What's the deal with the 80s? (1 Viewer)

[Mike Broadman]

I know a lot of people like to pick on the 80s music scene- imitator new-wave bands, hair metal, cheese-pop, etc. Ok, fine. But it seems to me that most of the bands or artists who I liked that started before the 80s suddenly started to suck once that decade began. What happened? Here are some examples to help illustrate my point:
Yes
Anti-proggers, you might want to skip this part. I love Yes when they're at their most absurd and "progressive." Relayer, Close To the Edge, and even Tales From Topographic Oceans. They broke up and reformed in the 80s with Trevor Rabin playing guitar and played simple, direct pop music. I have no problem with this. I like some pop music. But Yes' pop was particularly awful, IMO. I'd honestly rather listen to Madonna.
Jethro Tull
In my book, Ian Anderson is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. When the 80s hit, he formed a completely new band and bogged down his sound with cheesy synthesizers and electronic beats. Yech. The sad thing is, I can hear some great songwriting here and there, but I can't tolerate listening to it because of the sound and production. Add to the fact that Anderson's voice deteriorated, and the 80s were just not kind to Tull.
Bob Dylan
Ok, I know little of Dylan's 80s stuff. But, I've heard some, and it is weak. Of course I love a lot of what he did before (Blood On the Tracks, John Wesly Harding, etc) and I really like his latest stuff. So what happened in between? Am I just missing something?
Judas Priest
They used to ROCK! There early stuff is some good metal listenin'. British Steel is decent, but they became like Poison afterwards. Uch.
Genesis
Their change in style certainly helped them commercially. Artistically, however, a lot of it sounds silly nowadays. In recent memory, I see younger people more interested in 70s Genesis than 80s Genesis. Perhaps their better material will be remembered more kindly.
The only band that stayed good or got better in the 80s was Rush (though most would argue with this, I know, but this is my post, so I say Moving Pictures, Signals, and Hold Your Fire were three of their best albums ).
Possible factors for the crappiness of the 80s:
Obsession with synthesiser technology:
I guess it sounded cool then, but it sounds cheesy and dated now. Funny how electric guitars and regular drums don't sound dated now. I wonder if the electronic music of today will sound dated in 20 years.
Punk / new wave:
The whole "movement" of getting music back to basics, DYI, etc, took the passion away from music that may have been more involved. There's certainly nothing wrong with simple music (I like the Talking Heads and such.) But bands like Yes and Gentle Giant were probably under a lot of pressure to make pop music. Since these bands simply were not plain ol' pop bands, they failed.
Running out of steam:
Happens to the best of us. Maybe they just didn't have it anymore and were past their prime.
What an odd decade for music.

 

[Rick_Brown]

You asked the question, and answered it completely!

 

[Ike]

I was under the impression that you were, but you need to dig deeper. The post-punk movement was in effect, so there were tons of great bands:

Sonic Youth

The Pixies

Husker Du

Big Black

Black Flag

My Bloody Valentine

The Smiths

REM

The Replacements

The Butthole Surfers

And many more. Yeah, some classics stuttered, and I think it was part synthesizer/video coming in, thus the heavier influence of shitty Euro bands, but there were some really great bands.

 

[BrianB]

Bob Dylan

Ok, I know little of Dylan's 80s stuff. But, I've heard some, and it is weak. Of course I love a lot of what he did before (Blood On the Tracks, John Wesly Harding, etc) and I really like his latest stuff. So what happened in between? Am I just missing something?

He changed religion, it influenced his work greatly & he lost his way musically.

He took a long break from recording, toured heavily & came back in the mid 90s.

 

[Ike]

Yeah, Dylan's religion was called his Yoko Ono. I always found that amusing.

 

[MikeAW]

John Lennon being shot pretty much finished the decade off early, from whatever promise the seventies offered. It was a loss of momentum and sliding into a general maliase. Men At Work...and alot of One Hit Wonders exemplifies the mediocre and inept music stuff that was being lauded as "great". There was really no, one, singular music style that really grabbed you, so everyone was grabbing at straws, so to speak.

