Caleb’s Thoughts
September 2006. I’m in a bar or tavern or pub or maybe it was a club in Boulder with my girlfriend, who’s a month into law school. Seventy-three L1s are losing their mind because the DJ is playing Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer.” Again.
This is the first time I felt estranged from my generation. It’s not that I didn’t know the song. Slippery When Wet was one of the first cassettes I bought with my allowance money. But that was little kid music. One step above Rafi or “Kokomo” or water song Uncle Jesse’s band played on Full House. Had we learned nothing from Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and alt-rock radio of the 1990s? Corporate magazines still suck, and so does anything that sounds like it wants you to listen to it.
For a kid led to believe that good music comes from Seattle and teeth brushing is bourgeois, 80s music struck me inauthentic, robotic, sell-outicism. Even Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Johnny Cash—brilliant both before and after—sounded kinda lame in the 80s.
It’s taken decades for me to not cringe when I hear the tedious synth on “Take on Me” (A-ha) and “Tainted Love” (Soft Cell) or the overbearing drums on “Born in the USA” (Bruce Springsteen) or “In the Air Tonight” (Phil Collins). Fortunately, artists today are more open-minded than I am. Blood Orange, the 1975, the War on Drugs, Janelle Monáe, Sharon Van Etten—yes, even Taylor Swift—have helped me appreciate 80s sounds, melodies, and vibes by repurposing them, often without the unfortunate production decisions.
The artist who is most 80s, for me at least, is Prince. He illustrates everything crazy and beautiful and delirious and irresistible and dirty about the decade. The innovation. The variety. The flair. The groove. The synths. Also the gated reverb and excessive compression. I’ve come to see Prince for the genius he is, but I still don’t like the way the drums sound. Maybe that’s why many of my favorite 80s albums don’t sound like the 80s. Anyways, here they are. You can listen on Spotify, if you fancy.
Caleb’s picks
1. Bob Marley & The Wailers ~ Uprising (1980)
2. Tom Waits ~ Rain Dogs (1985)
3. Prince ~ Purple Rain (1984)
4. The Cure ~ Disintegration (1989)
5. U2 ~ Joshua Tree (1987)
6. The Clash ~ London Calling (1980)
7. Bruce Springsteen ~ Nebraska (1982)
8. Steve Earle ~ Copperhead Road (1988)
9. Guns N’ Roses ~ Appetite for Destruction (1987)
10. Tom Petty ~ Full Moon Fever (1989)
11. The Smiths ~ The Queen is Dead (1986)
12. Paul Simon ~ Graceland (1986)
13. Grateful Dead ~ In the Dark (1987)
14. Dire Straits ~ Making Movies (1980)
15. Bruce Springsteen ~ Born in the USA (1984)
16. Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble ~ Couldn’t Stand the Weather (1984)
17. Tracy Chapman ~ Tracy Chapman (1988)
18. The Jayhawks ~ Blue Earth (1989)
19. Lucinda Williams ~ Lucinda Williams (1988)
20. The Waterboys ~ Fisherman’s Blues (1988)
21. Prince ~ Sign O’ The Times (1987)
22. Beastie Boys ~ Paul’s Boutique (1989)
23. De La Soul ~ Three Feet High and Rising (1989)
24. The Pogues ~ Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash (1985)
25. Leonard Cohen ~ I’m Your Man (1988)
26. Tom Waits ~ Heartattack & Vine (1980)
27. The Cure ~ Pornography (1982)
28. Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band ~ Against the Wind (1980)
29. Jane’s Addiction ~ Nothing’s Shocking (1988)
30. Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble ~ Texas Flood (1983)
31. U2 ~ The Unforgettable Fire (1984)
32. Cowboy Junkies ~ The Trinity Sessions (1988)
33. Talking Heads ~ Remain in the Light (1980)
34. Pixies ~ Dolittle (1989)
35. Boogie Down Productions ~ By All Means Necessary (1988)
36. Lou Reed ~ New York (1989)
37. Dire Straits ~ Brothers in Arms (1985)
38. Roxy Music ~ Avalon (1982)
39. Michael Jackson ~ Thriller (1982)
40. Eric B. & Rakim ~ Paid in Full (1987)
41. Metallica ~ Ride the Lightning (1984)
42. The Highwaymen ~ Highwayman (1985)
43. Bruce Cockburn ~ Humans (1980)
44. Violent Femmes ~ Violent Femmes (1983)
45. NWA ~ Straight Outta Compton (1988)
46. Run-D.M.C. ~ Raising Hell (1986)
47. Public Enemy ~ It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)
48. Janet Jackson ~ Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989)
49. The Replacements ~ Pleased to Meet Me (1987)
50. John Prine ~ Storm Windows (1980)
Adam’s thoughts
The 1980s are a goddamned musical abomination. But in the spirit of fairness, I’m going to give this the old complement-critique-complement sandwich.
