Billie Jean comes to mind as it's the definition of a timeless record

What'dya think?

After the New Edition movie aired this year, a few of their songs & albums re-entered the Billboard charts like Can You Stand The Rain & Candy Girl. I'm not sure they would actually get airplay as new songs today though, especially not Candy Girl. Can You Stand The Rain might get Adult R&B airplay today. I don't see much from the 1980s getting radio airplay today unless they are remixed into a current sound, sort of like they did with Elvis Presley songs like A Little Less Conversation & Rubberneckin' or those Verve compilations of remixed old jazz songs. The original mixes of the Elvis songs weren't likely to become a hit in the modern era.

'Careless Whisper'. Timeless saxophone. Not a big fan of this song, but I have to respect it.

'Never Tear Us Apart'. Nothing has aged about this song.

'Livin' on a Prayer'. I know it can be considered as big hair rock song with classic hymn chorus, but it could appeared in any time frame and people would still consider it a hit. It is damn well-written song.

'Rhythm Nation'. Great sound without compromise between being so popular and being an amazing song in terms of music craft.

'In the air Tonight'. Not obsessed with it, however I have to gave the credit where it's deserved. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a new song. Construction of the song is well thought.

'Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'. You can learn a lot about rhythm and beat just hearing this song.

Whole 'Appetite for Destruction' album. Breathe of fresh air everytime I listen to it.

'Sweet Sixteen'. Again: well written song without any gimmicks, just guitar which 'cause the sound very irresistible.

'Fast Car'. Nothing about this song put it just in the 80's. Beautiful, moving, poetic.

Prince, MJ's, Madge's and Janet's hits would have likely hit big today. Prince's signature hits are particularly inimitable.

Jam + Lewis could have placed a number of their 80's hits on the charts today.

Never gonna give you up

TheFman said:

Never gonna give you up

Karo548363 said:

Whole 'Appetite for Destruction' album.

Going by the current Top 40, the songs on here are not likely to become big hit singles today. I don't think there's a hard rock song on the entire Hot 100 singles chart.

MickyDolenz said:

Karo548363 said:

Whole 'Appetite for Destruction' album.

Going by the current Top 40, the songs on here are not likely to become big hit singles today. I don't think there's a hard rock song on the entire Hot 100 singles chart.

Nope, but real rock is still out there...if someone looks for it.

purplethunder3121 said:

Nope, but real rock is still out there...if someone looks for it.

If you have to look for it, then it can't be a smash then.

MickyDolenz said:

purplethunder3121 said:

Nope, but real rock is still out there...if someone looks for it.

If you have to look for it, then it can't be a smash then.

No, but it means "real" music is still being created by artists who care.

purplethunder3121 said:

No, but it means "real" music is still being created by artists who care.

That isn't what the OP asked though. Expecting a 1980s hard rock song to be a hit today is like expecting Engelbert Humperdinck to get Top 40 airplay in 1987. Metallica got on the Grammy broadcast because they did a duet with Lady Gaga and then their mike didn't work. I doubt they would have been shown on the TV broadcast by themselves. VH-1 had That Metal Show, and Rock Lives, but they got cancelled because of low ratings.

MickyDolenz said:

purplethunder3121 said:

No, but it means "real" music is still being created by artists who care.

That isn't what the OP asked though. Expecting a 1980s hard rock song to be a hit today is like expecting Engelbert Humperdinck to get Top 40 airplay in 1987. Metallica got on the Grammy broadcast because they did a duet with Lady Gaga and then their mike didn't work. I doubt they would have been shown on the TV broadcast by themselves. VH-1 had That Metal Show, and Rock Lives, but they got cancelled because of low ratings.

Good point.

Shawy89 said:

Billie Jean comes to mind as it's the definition of a timeless record

What'dya think?

I seriously doubt that songs from the 80s, even the "good ones", would be as successful today as they
were yesterday. The proof is in the music that is charting currently which hardly carries any similarities
in terms of genre, compositional/production values, etc. with what was charting back then.