If there was ANY music style that flourished and matured, in the 80's, it was General Pop Music. And it wasn't until Madonna sang "Like A Virgin" in 1985, that there seemed any direction to where Music had been, and was "going". She made Pop Music profitable and legitimate for the more seasoned artists to engage in, respectably. Michael Jackson, Prince and Whitney Houston helped her take it, and made it "crossover", and a popular music art form for everyone. Even George Harrison had a hit song, coasting on this wave...he...writer of "Ding Dong"...couldn't even, not get it and not have a hit! That's how bad the music was before Madonna.

If any other music movement had any relevance it was Dance and that took us back into the 90's. But all thanks to Madonna...thank God...because she saved the decade from total meaninglessness !!!! And she saved the Music Companies too.

 

[Mike Broadman]

Ike, sorry I didn't make myself clearer (I do write in haste). I very much dislike punk. I've heard most or all of the bands you listed, and don't like them at all.

What surprises me isn't all the new (at the time) bands that sucked, but the older ones who became bad. It's like there was some conspiracy or Star Trek-ish space-time anamoly that effected all of these musicians simultaneously. Scary.

Mike, aren't you placing a tad too much emphasis on a couple of single events? I hardly think Lennon's assasination effected the creative ability of other artists, nor did some cheesy dance-pop song "save" music.

I was somewhat aware of Dylan's religious thing, but I didn't mention because I was afraid that people would yell at me and that would get the thread closed. However, I'd be curious to hear what it sounded like. I mean, lyrics aside, was the music still as good, or did that suffer, too?

Btw, not that it really matters I guess, but what's the deal now? Is he still Christian but not as vocal about it, or has he renounced it?

 

[Ryan Spaight]

Well, for me the 80s were the era of the Big Album. Lots of records were released that contained tons of hit singles and sold well across a wide demographic range. Consider:

Huey Lewis - Sports

Madonna - Like A Virgin

Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA

Prince - Purple Rain

Michael Jackson - Thriller

Cars - Heartbreak City

Don Henley - Building The Perfect Beast

Police - Syncronicity

Sting - Dream of the Blue Turtles

Genesis - Invisible Touch

Phil Collins - No Jacket Required

Lionel Richie - Can't Slow Down

INXS - Kick

Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms

Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet

Van Halen - 1984

Pretenders - Learning To Crawl

Wham - Make It Big

Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual

David Bowie - Let's Dance

Peter Gabriel - So

Billy Joel - An Innocent Man

Whitney Houston - Whitney Houston

Tina Turner - Private Dancer

Bryan Adams - Reckless

And all these just between 1983 and 1986! I'm sure I'm forgetting many more.

I'm not saying these are good albums -- some are good, some are wretched. But they all sold millions, spawned lots of radio singles that were played on the *same stations*, and sold to everyone and their mom, not just teens or stoners or yuppies or raveheads. MTV had a lot to do with this, I'm sure -- for a few years, it unified the music world.

I challenge anyone to come up with even a few albums in the 90s that were such broad-based hits, let alone that many from a four year span.

My point? Maybe the problem with the eighties is that everything was so broad in appeal, it didn't have the depth necessary to stand the test of time. (As Sammy Hagar so memorably observed, "Only time will tell if we stand the test of time.")

Ryan

 

[Frank_W]

I actually enjoyed Judas Priest up to the mid-80's with

Point of Entry, Screaming for Vengeance and Defenders

of the Faifth.

It was when Turbo Lover came out that I gave up.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Mike's premise was why did so many artists that started in the 60s and 70s all of a sudden derail in the 80s, even if the got back on track in the 90s. He was not talking about late 70s and early eighties punk and pop bands like Talking Heads, R.E.M., or The Smiths. I have to admit he has a point. Of the artists he listed, I would add Neil Young and The Rolling Stones as victims of extended slumps during the 80s.
I think Mike zeroed in on most of the reasons, but part of it may have also been MTV. I think that some of the established bands thought that they had to look and sound like the bands that were breaking at the time, so everyone wound up with the exact same drum sound and funny hair. David Bowie was kind of a natural fit for this, but even he went into a ten year tailspin after Let's Dance.
Regards,

 

[Anthony Hom]

If there was another banner years in the 80's for mass appeal albums, it was from 80-82.

