If you were into punk, metal, and/or alternative music, the 80s were flat out revolutionary. We will never see a time like that again.
Oh, I do think RAM wasn't as great as Homework or Discovery, but I did think they gave us an amazing effort. I think the real prob with pro-tools vs. the synths and drum machines of the past is that now that people just assume it will be consumed with bargain basement ear-buds via an ipod that the production is skimp compared to the 1980s stuff. People may love to bang on Duran Duran but listen to how great the production on their songs sound (if you have a tolerance for 1980's music) whereas how distorted and drained of everything the production on a lot of top 40 music is today where it's all about computers making something listenable on an ipod. that's fine and all, but it's all an opinion, right? I'd rather listen to Prince and a lot of the stuff coming out of Europe in the 1980s vs. the stuff that was at Woodstock (barring maybe The Who whom I actually do like a lot). What makes me right or you right? It's all opinion and subjective. I've really tried hard to get into the Grateful Dead, I appreciate their talent but I seriously don't *get* it. My right to the opinion That said, I do like stuff like the Beatles, Stones, Velvet Underground, Who, Beach Boys, etc..... but a lot of the American stuff that was huge with the counterculture movement isn't quite as good to those of us who weren't there.
Right, it's just an opinion. But you didn't have to "be there" to like the music. You just have to know the music. Yep, I lived through, and listened to, the music of all three of the decades in question, and the music of the 80's isn't as good, to me, as the previous two decades. Just my opinion.
The 80s were hit or miss for me. I really like what Eurythmics did with their music and the sounds they were able to produce. However, hearing some "80s production values" in different settings is a major turn off. McCartney's Press to Play is a great example. I enjoy the songs (and a stripped down bootleg is really great) but that glossy, thin, shiny sound is all over the place there and on other albums.
wait, 83-4, bad years? the hurting, Koyaanisqatsi , murmur, war, blue monday, Synchronicity, Soul Mining, brilliant trees, purple rain, zoolook, the queen is dead, unforgettable fire, purple rain, smiths at their best, Mister Heartbreak, joe jackson at his best, sade, arvo part's tabula rasa ... i hate 80s drum sound with a passion but there was PLENTY to love....
Wow. This thread took off! Some people were well aware of the horrible factor and played it to good effect: I think Queen embraced it, but I'm not sure they ever tried to invent with it the way they had with '70s studio tech and that's more my gripe. I do very much enjoy "The Works" as an album. It felt like a much more adventurous album as a whole, but I still wasn't sold on the production. It's like the gripes I remember hearing from Roger Daltrey about Pete Townsend's obsession with synths in the late '70s - he recognized that they had a superb guitarist in the band, why cut out the guitars? Same with Queen. They had a really solid drummer and opted for rather pedestrian, sequenced drum tracks instead. That's one band where I legitimately think they hurt the material by going that route and it ultimately didn't help Roger Taylor as a drummer either. His skills seemed to atrophy as the decade wore on, which is a sin and a shame. But that said, yeah, I have the same reaction when it comes to bands that wholesale just dismiss everything about the '80s. You'd think they'd established an apartheid state the way they wash their hands of the decade...
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds alone make the 80's great. I don't believe they had "that 80's production sound". Little of the music I listen to from the 80's did, really. As I remember, it just wasn't played on the radio, except to the left on the dial, on college stations. The "cheesy sounding hits" of the decade have become a symbol of the time, unfortunately. YMMV, or course, but I think the 80's were great musically.
Of course I am. I have an opinion, based on a long history of listening to music of many genres. A lot of it I like, a lot of it I don't. There's no objective reason for it. I bet there are a lot of artists you don't like that I do. You probably think your opinion is just as justified as I do mine. What the hell else is this thread about? My specific point is that those 80s bands (and many, many others) were just as "corporate" and "stale" as the 90s bands that the earlier post I referenced were. I'm standing by that. I won't attempt to make you dislike them because that was never my intent.
Your right to an opinion, but I would say that very few would put Tears For Fears on the same level as "this is why I hate the 80s" as say, Mr. Mister or Night Ranger or something. Mr. Mister was much closer to a Nickelback/Imagine Dragons of 1985. TFF and Simple Minds never lost their credibility or respect in the alternative field just because they had brief moments of pop stardom in the mid 1980s. It would be like trashing Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins for the 90s when Hootie And The Blowfish was more what critics and "hipsters" hated then and still hate now.
Except there is a HUGE difference between saying "I don't like this" and calling something out as being "corporate" of which there is little to no evidence of in the case of Tears For Fears and Simple Minds. Having a hit record does not automatically make you corporate.
Lou's New York album was a great return to basics. Early next decade Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend and Nirvana's Nevermind burned cheesy production sounds to ashes. The Replacements and Pixies never succumbed to dated production (though Tim sounds thin).
MTV had kicked in by then. I either dislike or, in more cases, don't care about most of what you listed. The only good things about the 1980s were IMO were Tom Waits and David Lynch. YMMV.
