BACK TO THE 80S
All modern electronic music – pop, dance, hip hop, or anything else – has some roots in the music of the 1980s. That’s the decade when electronic music went mainstream, and the sounds, styles, and technology of those times are still totally valid today. There was a time when the culture of the 1980s was derided as being cheesy and tacky, and nostalgia was focused on the fashion more than anything, but that passed, and now we can appreciate how creative – and how much fun – that era was.
“The 1980s sound was about the thrill of the new”
More than the 1970s, the 1980s sound was about the thrill of the new. Guitar music had stagnated; even the better bands had peaked and were living off their former glories. MTV was about to explode on TVs across the USA (and later, the world), bringing with it a massive change in how music was presented and consumed. In fact, it can be argued that MTV was the big thing that shaped 80s music, something that didn’t exist in any form previously – adding a new level of visual awareness, and bringing to the fore songs that sounded good coming out of a television, with bands that looked the part too, for better or worse. There was genuine excitement about creating new pop genres, or evolving existing ones, and the technological changes that brought new beats, new synths, new digital effects, home recording, music software, and of course, sampling, which without question was the next biggest and best thing to happen after MTV. You can still hear that sonic joy in some of the best 80s pop records, as artists and producers revelled in the new possibilities.
But we have an important message for you: there is no single definitive sound of the 1980s! You might listen to, say, Duran Duran, and say ‘that’s the 80s’… And it is, for you, maybe, but like any decade, the 1980s covers a lot of ground. The sounds of the 1980s are based in the sounds of the 1970s, with newer technology coming to the market place and to the studios, or obscure technology gaining more acceptance.
The 80s began with synth pop, and ended with industrial music, and a lot in-between, so your idea of typical 80s music might be Cyndi Lauper, or it might be Einstürzende Neubauten; both are cool, by the way. If you look at the UK singles charts from 1980, amongst the more typical pop material, you’ll see ‘electronic’ acts such as Ultravox, OMD, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Peter Gabriel, and Jon and Vangelis. Skip on to 1989, and you’ll find New Order,.
