1. Paula Abdul: A 27 (now 50) year old who acted and sung like a 13-year-old girl. She couldn't sing and didn't write her own sh!t. If it wasn't for American Idol, her overrated ass would still be living in "Where Are They Now?" Ave.

2. New Kids On The Block: A sh!tty late 80s boy band with ZERO talent. Can't sing, can't dance, and their lyrics suck. "Please Don't Go Girl?" The fvck outta here with that sh!t. You can say there would be no BSB or 'N Sync without NKOTB, but there wouldn't be a NKOTB without New Edition.

3. Expose: One of the most sh!tty girl groups to ever exist.

4. Milli Vanilli: Come on. These guys are known for lip syncing. They had no talent, so they decided to lip sync.

5. Fine Young Cannibals: The lead singer has the worst high-pitched male singing voice I've ever heard.

6. Winger: Overrated. I don't know what people saw in this band. They were just another sh!tty unoriginal hair band. They represented everything that was wrong with hair metal. Thank God Faith No More came and killed glam metal with "Epic" in the following year.

7. Warrant: Another sh!tty unoriginal glam band.

8. Tiffany: Nothing more than a cover singer. She didn't even write with her own sh!t.

9. Debbie Gibson: The most untalented and unoriginal pop singer ever.

10. The Bangles: A manufactured POS band with songs that shouldn't even exist. They're the reason pop rock has been generic as hell.

11. Cyndi Lauper's third album A Night to Remember flops, ending her career in the process.

Looking at what 1989 brought to the table, it's easily the worst year for mainstream music quality wise. 1988 sucked too, but at least it still had all the quality acts from the years prior dominating the charts, as well as new artists like NWA, Fresh Prince and Tracy Chapman. 1989 only had five good acts, and they were Madonna, Janet Jackson, Bobby Brown, Martika, and Skid Row. Looking at 1981 and 1982, as bad as those music years were, even they were better.

1989 will always be remembered as a miserable year.

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I'd easily take 1989 over recent years in mainstream music.

I don't know why I keep coming to this site. Bye.

I don't think JabarR74 would agree with your list. I like a lot of these acts myself and have records by Expose, Debbie Gibson, The Bangles, New Kids, and Fine Young Cannibals. As far as self-writing goes, I don't know why some people put a lot of importance in that. Most singers and groups since the beginning of the record business didn't write or rarely wrote songs. Then you had professional songwriters who didn't perform. If the music business only depended on acts who wrote their own songs, it would have never gotten off the ground in the first place or would have died a long time ago.

All that is irrelevant by this release.

1989 albums I like...

The Cure - Disintegration
Nirvana - Bleach

John Lee Hooker - The Healer
Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule

Madonna - Like A Prayer

Beastie Boys - Paul´s Boutique

Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine

Janet Jackson - Rhythm Nation 1815

The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

The Beautiful South - Welcome To The Beautiful South

New Order - Technique

Lou Reed - New York

2Point5D said:

1. Paula Abdul: A 27 (now 50) year old who acted and sung like a 13-year-old girl. She couldn't sing and didn't write her own sh!t. If it wasn't for American Idol, her overrated ass would still be living in "Where Are They Now?" Ave.

2. New Kids On The Block: A sh!tty late 80s boy band with ZERO talent. Can't sing, can't dance, and their lyrics suck. "Please Don't Go Girl?" The fvck outta here with that sh!t. You can say there would be no BSB or 'N Sync without NKOTB, but there wouldn't be a NKOTB without New Edition.

3. Expose: One of the most sh!tty girl groups to ever exist.

4. Milli Vanilli: Come on. These guys are known for lip syncing. They had no talent, so they decided to lip sync.

5. Fine Young Cannibals: The lead singer has the worst high-pitched male singing voice I've ever heard.

6. Winger: Overrated. I don't know what people saw in this band. They were just another sh!tty unoriginal hair band. They represented everything that was wrong with hair metal. Thank God Faith No More came and killed glam metal with "Epic" in the following year.

7. Warrant: Another sh!tty unoriginal glam band.

8. Tiffany: Nothing more than a cover singer. She didn't even write with her own sh!t.

9. Debbie Gibson: The most untalented and unoriginal pop singer ever.

10. The Bangles: A manufactured POS band with songs that shouldn't even exist. They're the reason pop rock has been generic as hell.

11. Cyndi Lauper's third album A Night to Remember flops, ending her career in the process.

Looking at what 1989 brought to the table, it's easily the worst year for mainstream music quality wise. 1988 sucked too, but at least it still had all the quality acts from the years prior dominating the charts, as well as new artists like NWA, Fresh Prince and Tracy Chapman. 1989 only had five good acts, and they were Madonna, Janet Jackson, Bobby Brown, Martika, and Skid Row. Looking at 1981 and 1982, as bad as those music years were, even they were better.