Billy Joel - Glass Houses

Journey - Escape

Foreigner - 4

Stevie Nicks - Bella Donna

Bob Seger - Against The Wind

Chicago - 17

Hall and Oates - Private Eyes

Toto - IV

David Bowie - Let's Dance

More examples of big albums of the 80's that spawned many hit songs, (good or bad).

 

[Ike]

Ike, sorry I didn't make myself clearer (I do write in haste). I very much dislike punk. I've heard most or all of the bands you listed, and don't like them at all.

I realize that this off track-

But your seriously don't like Sonic Youth, The Pixies, or Husker Du? None I'd consider punk (though they have their roots in punk) and most I'd consider some of the best music of the last 20 years. I can see someone finding The Big Black not their cup of tea, but these I'd put in the same league as The Stones or The Beatles-classic rock.

 

[Mike Broadman]

But your seriously don't like Sonic Youth, The Pixies, or Husker Du?

I haven't heard enough of these bands to say I don't like them. I've heard some Sonic Youth (don't ask me which songs or albums, I don't remember) and couldn't dig it. Same goes for Huskur Du. I don't think I've heard the Pixies.

If given the opportunity to listen to this stuff for free, I'd give it another shot, sure. But this stuff just doesn't hold any appeal to me. I have no interest in REM, the Clash, Blondie, the Ramones or any of that post-punk 80s stuff, even the "indy" material. Only the Talking Heads is sort of an exception, and that's specifically because of Remain In Light and the polyrhythmic stuff they did at their peak.

In that sense, though, the 80s were no different that any other moment in music. The early 90s had the grunge thing, where most bands were lame (there were exceptions, of course). The mid-late 70s was full of arena rock acts with no soul. And so on. But at each time, there are some bands that are great. The only difference with the 80s is that a lot of great bands started churning out lesser material.

MTV was mentioned, but what about radio? Did radio changed the way music was promoted at this time in some fashion?

 

[Ike]

I don't think I've heard the Pixies.

It really depends on what album you get, but if you start with Doolittle, these guys are really like a power pop group. Surfer Rosa, however, is much harder, and much more experimental. But there are some truly fantastic songs-Hey, Cactus, Where Is My Mind? (you may know from the end of Fight Club), Gigantic, Velouria, I Bleed, etc. Seek these guys out!

 

[Ryan Spaight]

MTV was mentioned, but what about radio? Did radio changed the way music was promoted at this time in some fashion?

Only insofar as radio followed MTV's lead. Everyone was watching MTV, and whatever MTV played become a hit, which then was played on the radio.

It was essentially a mass homogenization of music, which eventually collapsed when MTV stopped being all things to all people and started creating "ghetto" shows for rap, alternative, metal, and so on. About the same time, radio station playlists got a whole lot shorter. Coincidence? Hmmmm....

Ryan

 

[RicP]

And it wasn't until Madonna sang "Like A Virgin" in 1985, that there seemed any direction to where Music had been, and was "going".

Not really. Michael Jackson did it with "Thriller" 2 years earlier than that. Anything that Madonna did with "Like a Virgin", Michael had already done with Thriller. That's the vehicle that stated the Pop movement of the 80's.
In the same way that "Jaws" became the quintessential Summer Blockbuster with everyone looking to make another "Jaws"; "Thriller" was the same thing in the music industry...everyone wanted to have the next "Thriller"
Hey the 80's weren't all bad...there was Bon Jovi.

 

[Peter Mazur]

Well Mike as usual I disagree with pretty much everything you wrote. A lot of the things you write sound to me like you have spent too much time reading Rolling Stone. Since I was in High School during the 80's, the music of the time holds a special place in my heart.

I want to take three bands you wrote about in your initial post. First lets start with Yes. Drama released in 1980 is hardly a pop album. Songs like "Machine Messiah", Does It Really Happen?" and "Tempus Fugit" are very much prog rock. You were talking about the Rabin line-up though, so from 90125 songs like "Changes", Leave It", "Our Song" and "Hearts" are not simply pop songs. And the same can be said for "Shoot High Aim Low" and "Holy Lamb" from Big Generator. These might not be as heavy Prog as songs from Fragile or Close To The Edge, but they are more than just pop songs.

