I always hated the 80s - or so I thought. I was a teenager in the 80s and I listened to the 60s and I was convinced the 80s was worthless. But hey, a decade when so many great bands overlapped like The Queen and U2?
Cannot be that terrible....
How did 70s rock music transition into 80s music?
80s music appeared to be a re-visitation of the beginning of Rock — when "singles" ruled the AM radio. In those early days, in the event that a craftsman had a hit, he/she could get to record an "collection" (when those modern LP records appeared). A LP could have two hits and 10 tunes of forgettable filler melodies. Most craftsmen were characterized by their hit singles.
The 60s and 70s saw an ascent in FM radio and AOR (Album Oriented Rock) which gave numerous specialists the opportunity to make bigger works, or gatherings of melodies which frequently remained all in all work, and empowered a more extended tuning in/focus time. Beside funk and disco dance hits, the 70s inclined towards Album Oriented Rock.
The 80s saw a swing away from longer works and AOR, and back towards snappy singles. I'd say MTV had a great deal to do with the progress to 80s music. ("Video killed the radio star"):
MTV presented many gatherings who had fantastic singles, yet probably won't have accomplished acknowledgment without MTV video openness: Squeeze, The Vapors, Duran, Adam and the Ants, the B-52s, The Cars — to give some examples. (Note, I said "may" — yet that is my hypothesis.)
MTV constrained many long settled stars — David Bowie, Rod Stewart, even The Rolling Stones — to make video-commendable tunes. (That is — SINGLES.)
Peter Gabriel is a story regardless of anyone else's opinion. He was genuinely known from his Genesis Days — yet those astonishing recordings of "For sure" and "Demolition hammer" certainly kicked him into the super frightening.
MTV — after a ton of asking, cajoling, and dangers — at last changed their bigoted whites-just strategy, and began broadcasting recordings by people like Michael Jackson and Prince — presenting various dark craftsman to a lot bigger crowd.
In outline, I think MTV during the 80s — and later the Internet and YouTube — abbreviated individuals' capacity to focus, made a market weighty on short snappy singles, and made it progressively hard for craftsman to make "collections" which would allow them an opportunity to introduce their bigger vision.
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There was whole corporate thing going on. Remember Sony-BMG? The massive selling records of the 70s attracted investment dollars into the industry resulting in consolidation. At first it worked out pretty good with Micheal Jackson's "Thriller", which is still the biggest selling record of all time, and other mega-hits by Madonna, Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen. When accountants start making artistic decisions, well do I have to spell it out? Fortunately, R.E.M. broke alternative music open, the Gang Of Four played Marxism with a beat, Bryan Ferry crooned his best solo work, Janet Jackson showed what Madonna was trying to do and even Guns N' Roses became an arena filling band. By the end of the decade hip-hop/rap became the dominate music. There were tons of great music in the 80s. Ignore it at your own peril. |
@mikelavigne “basically”…nonsense. You named three uber-popular bands of the ‘70s (as if they constituted the totality of consequential popular music of that decade), besmirched an entire decade’s worth of great music (‘80s), and then capped it all off with the most grossly oversimplified and clichéd summation of popular music imaginable: “Nevermind came along and ‘saved popular music.’” The ‘80s: Metallica, Joy Division, Young Marble Giants, Delta 5, The Modettes, Au Pairs, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Kleenex/Liliput, The Bush Tetras, Afrika Bambaataa, The Raincoats, Patrice Rushen, The Fall, The B-52s, Diamanda Galas, Public Enemy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Devo, Michael Jackson, Sonic Youth, Boogie Down Productions, Magazine, The Clash, Flipper, Gang of Four, Run-D.M.C., Talking Heads, Arthur Russell, Motörhead, Grace Jones, The Feelies, Cure, Suicide, Fad Gadget, Bauhaus, Ministry, Big Black, Daniel Johnston, Too Short, Kate Bush, A Certain Ratio, Prince, Wipers, Butthole Surfers, Cocteau Twins, N.W.A., Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, Beastie Boys, The Go-Gos, Jerry’s Kids, Human League, Eric B. & Rakim, Pixies, ESG, The Smiths, Tears For Fears, Laurie Anderson, The Birthday Party, Madonna, The Cramps, Meat Puppets, Talk Talk, Ultramagnetic MC’s, Pet Shop Boys, The Mekons, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Violent Femmes, Scritti Politti, Misfits, Tom Waits, XTC, Psychic TV, Duran Duran, Nurse With Wound, Geto Boys, Cyndi Lauper, Minutemen, and Slick Rick to name a few. |
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