I wish there was a way to pour some sugar on that, but you can’t fight this feeling.
The music often reflects the times and the ’80s are no exception. It was a decade of exuberance -- bright clothes, gaudy hairstyles and shameless music.
There’s no decade that matches it for grating, cheesy pomposity.
It’s supposed “highs” are of the face-meets-palm variety with the likes of “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “Up Where We Belong” or “Funkytown.”
It’s a decade responsible for Wham!, Milli Vanilli, Debbie Gibson, Great White, Dokken, Motley Crue, Hall and Oates, Boy George, Loverboy, Air Supply, Rick Astley and many, many more abominations.
Here are seven-and-one-third more words to convince you: “We built this city on rock ’n’ roll!”
Does anything induce the gag reflex as much as Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear
it for the Boy,” a 1984 hit that pretty much encapsulates everything horrifying
about pop music in the 1980s synthesizers as a primary instrument, unnecessary amounts of reverb and a tendency toward dance pop brazenly lacking in self-awareness?
I almost feel a little guilty about this because making fun of ’80s music is like picking on the slow kid at school.
It would be one thing to berate one-hit wonders, but my distaste for the decade extends further to otherwise reputable artists who were engulfed by the vortex of shame.
Bob Dylan, that champion of ’60s counterculture, became a born-again Christian and released some of his worst material.
The Clash went from the raw power of “Janie Jones” to the novelty pop of “Rock the Casbah” in just five years.
Despite their own claims, The Rolling Stones did much more suckin’ in the ’80s than the ’70s or any other decade of its career.
Rock ’n’ roll had ceased shocking people. It was there to mollify us with the likes of Ratt, Poison (right), Warrant, Skid Row, Slaughter, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner and Journey with bad, long hair, tight jeans and a color palette to make Richard Simmons blush.
For me, synthesizers are the biggest reason for the wretchedness.
Nothing distinguishes music from the ’80s as much as a firm layer of cheesy synth.
It so permeated popular music from the decade that use of the bass guitar became passé. Look at Van Halen, which went from 1970s metal thump to “Jump,” which relies heavily on an escalating synth phrase.
Reverb, too, was out of hand. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” is awash in walls of it. The album also suffers from overblown production values and rides on a pile of synthesizers. In spite of these things, it remains a decent record.
It’s worth noting that this epidemic did not spread to the then-fledgling hip-hop genre. “Old school” hip-hop is generally remembered for being either silly and fun of the Sugarhill Gang variety or political such as Public Enemy.
Yet culture has a way of wrapping back around on itself, which makes the new wave/post-punk revival going on so eyebrow raising to me.
These are groups such as The Killers, Muse, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, The Faint, Editors, Foals, Arctic Monkeys, The Ting Tings or Abe Vigoda.
I think we go in 20-year cycles with things like this because the individuals who are responsible for this were kids the first time around, so it influences the musicians. For the listeners, there’s something familiar about this brand of material.
These bands have taken the worst elements of the ’80s and reigned them in. The synth is there, but it usually doesn’t drive the mood of the song. The reverb is there, too, to give the songs a wider sense of scope rather than dominating the hearing landscape.
Still, some of them get a little too close to their inspiration. I can stand these bands, but only in small doses.
People who enjoy the material on terms that are not ironic must have a personal attachment to the period, maybe growing up during it.
Seriously, the 1980s represent the worst in music and popular trends. It’s a decade that is worth forgetting in musical terms.
Let’s never hear it for the boy again.
Ever.
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