Genesis as well take a lot of heat from fans for the Collins years but again they had some great moments on each of the 80's albums. "Abacab", "Keep It Dark", "Dodo/Lurker", "Home By The Sea", "Just A Job To Do", "Silver Rainbow", "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight", "Land Of Confusion" and especially "Domino" are all awesome songs.

And if anything I feel that Judas Priest got heavier in the 80's. Screaming For Vengeance, Defenders Of The Faith and Ram It Down are all classic, very heavy albums. Only Turbo in my opinion was a little weak.

And I think most Rush fans I've read will say that albums like Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows, Hold Your Fire and Presto are among the low point in their career. I personally do like their 80's albums quite well, but most fans I've talked to don't like them at all.

I just love 80's music. From the new romantic music of Adam Ant and Duran Duran, to the heavy metal of Metallica and Anthrax and everything in between. I just think it was a great decade for music.

For you guys in your early to mid 20's, just wait until about 10 years from now when the 20 year olds then will be saying how the music of the 90's was garbage. You will probably be a little defensive of it as well.

 

[Mike Broadman]

A lot of the things you write sound to me like you have spent too much time reading Rolling Stone.

I've never spent a penny on that rag, nor have I read more than a couple of articles by them in my entire life, thank you very much. They stink.

Yes, Drama was more "prog." I thought it was released in 1979, but now we're just getting silly with details. Of course I was referring to the Rabin line-up.

Sure, Collins-Genesis had a few good songs here and there. Heck, I even have my copy of their hits CD. But do you think that it could even hold a candle to Foxtrot or Selling England By the Pound? If so, then you and I have vastly different tastes.

The point is, the quality decreased significantly for a heck of a lot of artists. Of course this is my opinion and taste, but then again, isn't everything? And I'm certainly not alone by any means.

And I already said that most people would disagree with me when I say Rush made some of their best stuff in the 80s.

Sure, I like my share of 80s music. All the best metal is from that decade: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Iron Maiden. Marillion, Peter Gabriel, and Talking Heads have some music I like, too. And if some kid tells me in 20 years that most 90s music was garbage, I would not argue. Most 60s and 70s popular music was awful, too. But at no other point in rock history did bands take as big as a collective creative nosedive than in the early 80s.

 

[TheLongshot]

And I think most Rush fans I've read will say that albums like Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows, Hold Your Fire and Presto are among the low point in their career.

Actually, I think it is some of the best stuff they have done.

As far as what happened, I think Punk and Disco had something to do with it. (a reaction against Arena Rock) MTV had something to do with it. (Bands with good looks and no substance could rule) The rise of the synth could have something to do with it as well. I would also like to point out, tho that a lot of the hair bands of the 80s also seemed to disappear into the 90s. Maybe it is just a regular cycle of the record industry that things only last about 8-10 years before everything must change.

As for your individual examples: 80s Yes is still good music, just not Yes music. Jethro Tull was hurt by the fact that Ian killed his voice in the 80s. J-Tull.com is a great album in the 90s, tho. Genesis was probably hurt more with Steve Hackett leaving rather than Peter Gabriel leaving. Still great music, but not the same band.

Jason

 

[MickeS]

One exception is Aerosmith, which actually made a comeback in the 80's with a good album that was up there with their 70's stuff, IMO.

But I overall you're right... it's just that the 80's saw so many technical inventions coming into the marketplace that it changed the way the whole industry worked, and that led some artists from the 70's to make some bad judgment calls, trying to keep up, when they instead should have focused on doing what they did best.

You're also right about the sound of 80's music, a lot of it sounds very dated today, much more so than 60's or 70's stuff, mostly thanks to technology that was new and exciting, but not fully developed. Like synthesizers, everyone thought they sounded great and that they were cool... and you know what, they DID sound great and they WERE cool, back then. Now however, when that type of technology has advanced, the early stuff sounds very dated. Since guitars and drums haven't changed since the 60's basically, they still sound timeless.

As for whether today's electronic music will sound dated later on, I really don't think it will, at least not to the same extent. Technology today allows for real lifelike production of sounds on computers and synthesizers, and the sounds themselves won't sound so dated. If the style of music will go away (kind of like the "hair metal" sound did) I don't know, but at least the sounds themselves won't be outdated. IMO.

/mike