Miles said:

To me, the late 80's were all about Prince and hip-hop. I liked a lot of the hits, though many are dated these days.



Indeed.



I'd like to agree with that, but it's hard for me to think of a record in that era that sounds quite like SOTT or Lovesexy.




I don't like a lot of things about today's music.

1. The the corporate rock bands are basically doing Carpenters songs set to bad wannabe-Nirvana riffs.

2. The alt-rock/emo folks are making music that puts you to sleep and has no soul whatsoever. Go into any indepedent record store and invariably you hear some really tired stuff. Literally and figuratively.

3. Hit-pop is a minstrel show.

4. R&B radio is . . . strike that, it doesn't exist.

But artists like Beck, Van Hunt, Me'Shell, Gnarls Barkley, and MF Doom keep me buying new music, and new artists are cropping up every year.

I agree with those who say the decline began around 1985 or so. I'm not sure synths are to blame so much as weak songwriting and awful production techniques. For some reason, in the mid to late eighties everyone added cheap brass and generic female backing vocals to all their songs.

Even bands that were good in the early eighties started to suck big time. Look at Duran Duran. They were synth based from the beginning, but their sound got somehow cheaper and more plastic as the decade wore on. For a time of such synthetic music, very few synth bands survived the late eighties. Only New Order comes to mind.

Adult contemporary was fucking things up also. Even on the rock side, Rod Stewart had some great songs in the early 1980s such as "Passion", "Gimme Wings", "Young Turks", "Tonight I'm Yours", "Infatuation", etc. In the late 1980s, he became a boring ass Barry Mannilow type singer.

The 80's had some good hits, but style wise it's completely superficial. Just like the '00's.

Give me some 90's or some 60's or 70's any day over the 80's or the right nows.

hopefully the 10's will be good again.

the other day some friends were listening to a few one-hit-wonders from this period and i told them they were supergroups and they laughed.....but it was funny because Bad English and Damn Yankees were both supergroups that had one hit each and that was it.....being a part of that scene and music was a bit sad in a way.....

Certainly not by me, this decade sucks ass.

The funny thing is its a decade that is made fun of and yet ripped off the most today. Everytime period has their bad/good fashion moments, i mean 70's platform shoes to bell bottoms or just the 60's for the hippie gear, the 50's and bobby socks and skirts, The thing that is so special is how you can look back and define a decade but i think that has stopped, i cant really define the 90's, maybe east Vs West coast rap, life and death of grunge, but nothing really stands out because decades have stopped creating but are imitating now. Be it designers going for the "retro" look or an artist trying to be "retro". Turn on Tv late at night and what still sells 80's compilations, freestyle compilations, rb funk collections etc..

onenitealone said:

Me too! The 80's will NEVER get a bad rap from me, I totally loved that decade. In fact, I miss it a lot, soooo many great memories!!

psychodelicide said:

I loved the 80's up to 87. That is when this new jack music came in
and totally ruined r&b bands. On the pop end a lot of european bands
came in with their synth sounds and took over. Talk about weird
dress styles and hair styles with the new jack era.

phunkdaddy said:

The New Jack Swing didn't ruin R&B bands at all. Most of them were already on their last legs (e.g., Midnight Star, Kool & The Gang, S.O.S. Band) at the time.

coolcat said:

who says it gets a bad rap? if anything 80's music has stuck around much more than the 90's,its amazing how many 80's songs are used in big time commercials.vh-1 classic plays 80's most fhe day and the tube plays lots of 80's videos throughout the day..80's artists continue to be a big draw when it comes to concerts

PANDURITO said:

better than the boring short hair or bald shit now thats for sure.. at least people were original instead of the grazing cows they are now

onenitealone said:

ok here i go again but blame fucking Nirvana for the dullness that exists today they totally wiped out the fun

im not a huge 80s fan but 87-89 was a cool time for music i thought.

AlexdeParis said:

It was sad seeing what happened to many great R&B/funk bands in the late 80s.With the rise of hip-hop,many of these bands suddenly became irrelevent.Remember Midnight Star's awful 1986 single "Headlines"? They had to incorporate hip-hop beats into their music just to get played on the radio.I can't even listen to any of the Bar Kays' music after 1984.

It's the best decade for music in my opinion.

SoulAlive said:

My 2 favorite Stevie Wonder songs are both on Characters: "My Eyes Don't Cry" and "Free". That said, the entire rest of the album is lost on me aside from "You Will Know".

Mazerati said:

Possibly. I don't know if you can lay all the blame on one band - and I do think Nirvana gave music the kick up its' ass that it needed. But their appearance did coincide with the 'Let's get real' era.

Moonbeam said:

I that song!

Moonbeam said:

There are actually people who don't like "Skeletons"? I'm shocked! That's my jam!

Anyway, I think Characters gets a bad rap. There's a little filler, but I think it's an enjoyable record. Comparing it to his '70s records is a lost cause.

SoulAlive said:

Actually, I would say that it really began around 1986. I think 1985 was the last really great year musically in the 1980s because people were still making creative sounds with synthesizers and drum machines. But around 1986 new-wave and R&B synth-funk became mainstream, and a lot of producers took the easy way out and strated producing the same synthesized programming on all of their records. It became difficult to distinguish a pop record from an R&B record or even an adult contemporary/lite FM record because they all started sounding the same. And I agree with the poster that says that most of the music sounds dated and soulless, because I have a hard time listening to those songs as well.

R&B really began to suffer around this time because the record companies wanted all of the male artists to sound like Lionel Richie, and the female artists to sound like Whitney Houston. I remeber Atlantic Starr in particular, because they used to be an incredible funk fand with a huge horn section and lots of rhythm and bass. But by the mid to late 1980's they abandoned their funk roots for a pure adult contemporary sound.

But what about hair metal? Yeah, they played a lot of guitars and speedy riffs like Eddie Van Halen, but you would be surprised at the huge volume of synth production in those records as well. Part of the reason those records sound so dated, besides the outrageous fashion, is due to those synthesizers.

728huey said:

I know exactly what you mean.I actually felt sorry for many of the R&B and funk artists/bands who were popular in the 70s,but now felt the need to change their sound in order to fit in.Some of these bands had great success doing so (Kool and The Gang is the prime example),but others spent the 80s in the chart wilderness,looking foolish and ridiculous.

I would say mid 1985. This was my senior year in high school and I remember a few jams in early 1985 such as "Electric Lady" by Con-Funk-Shun, "Beep A Freak" by The Gap Band, and "Freak-A-Ristic" by Atlantic Star.

I graduated in May that year and thought I was going to really party from then on. Little did I know what was in store for me not even a full month after I graduated. Shitney Houston came on the scene and fucked things up immediately after I graduated. When I first heard her, I remember thinking to myself...."this boring ass woman will never be heard of after this dead shit bombs"....since I was accustomed to artists throwing down and, I mean, throwing down hard. I be damned if I didn't start hearing more boring shit later by folks like Freddie Jackson and, even MORE boring, Anita Baker. It's like people had just lost ALL their individual taste altogether and started listening to their parents' music.



You can say that again!




I blame her more than I blame him. He came on the scene years earlier but really didn't influence other artists. He was turning out his hits but everyone else was still doing their own thing. When she brought her dead ass on the scene is when things started changing.



So true. They became absolutely horrible. I absolutely HATE "Secret Lovers".
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[Edited 10/24/06 6:54am]

Vainandy's 80s song of the day: "You Give Good Love" by Whitney Houston (1985)

Oh God, that brings back horrible memories!