1989 will always be remembered as a miserable year.

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I gotta admit,there was alot of crap pop music in 1989.I hated stuff like Paula Abdul and Milli Vanilli.

On the other hand,Madonna released her very first masterpiece in 1989 (the Like A Prayer album).....Nenah Cherry released an exciting debut album and infectious single "Buffalo Stance"....Dino's debut album 24/7 was a nice surprise.....and even Donna Summer had a comeback hit that year.

I think the music of 1989 was a preview of things to come. While I think '89 was probably the weakest year in music in that particular decade, you have to admit things began to pick back up again in the early 90's when we saw a lot of veteran acts having great success on the charts again, despite the fact that New Jack Swing and Hip-Hop were dominating the charts. And the early 90's introduced people like Mimi and Rachelle who proved you could have hit records without having to chase the latest trends. Unfortunately, things began to take a downward spiral again around 1995 and have gotten worse ever since.

I was only 8 that year but I can't tell you how many songs from 1989 I absolutely loathe to this day.

1989 was the first time I remember truly hating music. Everything had that big massive synth drums sound. C & C music factory.

Hip Hop was great though. The golden era was just beginning. EPMD, Beastie Boys, De La Soul, Biz Markie, Mc Lyte, Three Times Dope, Boogie Down Productions, Gangstarr, Kool Moe Dee, Public Enemy.

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lazycrockett said:

All that is irrelevant by this release.

Is this the same album that has "Love Shack" on it? Because that song really gets on my nerves.

Yep, I stand by what I said about 1989. It was a crap year.

'89 was a great year in music. I remember it being very upbeat, colorful, slick and chic/stylized in that sort of "Madison Avenue" kind of way. The budget in entertainment overall (music, movies, TV) was the largest it had ever been.

2Point5D said:

3. Expose: One of the most sh!tty girl groups to ever exist.

And you little boy (OR girl) are a freaking tool if you actually expect me to believe in THAT^ total bullshit.


Excuse you, but Expose are classic.

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1989 wasn't even really the year of Expose or Debbie Gibson. Yeah, they each may have had one hit (What You Don't Know/Lost In Your Eyes), but for the most part their peak years were '87-'88. By '89, they weren't the premiere acts of that year and were beginning to fade out.

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ADC said:

1989 wasn't even really the year of Expose or Debbie Gibson. Yeah, they each may have had one hit (What You Don't Know/Lost In Your Eyes), but for the most part their peak years were '87-'88. By '89, they weren't the premiere acts of that year and were beginning to fade out.

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They weren't exactly the top acts but they were a huge part of it.

In actuality, 1989 was mostly about Paula Abdul, who I hate more than any female act. The reason I hate her is not only because she was a crap singer, but also because she was a late 20s woman coming across as a 12/13-year-old girl, and also doing crappy songs for the 12-13 (tween) crowd. I mean she was the center of attention in all those teen magazines in the late 80s-early 90s, and it makes me sick.

1989 should've been the year of Martika (a real teen star), who was the best of any new female pop act from 1987-89.

Pop Ascension anyone?

I do not think 1989 was great for music, but "the worst year for mainstream music"?
it's not even the worst year in the 80's ..

I love Expose They had a very vibrant freestyle/dance/pop sound and contrary to what you guys are saying,their 1989 album What You Don't Know is every bit as strong as their previous album.The album did very well.

SoulAlive said:

I love Expose They had a very vibrant freestyle/dance/pop sound and contrary to what you guys are saying,their 1989 album What You Don't Know is every bit as strong as their previous album.The album did very well.

Expose was the real deal from the opening bell...

they were the precursor to En Vogue.......

Expose was to EnVogue what Troop was to Boyz II Men.......

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the pop ascension has caused a great deal of damage by obliterating culture, destroying the very essense of what is needed to create exceptional music, authentic music.....

and when u trace it all back to the point of origin...I mark 1987 as the year when this movement began to destroy everything

Scorp said:

SoulAlive said:

I love Expose They had a very vibrant freestyle/dance/pop sound and contrary to what you guys are saying,their 1989 album What You Don't Know is every bit as strong as their previous album.The album did very well.

Expose was the real deal from the opening bell...

they were the precursor to En Vogue.......

Expose was to EnVogue what Troop was to Boyz II Men.......

I still smile everytime I hear "The Point Of No Return" such a great dance track that brings back alot of teenage memories

LiLi1992 said:

I do not think 1989 was great for music, but "the worst year for mainstream music"?
it's not even the worst year in the 80's ..

