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a primer to music pop culture from the eighties to the noughties

Category: 80ies Page 2 of 3

Songs of the 1980ies

Their Dwelling

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On 31 August 2022

In 1982, 80ies

While the musical variety Ska is generally considered to be closely related to the Jamaican genres Reggae and Rocksteady there’s no denying many of it’s modern performers also draw heavily from Balkan roots – and maybe it’s no wonder the north-eastern London band Madness always had more followers in Europe than the United States, where only one of their hits really took flight.

“Our House” describes the feeling many young people had in the tough economics of the 80ies – enforced to keep living with their parents as they simply couldn’t afford to move out they were trapped between nostalgia and the knowledge that this period of life was supposed to be over.

They tripped me into not wanting to think about cultural appropriation thirty years before that was even a thing.

Extraterrestrial Weather

By

On 29 August 2022

In 1985, 80ies, Must-See-Video

It was in the late 60ies, that Richard Anthony Hewson started his work arranging songs for other bands and he soon came up with quite a portfolio, working with such illustrious names as The Beatles, The Bee Gees, Herbie Hancock, Supertramp, Diana Ross, Chris De Burgh and many others. So we’ll forgive the sign of a slightly inflated ego that shines through when he named the band with which he was going to produce his own music after himself – RAH band – especially given that he was, in fact, the band’s only actual member.

Founded in 1977 the band’s first hit was “The Crunch”, an instrumental involving no synthesizers in which Hewson played all the instruments himself. Their biggest hit, “Clouds Across The Moon”, however, involved quite a few machine-generated melodies, as well as vocals provided by his wife, “Dizzy Lizzy”. Can’t stray too far, now, can we?

They obviously spared no expenses in the costume department, did they?

What Girls Really Really Want

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On 23 August 2022

In 1983, 80ies, Girl Power Tuesday

In 1979 Robert Hazard recorded the demo for a little song he wrote about who lucky he was that there were so many girls who wanted to have some fun – with him… which wasn’t a big hit. But as the label, Columbia, owned the rights they asked producer Rick Chertoff to do something with the song. Which he did a few years later, by suggesting it to newly hired Cyndi Lauper, suggesting she’d edit the lyrics to a more feminist point-of-view. She was working on her album with his old bandmates of “The Hooters” at the time, and after experimenting with a number of different musical styles they together transposed “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” into what would become the anthem for female attitude in the 80ies.

The album, “She’s So Unusual” was a huge success and contained four top-five songs, the first debut by a female artist ever to do so. “True Colors” was another one of those and it evinced a strong theme in Lauper’s work even more: acceptance. While most videos at the time depicted staggeringly beautiful people rarely seen in real life, she insisted on having hers populated by normal gals and guys, leading regular lifes. And as “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” was to be an anthem for all women it was important to her that they all were represented in the video, irregular of race, body type or alleged flaws – what should go without saying these days took a long time in the making.

The video also features what at the time were mind-blowing never-before-seen computer generated images, produced by the brand new multi-million-dollar digital editing equipment bought for Saturday Night Live that they were allowed free access to.

The mother in the video really is Lauper’s mother, while the “father” is wrestler “Captain” Lou Albano, with whom she would collaborate on a number of occasions throughout her career.

Atrocious Magic

By

On 19 August 2022

In 1982, 80ies

The Steve Miller Band started out as a blues band in the 60ies and evolved into a solid rock troupe by the 70ies. But when the 80ies came along with Punk and New Wave they started to feel like dinosaurs and as fewer and fewer fans turned up to their concerts they stopped touring altogether – at least until 1988, by which time they had transitioned into “Classic Rock” and were able to draw solid crowds again. But they did have one last big hit in 1982, even though their label, Capitol, did not believe in it and only came round when it was a number one hit all over the world: “Abracadabra” was a great piece of music with hideous lyrics.

Now, as we established, in the 80ies MTV had become a force and in order to sell records you needed to have a video to go along with your songs. Which was kind of a problem for one of the lowest-profile frontmen in rock. They had never done a video before and he just wasn’t going to be a video-star, so director Peter Conn did a little slight-of-hand of his own and made the video all about magic, with Miller – who was off touring Europe anyway – only appearing in photographs, incognito behind huge sunglasses and black bars.

I only found out after scheduling this post that she turns 64 today. Happy Birthday!

I found out even later that it’s the 45th anniversary of Elvis’ death as well.

Newtonian vs. Quantum Physics

By

On 10 August 2022

In 1981, 80ies, Eulogies, Must-See-Video

It’s been slightly over a month since NIST announced their winners of a six-year competition to find encryption algorithms that would withstand a quantum attack (and a few days since another one still in consideration got cracked with pre-quantum hardware). None of that work would have been possible without Jewish physicist Max Born, who fled to Great Britain with his family from the Nazi Regime in 1939. There his daughter Irene met an MI5 officer working on the Enigma project to decipher German top-secret messages (if you’re interested in the subject and would prefer an easy-to-read approach, Neal Stephenson’s book “Cryptonomicon” can not be recommended highly enough, but I digress). The couple emigrated to Melbourne, Australia in 1954 with their three children, the youngest of which was Olivia Newton-John, who started a musical career at the tender age of fourteen and soon became a regular on local TV. In 1974, she represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest, but lost to – you guessed it – Sweden.