"Billie Jean" was released in January 1983. But look at the other songs that were in the top 10 according
to Billboard at the same time:

1 MANEATER –•– Daryl Hall & John Oates (RCA)-13 (4 weeks at #1) (1)
2 THE GIRL IS MINE –•– Michael Jackson / Paul McCartney (Epic)-10 (2)
3 DIRTY LAUNDRY –•– Don Henley (Asylum)-11 (3)
4 DOWN UNDER –•– Men At Work (Columbia)-10 (4)
5 SEXUAL HEALING –•– Marvin Gaye (Columbia)-11 (5)
6 MICKEY –•– Toni Basil (Chrysalis)-19 (1)
7 GLORIA –•– Laura Branigan (Atlantic)-27 (2)
8 STEPPIN’ OUT –•– Joe Jackson (A&M)-21 (6)
9 ROCK THIS TOWN –•– The Stray Cats (EMI-America)-17 (9)
10 TRULY –•– Lionel Richie (Motown)-14 (1)

source

The compositional and production values heard in these songs are not what is popular today.

Pfff, not many I am afraid. Times have changed and so have people's preferences and artist's production styles.

The only one that was suggested already that I agree on is Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car", this is a quality song with a timeless production and great lyrics/performance. If Ed Sheeran can score with songs like "The A Team" I am sure Tracy could have still had a hit with "Fast Car".

Maybe WDC and Kiss could possibly still chart in this era, but even these two Prince iconic songs would sound different and likely 'out of place' at today's Top 40 radio stations. Although -in all honesty- these songs sounded different already when they were released back in the 80's, so who knows?

When Doves Cry.

Cars.

Kiss would tank.

purplethunder3121 said:

Good point.

Rap has been the rock music for the younger generations since the 1990s, but I don't see the rapping styles & sounds from the 1980s being mainstream popular now either. Kurtis Blow, Beastie Boys, Tone Loc, Eric B & Rakim, Run DMC, LL Cool J and other hip hop acts popular then won't get airplay with the same songs now. If DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince came out with songs like Parents Just Don't Understand & I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson today, it's not as likely The Fresh Prince would have gotten a TV show or became a movie star. Dancing rappers are not really a thing now, so there goes the careers of Heavy D & The Boyz, Kid n Play, MC Hammer, Salt n Pepa, Big Daddy Kane, etc.

funkaholic1972 said:

Pfff, not many I am afraid. Times have changed and so have people's preferences and artist's production styles. Maybe WDC and Kiss could possibly still chart in this era, but even these two Prince iconic songs would sound different and likely 'out of place' at today's Top 40 radio stations.

Agreed.

There is not much that is heard on the radio today that is reminiscent of the 80s. Face it, y'all: what is
underscoring this thread is the notion that we are getting old as fuck, and that is the ONLY reason why
we don't like what is played on the radio today. It is fucking IMPOSSIBLE to articulate why something
that is sophisticated, like Joe Jackson's "Stepping Out", is better than something that is not, like DJ
Khaled's "I'm the One".

"More sophisticated" does not inherently mean "better".

I think songs like these might have a chance because they could marketed as EDM. But I'm not sure that EDM is as popular on Top 40 radio now as 2 or 3 years ago, trap beats is in now.

NorthC said:

There were films about Jerry Lee Lewis and Richie Valens that sent Great Balls of Fire and La Bamba back into the charts.

Today's equivalent of that is Straight Outta Compton which is currently the highest grossing music biopic. NWA came out in the late 1980s, which is around the same amount of time between those movies and the 1950s when Jerry & Richie were popular. There's also a upcoming Tupac Shakur movie. Ice Cube has a new version of the game show Hollywood Squares called Hip Hop Squares and The Roots is the house band for the Tonight Show now. When Johnny Carson was on it, he had Doc Severinsen, who had a more big band easy listening sound. Also several rappers have become mainstream popular actors in a way Elvis Presley, Madonna, Ringo Starr, & Prince couldn't. Elvis movies made money for awhile, but in most of them he was basically playing himself. Hip hop has influenced American mainstram culture in a way rock didn't as well. Rock sold a lot in the past, but primarily to a certain demographic. AOR stations played few women and non-white acts. Some forms of rock like prog rock & heavy metal had a mainly white male audience. There might have been a large audience that could buy a lot of rock albums or attend their concerts, but technically it was not a mainstream one. A lot of those rock bands didn't have Top 40 airplay like Iron Maiden and Rush. You have to have big hits on the Hot 100 to be mainstream.