Exactly. And this is one more reason why I think from reading the opening post that 2Point5D might be younger than most of us, meaning that the early 1980's may have been before his/her time.

Stay on-topic, if I was going to pinpoint a weak moment in the 1980's concerning mainstream pop culture, It was definitely 80-82 (before Michael Jackson's Thriller album was release) because that was a transitition period after disco "died" in the 1980. Around this time, there were plenty of country artists that were having crossover pop success. And adult contempory artists (when the genre was still called soft-rock at the time) was the definitely sound of the early 1980's. Remember, Christopher Cross damn nearly became the King Of Pop!


The "death" of disco was totally nonsense, given by the fact that genre was a foundation of Chicago's house, NYC's garage, and Itaty's italo-house respectfully on an underground level. And also, r&b/soul radio stations were not negatively effected by the translation period of 80-82 because funk was still alive and well, especially when that genre became more synth-driven and much more different from the horn-driven era of the 1970's. The hip-hop/rap culture was still young, underground-level, and not full-time mainstream yet. But yet, it was defintely cutting edge when electro was THE hip-hop sound of the moment. And it was all good timing when Kool & The Gang, Michael Jackson, & Prince help spearheaded the post-disco era in the mainstream that the 1980's needed soon after.

TonyVanDam said:

if I was going to pinpoint a weak moment in the 1980's concerning mainstream pop culture, It was definitely 80-82 (before Michael Jackson's Thriller album was release) because that was a transitition period after disco "died" in the 1980. Around this time, there were plenty of country artists that were having crossover pop success. And adult contempory artists (when the genre was still called soft-rock at the time) was the definitely sound of the early 1980's. Remember, Christopher Cross damn nearly became the King Of Pop!


The "death" of disco was totally nonsense, given by the fact that genre was a foundation of Chicago's house, NYC's garage, and Itaty's italo-house respectfully on an underground level. And also, r&b/soul radio stations were not negatively effected by the translation period of 80-82 because funk was still alive and well, especially when that genre became more synth-driven and much more different from the horn-driven era of the 1970's. The hip-hop/rap culture was still young, underground-level, and not full-time mainstream yet. But yet, it was defintely cutting edge when electro was THE hip-hop sound of the moment. And it was all good timing when Kool & The Gang, Michael Jackson, & Prince help spearheaded the post-disco era in the mainstream that the 1980's needed soon after.

I disagree that "transition period" that you mentioned,resulted in some of the best funk and R&B music of the 80s.Rick James' 'Street Songs'....Kool and The Gang's 'Something Special'....EW&F's 'Raise' (arguably their best album of the 80s)....Luther Vandross' debut album 'Never Too Much'....etc

The best R&B music of the 80s was made in the first few years of that decade,imo.

SoulAlive said:

TonyVanDam said:

if I was going to pinpoint a weak moment in the 1980's concerning mainstream pop culture, It was definitely 80-82 (before Michael Jackson's Thriller album was release) because that was a transitition period after disco "died" in the 1980. Around this time, there were plenty of country artists that were having crossover pop success. And adult contempory artists (when the genre was still called soft-rock at the time) was the definitely sound of the early 1980's. Remember, Christopher Cross damn nearly became the King Of Pop!


The "death" of disco was totally nonsense, given by the fact that genre was a foundation of Chicago's house, NYC's garage, and Itaty's italo-house respectfully on an underground level. And also, r&b/soul radio stations were not negatively effected by the translation period of 80-82 because funk was still alive and well, especially when that genre became more synth-driven and much more different from the horn-driven era of the 1970's. The hip-hop/rap culture was still young, underground-level, and not full-time mainstream yet. But yet, it was defintely cutting edge when electro was THE hip-hop sound of the moment. And it was all good timing when Kool & The Gang, Michael Jackson, & Prince help spearheaded the post-disco era in the mainstream that the 1980's needed soon after.

I disagree that "transition period" that you mentioned,resulted in some of the best funk and R&B music of the 80s.Rick James' 'Street Songs'....Kool and The Gang's 'Something Special'....EW&F's 'Raise' (arguably their best album of the 80s)....Luther Vandross' debut album 'Never Too Much'....etc

The best R&B music of the 80s was made in the first few years of that decade,imo.

"Street Songs" is one of the greatest r&b albums/all time albums I ever heard

that album made the summer of 81 what it was.....

for me, Luther Vandross's best work as a solo artist took occurred with his first two albums, "Never Too Much" and "Forever, For Always, For Love" (my favorite Luther album)

Wasn't that also the year of Kokomo? One of my most hated songs of all time.