Her career finally soared off four years later when she scored the lead role of Sandy in “Grease” alongside John Travolta. The movie became the biggest box-office hit of 1978 and yielded no less than three Top-5-Singles and to this day one of the best selling movie soundtracks. Personally I like her next movie, “Xanadu”, featuring a musical co-production with the Electric Light Orchestra even better, but then again I’m into all kinds of weird, so take that with a grain of salt.

By this time, just like Sandy, Newton-John had undergone a transformation from the least offensive woman in music to leather-clad vixen. Her biggest hit, “Physical” helped with the new image: the thinly veiled sexual references at the time were thought to be too provocative by Tina Turner, who had been offered the song before and turned it down (only to release the even more obvious “Private Dancer” three years later). The song would stay at number one of the Charts for an amazing 10 weeks, which by that time only Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” had achieved, and the video featuring fat men failing comically at what in 1981 was the newest gym fad – Aerobics – only to turn into fit gay couples the moment Newton-John left the room for a shower is simply hilarious.

Sadly, Newton-John has lost her fight with breast cancer two days ago. RIP.

Almost Lifelike CGI

By

On 8 August 2022

In 1985, 80ies, Guitar Gods, Must-See-Video

Fifty-Three years, two weeks and five days ago Neil Armstrong uttered his famous words as he first set foot onto Earth’s big satellite. Some people to this day are certain that it was all staged, using studio photos and computer generated graphics.

Thirty-five years and one week ago MTV Europe went on air, with Dire Strait’s “Money For Nothing” being the first video that flickered into European music lovers’ homesteads. It featured lines Mark Knopfler – who had work-experience as a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post – had picked up from a guy standing next to him in an electronics store in New York City in front of a wall of TV’s (all playing MTV) and a guest performance by Sting (“I want my Em-Tee-Veeee….”). Most notably though it displayed breathtaking state-of-the-art CGI, depicting not one but two working-class men watching and commenting on music videos.

Knopfler was rather unimpressed, as he considered videos to be beneath his dignity, destroying the purity of the music. Luckily for us his girlfriend chimed in, finding the concept quite brilliant, and while Knopfler was supposedly not at all convinced he at least did not interfere with proceedings.

The video was supposed to have more details, like buttons on the shirts, which couldn’t be implemented as they ran out of budget. It still won the Video of the Year awards though.

But just think about what might have been possible, if only they had asked NASA, instead of having it directed by Steve Barron (whom we already know from A-Ha).

Straight Up The Charts

By

On 2 August 2022

In 1988, 80ies, Girl Power Tuesday

We already came across several pieces where the artist overruled their label when it came to song selection, video choices or track length, only to be proven absolutely right by commercial success. Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” – which she only was allowed to record under the premise that she would also do two other songs she did not like chosen by the studio – fits right into the category.

Written by Elliot Wolff, a friend of her mother’s, the quality of the demo version was so bad that it went straight into the trash. But Abdul, who was primarily working as a choreographer at the time, fished it back out and recorded it in her bathroom (including, on the master tape, a performance of her neighbours who must have misheard the lyrics – they went for “Shut Up!” instead of “Straight Up”).

When the song went through the roof – to the label’s surprise – Abdul’s choreographer talent paid off, as the video had to be hastily put together – only to win a whopping four MTV Music Awards that year.

My personal favourite bit about the song is when my significant other performs her karaoke version of it. She’s been practising it ever since childhood and it never fails to turn my knees to jello.

The 50ies Are Calling

By

On 28 July 2022

In 1989, 80ies

Before Apple (Computers, not the Beatles’ record label) sold their first portable computer under the name “Mac Portable” it was known internally as the “Love Shack”, after The B-52’s signature song from 1989. It’s a funny, harmless song into which people keep interpreting things that just aren’t there. It really is just about a simple shack where people are having a big party with everyone invited.

The video was shot by Adam Bernstein, who also did a few episodes of “Breaking Bad”, in Upstate New York at the house of a friend. Some of the party attendants were just real friends of the band members, but you can also spot drag queen Rupaul, unknown to the general public at the time.

It was a world-wide hit except for Japan. Even though “The B52’s” were named after the hairstyle of the singers it turned out sharing a name with an American bomber was not a particularly popular choice there.

Covert Covers

By

On 27 July 2022

In 1989, 80ies

Like several of the songs we have talked about “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak is another one that took a while to really set off. Even though it was released as a single from his studio album “Heart Shaped World” it only become a hit when David Lynch included it in his film “Wild at Heart”.

Most notably though it has been covered a lot, by bands such as R.E.M., HIM, Pink, Céline Dion, Zucchero or – my personal favourite – Les Reines Prochaines. And many more.

Supermodel Helena Christensen, on the contrary, is pictured quite uncovered in the video (the better known one of two).

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