NorthC said:

Sure, we may be getting old as fuck, but do young people still know something about music history? How many 50s/60s songs would have charted in the 1980s? Actually... Quite a few. There were films about Jerry Lee Lewis and Richie Valens that sent Great Balls of Fire and La Bamba back into the charts. Roy Orbison had a hit with You Got It. And he was with The Travelling Wilburys, who also had a hit with Handle With Care. We had BB King playing with U2. Carlos Santana with John Lee Hooker. Gary Moore with Albert King. Even Muddy Waters had a posthumous hit with Manish Boy thanks to a jeans commercial. I heard all of that on the radion when I was 16-18 and that's how I discovered the blues. Can you imagine radio nowadays with a Katie Perry song followed by a Muddy Waters song? [Edited 5/16/17 11:27am] [Edited 5/16/17 11:36am]

Excellent points, North. But you forgot one thing that I've iterated and Funkaholic did too:

Times have changed; the general populace's taste has changed in addition to the compositional
and production and artistic values of songwriters, recording artists, and producers. Maybe this
generation does not look back onto the past as fondly or as wistfully as we did and our parents
did.

Just because things are different does not mean they are better/worse. It just means, sometimes,
that things are different.

Dasein said:

Shawy89 said:

Billie Jean comes to mind as it's the definition of a timeless record

What'dya think?

I seriously doubt that songs from the 80s, even the "good ones", would be as successful today as they were yesterday. The proof is in the music that is charting currently which hardly carries any similarities in terms of genre, compositional/production values, etc. with what was charting back then.

The compositional and production values heard in these songs ae not what is popular today.

That said, Daft Punk, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake and others have hit big in recent years with songs reminiscent of the production values of the 80's. And the production values of the 80's songs would have likely been calibrated to present production values.

The major hitmakers of the 80's paid close attention to the sounds of their day and honed their hits accordingly. They would have done no differently in the 2010's.

namepeace said:

MotownSubdivision said:

namepeace said:

That said, Daft Punk, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake and others have hit big in recent years with songs reminiscent of the production values of the 80's. And the production values of the 80's songs would have likely been calibrated to present production values.

The major hitmakers of the 80's paid close attention to the sounds of their day and honed their hits accordingly. They would have done no differently in the 2010's.

I see the 1980s as a glitzier, more colorful incarnation of the 1960s as they were.

I would like for you to unpack this: how are the 80s a more colorful incarnation of the 60s?

And NP, of course there are going to be contemporary tunesmiths who look nostalgically upon the
compositional and production values of yesterday, but I'd ask that you refer to the list I provided
from Billboard: the same week that Michael Jackson released "Billie Jean" in January 1983, {since
that song was referenced in the OP} there are other songs with compositional and production values
that are mostly dissimilar to modern day pop songwriting conventions.

Dasein said:

MotownSubdivision said:

namepeace said: I see the 1980s as a glitzier, more colorful incarnation of the 1960s as they were

And NP, of course there are going to be contemporary tunesmiths who look nostalgically upon the compositional and production values of yesterday, but I'd ask that you refer to the list I provided from Billboard: the same week that Michael Jackson released "Billie Jean" in January 1983, {since that song was referenced in the OP} there are other songs with compositional and production values that are mostly dissimilar to modern day pop songwriting conventions.

Nostalgia plays a role, of course, but that would reduce some of the biggest hits to novelty aberrations. The more plausible explanation is that key elements of signature 80's sounds persist in today's music. Which is why the artists behind those signature sounds would find their hits enjoying similar success today.

And I think your reference to "Billie Jean" actually reinforces the point -- many if not most 80's hits may not translate well to 2010's audiences. But there are those few standout, iconic songs that would. And it's no accident most of them were made by the biggest stars of the time.

But I think critics are even calling into question the premise that 80's and 70's pop doesn't translate well in 2017. A recent Salon article makes the case that the work of today's major pop artists find their roots in the soft rock/"yacht rock" sounds of the late 70's and early 80's.

namepeace said:

And I think your reference to "Billie Jean" actually reinforces the point -- many if not most 80's hits may not translate well to 2010's audiences. But there are those few standout, iconic songs that would. And it's no accident most of them were made by the biggest stars of the time.

Yeah, but like I mentioned with Elvis, they put out remixes with currently popular acts to get new audiences to buy it.

The entire Michael & Xscape albums are another sign of this. They didn't release the original mixes as the albums, but Xscape has a deluxe version that does have the original versions. As a single, a duet (and music video) with Justin Timberlake was released and that is what I heard played on the radio. Michael has been accused of having 3 songs that are not even sung by Mike. Motown also released a remix album of Jackson 5 era stuff a few years ago.

Dasein said:

We never know, what or what not could be a hit nowadays.