If it was cheesy then it's certainly still cheesy now. Most of the albums I bought in the 80s I can still play today without being embarrassed and for some of the collections (Pet Shop Boys: Discography, Madonna: Immaculate Collection) the tracks hold up way better than the albums they came from (I didn't buy the albums). I don't believe I missed much. So listen carefully before buying. The 90s were a different matter I completely missed out on Shoe Gaze, Power Pop and Brit Pop and, with the help of this site, I have uncovered some real gems from the 90s and beyond.
I agree that 1977-1982 was great, but 83-84 are my favorite years for 80s music. There was such a diversity of great music on the charts in that time, with MTV just hitting its stride. Great memories for me.
I can definitely relate to the feeling. It felt like the singles were just being paraded out any time the opportunity to make a buck presented itself. Granted, that's more the record label than the band, but... Honestly, what rehabilitated at least Tears for Fears (still working on Simple Minds) was the Steve Wilson remix of Songs from the Big Chair. I approached it in terms of, "Well, lots of people seem to like them, the singles were ok songs and it seemed to deserve the 'luxe treatment, so let's see what it's about." The real tipping point for shattering any idea that TfF were corporate and stale for me was listening to the reissue and realizing I was hearing a cover of a Robert Wyatt song. Seriously, they covered "Sea Song," and rather well at that. I definitely gained an appreciation at that point. You may not like them even after that, but I'd hate to think of someone missing out on good music due to a misconception.
When I look at music in my collection, '82-'85 or so were a good span of years for just unusual sounds and songs. I will agree that, by the late '80s, even the more adventurous bands of the decades had stumbled into formulaic production and songwriting. For example, I'm a HUGE Oingo Boingo fan, but I still don't quite know what to make of Dead Man's Party. Good songs, but something about the album itself has always left me cold. The psuedo-self-titled album that followed gave me similar vibes, although it's grown on me as a bit of a sleeper hit. Though, it should be said, I like Dark at the End of the Tunnel specifically because it's an album that gives the finger to audience expectations - AND I love the songs. So, make of that what you will.
Boy oh boy! The 80's! Why so much hate? I dunno and I definitely don't. 80's music was and always will be the soundtrack of my life. The music that reminds me of my formative years. I think '84 and '85 are the best years for me. Never once did I listen to music back then and say, "$h1+, that snare has too much reverb on it! The mix is distorted, cold and muddy. I listened coz it meant something at that very moment of my life. When I listen to it now, it takes me back to happy memories. I didn't think about drum machines, synths or the production values. Of course, as music production became much more easier and accessible to everybody, my listening habits changed. For some reason, I couldn't keep myself and listen to a track in completion. I always find myself skipping to the next. It holds true to any music released after the 90's. I don't listen anymore, I scrutinize. But play any music from the 80's, I sit down and listen to the track in its entirety. And then memories start to come back. And it fills my heart with warmth and joy.
i need to do an 83/84 mixtape, and i'll add waits to the mix. i mean, i get the hate for the era, i really do but there are always strong artists that transcend eras miles davis had something to say about this
The 80s generally had a far more simplistic sound (for want of a better way of saying it) than the 70s. Queen stayed relevant at the time with their sound, unlike some of the big 70s acts (After Let's Dance, Bowie didn't have many big hits during the 80s, nor did Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath, to name a few). Although a lot of bands changed their sound, unlike many others, Queen pulled it off during that decade (for the most part, maybe aside from Hot Space). But I don't think it was down to laziness (although, Freddie Mercury generally took less interest in writing, but then there's the other three who stepped it up). I quite like the way The Game and The Works sounds, they're very much of their time (I don't think The Game - in particular - has aged too badly either). A Kind of Magic had some big hits, and The Miracle wasn't lazy either (listen to Was It All Worth It, for example).
The '80s (like any decade) was a mixed bag, and its end was very different from its start. I've already expressed a dislike for some '80s albums which bear certain unpleasant (to my mind) characteristics of the era. But the '80s was also a good time for certain genres: new wave and post punk (Siouxsie, The Cure, The Monochrome Set, and - don't laugh - early Fuzzbox, etc.) flourished, or continued to flourish, during the first half of the decade, and folky rock and pop was well represented almost throughout (Suzanne Vega, The Proclaimers, Aztec Camera, and XTC, etc.). I'd also add that one of my favourite bands, Fat and Frantic, emerged in the '80s - though, it might be said, they were still often making a bit of an 'orible racket till close to the turn of the decade. Also, by the '80s, production technology had matured to a level where a highly satisfying stereo soundstage could be presented - especially when compared to recordings from the '60s, or even the early '70s. (As an aside, I don't know why this had to be the case, given that highly satisfactory stereo classical recordings were being made as far back as the '50s using only two tracks - but then, pop/rock never really went for simulating the naturalistic soundstage of a live performance).
Here's the antidote to the ignorant 80s haters: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-other-80s.153918/
