80's music, what happened to it?

[clockout]

Anybody know Depeche Mode?

I only know them as the final two letters of KMFDM. And the one song on Radio X.

Kein Mitleid für Die Mehrheit
No pity for the majority. Both bands are kind of meh imo

OT: mainstream music tends to change overtime

p.s...It feels like somebody watching me...where my sledgehammer?

 

[SonicKoala]

It got replaced with far superior music around 1991, that's what happened. Although I do have a soft spot for 80's pop, the abundance of hair metal was absolutely revolting... however, the 80's did give us the Pixies and Sonic Youth, so i'll always love the decade for that.

To be honest, though, I'd much rather popular music be more akin to how it was in the 80's than it is now - as has already been mentioned, back in the 80's and 90's, turning on the radio usually meant hearing some pretty solid tracks. Oh, how long ago those days seem...

 

[Shpongled]

Was anyone here actually alive during the 80's? The music then was just as bad as the music now.

Someone should remind the music industry why it was riding high in the 80's.

Kinda the opposite was true, especially towards the end of the decade. The music industry probably would have had a crash much sooner had they not managed to latch on to Grunge and Alternative when they did.

I see for some reason you failed to mention the actual bands like Judas priest, Manowar, Iron Maiden, and Dio, ect. Pop music has always been shit and we should just learn to accept it. Pop= lowest common denominator and ever since the Beetles it has gotten lower and lower. When you are bitching about pop music being to simple go back to the beetles they started this shit. Pre beetles you actually had to be a skilled musician to make it and your music had to be "more" complex.

Are you joking? Do you know what came out of the decade Pre-Beatles? A lot of the biggest rock songs were straight up blues progressions in their simplest forms. Lennon/McCartney managed to evolve pop music, not devolve it. All I'm getting from your list is that you like cliché metal instead of cliché pop.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, the Beatles had broken up long before the 80's began. Hell, one of them was dead before the decade really kicked off. I can only assume the quoted poster meant that pop music has been going downhill since The Beatles left the main stage, which is arguably true.

Luckily theres always the few gems out there to keep us going.

 

[BonsaiK]

I don't understand it, I first heard 80's music in my early childhood on the radio, I immediately fell in love with it to this day.

Bands like Starship, Culture Club, WHAM!, or star singers like Bon Jovi, Micheal Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, and Pat Benatar all introduced to the world amazing songs, they had a fun, bright tone that can boost your mood, songs that you can find yourself repeating in your head in the good way, and voices that I, personally, must've implied that singers like Phil Collins have the vocal cords of gods.

But what happened to that kind of music? the 90's had a fair share of good tracks, but not as much as the 80's did, and mostly it seemed that the music industry is going down hill every passing year.


What happened to the sort of music the 1980's introduced us? did the mainstream change? did it have something to do with the whole 'Rickroll" thing? what was it?

WARNING: actual answer to the question from someone in the industry who actually knows follows. Read at your own risk.

Wait.... what? You mean that you haven't noticed the absolutely gobsmackingly huge 80's revival that is happening right fucking now in popular music? Let me enlighten you - here's just two of several hundred very recent pop songs I could link that sound more 80s than most of the shit that was actually being made in the 80s:


But as for what happened to music in the 80s (although I guess it's a purely academic issue these days given that this style of music is being so heavily revived right now) - well, Nirvana may have nailed the coffin shut, but this is what cut down the tree that grew the wood:


I'm not talking about rap music in general. I'm not even talking about Public Enemy in general. I'm talking specifically about Public Enemy's "It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back" album. This is the album that singlehandedly killed the "80s sound" in chart-oriented popular music and replaced it with something else. Rock drummers started drumming differently, adding off-beat bass and snare into previously non-syncopated rhythms (including Dave Grohl), and electronic musicians using drum machines did the same thing. Pop music started to use more "noise textures", and replaced their squared-off beats with rhythms approaching PE's sampled James Brown loops, almost overnight. Melody became less important and rhythm became far more important than before. If you listen to the song I linked above, there's really no melody in it, unless you count Chuck D's "pitched mouth noises" and the car-alarm type sound in the background... I mean foreground. And just think about that - a car-alarm noise in the foreground of an entire fucking song and it not only works, it's considered a classic. What could be more fucking annoying in theory, besides maybe a continually whistling kettle? Oh, wait - they did that too...


The songs are basically all rhythm and little else, yet this shit was huge when it came out, and changed everything. "Nation Of Millions" is, for better or worse, one of the most important albums of all time in terms of the development of popular music, and definitely the most influential in the last 30 years. Note: I didn't say "one of the most important rap albums", I said "one of the most important albums". This is where the decline in the importance of melody and the increase in the importance of rhythm in 1990s popular music can be directly traced back to. Nirvana, grunge, so-called "alternative" (pfft) etc... that stuff was important too, but that came later and it wouldn't have sounded anything like the way that it did without Public Enemy coming first.

But if that makes you upset or angry, don't worry. Like I said, motherfucking 80s' revival is on right now. Don't miss the boat - buy all the new shit you can now before the sound of Public Enemy's "Nation Of Millions" gets revived in a few years...

