80's music, what happened to it?

[minimacker]

It was too awesome, it had to be put down.

 

[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.

The "all about sex" bit was refering to the songs. Sorry if I never made that clear my man, I'm in a bit of a hurry.

Well that's partially true. "Rock And Roll", "Jazz", "Punk", "Swing" and "Funk" all started their life as euphemisms of one kind or another. However there are also plenty of pop songs that have nothing to do with sex.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

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

Rochelle does.

As for the 80s, it was the endings of Disco and the start of Bubblegum Pop; but then people said that we needed lyrics and it had to be realistic and could spawn sequels and couldn't just have a female front...

Hmmmm...seem to have heard that before.

Although, there's still some unearthly horrors born in the 80s

 

[Luftwaffles]

Don Mclean, Andy Williams, Tom Jones, Buddy Holly, Nat bloody King Cole etc. I listen to those kinds of music all the time. And i do agree with Bonsaik, i have been noticing some 80's vibe in some of the modern music. And shit im only in my early 20's.

 

[Super Toast]

The decade changed.

 

[boholikeu]

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

Exactly. If you're complaining about the state of music now you probably would have been complaining about hair metal bands in the 80s had you been a little older.

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...

Sorry to re-quote this whole post, but everyone here really should read it if you haven't already. Mad props to this guy.

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.

Again, totally true. If you ever miss the types of songs that were popular when you were a kid, don't worry. Wait a few years and you'll see a revival of it.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Also, it's totally in fashion to listen to 80's music if you're an indie hipster with tight jeans and a fedora who sits outside a coffee shop smoking trendy cigs all day.

That's enough to put me off.

It's so funny to me (a 30 year old 80s kid) that the 80s is now considered retro fashionable... a few years ago it was considered the 'decade that taste forgot'

I guess that was before people experienced 'naughties' culture.

Also, it makes me think of this:

 

[Calico93]

Died out with time i guess, its a shame but some artists now have a bit of an 80s feel
Like Steel Panther for glam rock
Or I saw the Ting Tings on the TV the other day doing a song called hands and it was very 80s dance disco jazz stufff

So it does still exist out there somewhere, you just have to find it, thats the fun

 

[Vampire cat]

The 90's.

 

[Alon Shechter]

It died, everything expires at some point.
Plus. It's called 80's music.
You want 80's music to continue to the 90's?
80's in 90's?
Insanity!

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Iron Maiden had the hit-or-miss Somewhere in Time,

....that's my favorite Maiden album

 

[Lyx]

Its not just the composition but also the mixing. The 80ies had about the best mixing and soundquality mainstream music ever had until today. Nowadays music is mastered so hot (constantly near max volume) that the waveform even constantly distorts.... resulting in no dynamics (i.e. drums have no punch) and an almost totally collapsed stereofield (nowadays music is near-mono).

Some people claim that current music is produced so crappy, so that people buy new surround tech (gotta notice the difference between mono and 5.1), but i think stuff just went downhill because of an imaginary "who can scream the loudest"-contest.

 

[chetoos]

I personally prefer the 80s music because it was what my dad played when I was a kid. now, I have a very eclectic taste in music, ranging from weird al, to a short playlist of other awesome songs, many of which were from the 80s and on a special tape my dad recorded, then I shift to my beatles section, then I hit the band of whom none are named floyd or colored light red, for the wall, DSotM, and wish you were here, and then the cycle repeats itself
but I agree, modern music sucks

 

[UltraParanoia]

Pop music has sucked since the late 70s.

As odd as that sounds, it's true. Mostly because what was popular got really shitty and annoying, I blame the 60s and drugs.


Also disco.

As far as 80s pop music coming back, I really fucking hope not, but since people are already starting to dress in distinctly 80s "I just got off of a three day coke binge" style, I have a sneaking suspicion there's gonna be a revival of that crap soon.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

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.

The problem with calling bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Dio "cliche" is that it's like complaining about Shakespeare being nothing but cliches. They're cliche now because they helped invent the mold that has been so reused.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

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.

Having listened to most of the back catalogue of Judas Priest, almost all of the studio albums of Iron Maiden, and enjoying both bands, I don't think that I meant any criticism of their material as a whole. What I meant was that when both bands most embraced the stereotypical qualities of '80s music, including synthesisers, they didn't necessarily come out with the best results. Neither, by the way, did Black Sabbath when they started playing around with synthesisers.

Some of Sabbath's synthed albums are still great, but once it started being the primary melodic instrument (Never Say Die, anyone?) It kinda stunk.

 

[LastMondaysHangover]

Seeing as how everything on the radio uses nothing but the same Eurotrash beats (The bad kind, not the good kind...) and that auto-tune crap, I would welcome back 80's style music with open arms.

At least in the 80's you had to put some level of effort into sounding decent. While we're at it, let's bring back 80's style metal!