its' soldiers already, and nobody with tattered, acid-washed jeans brought results like Bryan Cougar Springsteen.


So you can conclude that in 1980, music awareness outside the larger pop-culture communities in the Seaboard and the Left Coast, music was more focused on...more of the same.