 

[Mafoobula]

Honestly, I blame technology. Because of autotuning and synth'd instruments, suddenly the music itself became bone-stupid simple to manufacture. Instead, we cared about the singers themselves, and their personalities. Were it not for the autotuning, we wouldn't have 90% of the pop crap today. On the other hand, we wouldn't have "A Glorious Dawn," so I guess it balances out.
Now that I think about it, I think the problem is that the "mature" bands have moved on WITH their audiences. There are still new AC\DC, Flogging Molly and etc. albums being made, and they're still great, BUT they're not exactly marketed toward the high school boys, are they?
Also, and I know this is kinda a sad thing to think about, but the tastes of the culture evolves, and that's a fact. A long long time ago, Frank Sinatra was the greatest musical talent evar; people might KNOW of him, nowadays, but how many songs of his do you actually know? Over the ages, popular musical styles changed, and we may be simply witnessing such an evolution; these pop/pop-rock styles are radically different from what we grew up with, and therefore we call it crap. I'd bet money that in 15 years time, the rabid Bieber fans will look at what THEIR kids are listening to and declare exactly the same that you and I say about Bieber.

So, bottom line: Love your 80's and 90's, dig around for the nuggets of gold of this era, for they ARE there. If you don't like the modern music, then... that's life; deal.

 

[ConnorCool]

Yeah, pretty much it stopped being the 80's. What I always tell people about 80's music though, is that most of the stuff that is widely remembered today is the 'good' (for a given value of the word good) stuff, the bad stuff got left behind to die in the past. Loads of great bands from the 80's and before are still going anyway.
How many people will remember Bieber and other small R&B stars in 30 years? Not too many.

 

[DJDarque]

Ah the 80's were a great time for music. Anybody know Depeche Mode?

60's and 70's were better.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

I'm reminded of the joke were the father tells his son, that what his son listen's to isn't music, and what his father listened to is true music, only to flashback to his father telling him that his music is trash, unlike his father's music.

I'm sure there'll come an era of "new" music, where the Kesha/Bieber/etc fans are now older and call it crap, while teenagers can't get enough of it.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

Part of the whole "what happened to 1980s/70s/60s X" is part of a cycle which has been prevalent for the last 60 or so years. Basically everything that is popular now will be popular again in 15-25 years. Take for example the 50s, probably most well known for its "greaser" culture which is highly stereotyped nowadays. In the 70s there was a massive increase in interest in products and themes most commonly associated with the 50s (American Graffiti, Grease, Happy Days) as well as a resurgence in the popularity of musical styles popular in the 50s.

So basically, this is to be expected. The last decade was rife with love for the 1980's (hell, Family Guy has to suck the 80's dick 4 times an episode just to make a joke) and this next decade will be rife with love for the 90's (invest in denim, boy-bands and grunge music)
This is also because stuff about 20 years old falls into the realm of being "retro" and thus, more popular.

 

[DJDarque]

Also, be wary of talking about metal bands with connection to the 1980s. Judas Priest had the derisory Turbo album, Iron Maiden had the hit-or-miss Somewhere in Time, et cetera, and the big successes of both bands in the Eighties took place during the early parts of the decade, when they stripped everything back to basics during the NWOBHM period.

I have to be honest with you here. This specific point you're trying to make is very closed-minded and just all around not very smart. Just about every band or artist from any timeframe you choose is going to have at least one album that people think isn't as good as the rest of their albums or isn't as popular with fans. You're saying to be wary of talking of two legendary bands based on one album apiece? I will go even further than you and say that both of these bands had at least three albums that didn't stand up to the rest of their works, but that's not to say that they weren't still enjoyed by some people. I also think that based on the sheer amount of albums both bands have recorded, a few sub-par albums are more than forgivable.

 

[GrimTuesday]

You sound like my mom. She was in high school during the 80's so the majority of my childhood was spent listening to old pop bands from the 80s that she had enjoyed. I've always had a soft spot for it but I do like some of the newer stuff and of course being from Washington I am a big fan of Nirvana and to a certain extent the rest of the grunge scene which was what killed a lot of the bands of the 80s.

 

[ThePantomimeThief]

The 80s just expanded into the 90s really. 1980s was a decade of general experimentation with new musical forms, that kind of exploded into the endless different genres and styles that came about in the 1990s. It's one of the reasons that I love the 90s so much - there's a lot of shit there, and in modern music too, but there's also a load of incredible music too, it's a decade that's impossible to write off as 'bad' musically because it has just such a huge variety.

A lot of the last few years have been 1980s-obsessed anyway - look at the post-punk scene that popped up again, the returning love for synth-pop, etc. I'd say if you're looking for music similar to that of your childhood, then have a look now!

 

[Treefingers]

I despair of pop music nowadays.

I despair of pop music in every era.

The 80s had some great tracks. So did the 70s and the 90s. So has 2010. All of them have their fair share of rubbish too.

 

[Treefingers]

A lot of the last few years have been 1980s-obsessed anyway - look at the post-punk scene that popped up again, the returning love for synth-pop, etc. I'd say if you're looking for music similar to that of your childhood, then have a look now!

This too. I hear a lot of 80s influence in music these days.

For example:

 

[BonsaiK]

1990 happened to it.

Seriously though... I despair of pop music nowadays. In the 80s and 90s a song had to have a strong melody and a great singer to be a hit. Not anymore.

This. Hell does anyone here even listen to pop nowadays? I was under the impression it was all about sex, flashing a bit of leg or cleavage and the money rolls in.

I wish it was that easy. Would save me a lot of trouble with those inconvenient "song" things.