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. There were some transcendent musicians in the 80s. It’s true that the 70s can stake a (very solid) claim to Queen, but I think of them as an 80s band and Freddie Mercury is my slam-dunk choice for all-time greatest frontman. David Bowie, Whitney Houston, Prince, and Michael Jackson were all HOF performers. And uhhh…..
Things are about to get bleak. The preceding decades of modern music (70s and 60s and 50s) were adventurous, exploratory, and musically groundbreaking. The 1980s were the equivalent of a dog barfing and then eating its barf. The “classic” 80s sound is aurally offensive. Cheesy synths. Gated snare drums. Homogenous repetitive verse-chorus tripe. Emotions as deep as a puddle. Lucky to get a song with a bridge, god forbid an intro or outro or a random section just because. Just awful.
Even the good 80s stuff isn’t that good. The Police are a wildly talented band, but they always leave me wanting more (better in a George Costanza work meeting than in a band). Metallica is cool, and this is an executable statement to many, but a lot of their best stuff came in the 90s. Metal had such a great start, and then ran into the 80s maelstrom of shitty pants, shitty hair, schlocky guitar, and crap singing. Hip-hop was nascent (which is rad) but hadn’t fully found its legs yet. The disaster that is Red Hot Chili Peppers began. Fucking MTV was getting started. Fucking New Kids on the Block. The more I write, the harder pressed I am to give the 80s a defense.
But let’s try. I like 90s music even more than I dislike 80s music, and like any decade, the 90s owes deep debts to the 10 years before it. Some of that is the obvious stuff about bands like Nirvana being an authentic reaction to the previous 10 years of contrived schlock. But moreover, a bunch of deeply influential 90s bands were really 80s bands and you can tell. Nine Inch Nails, Faith No More, Jane’s Addiction, and the Flaming Lips were all releasing formative albums in the 80s. Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, and Fugazi were all figuring out the bands they would become. Pulp and REM and Depeche Mode were exploring sounds that would become fundamental to the bands they inspired.
I don’t like 80s music, but I like what 80s music became.
Nate’s thoughts
The 80s aren’t my decade. I guess that Talking Heads and Dire Straits made some good stuff.
John’s thoughts
John is the only band member who was alive for the entire decade. He is also the only one who expressed unqualified enthusiasm for 80s music pointing to the Cure, the B52s, the Go Gos, David Bowie, The Clash, The Ramones, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Police, and Iggy Pop.
Commentary
I got some great recommendations, insights, and thought-nuggets from others, which I’m adding here for your reading pleasure.
Matt Mathias:
I think Laurie Anderson needs to be on any list talking about pop music, especially music coming from the USA in the 2nd half of the 20th century. She’s often credited as a pioneer of electronic music and is also an experimental artist across several forms. And don’t let me forget to mention that she also invented several musical devices.
Her first two studio albums were released in 1981 and 1982. O’Superman from Big Science is I think her biggest “hit” on the popular charts.
Anderson is one of those artists who was at the center of American music culture for a long time with comparatively little renown relative to her influence and talent.
Scott Goldstein
I double and triple checked, but I don’t see any REM? Do mine eyes deceive me? They had so many phenomenal albums in the 80s, I don’t even know where to start.
Also, earlier this year, I learned about a band called the Mekons. They’ve been around for several decades, including the 80s and they had some great songs, my favorite of which is “millionaire”. That song came out in the early 90s, but check out their 1989 record rock n roll.
Also Nirvana’s Bleach was 1989. I feel that deserves at least an honorable mention.
Andrew Gravel (The Gravel Project)
I put Disintegration and Joshua Tree into best rock albums of all time.
Eric Schmidt
I love how this is so much more my speed than Caleb’s usual blog. Name your top-10 indie pop B-sides of 2025 in descending order, huh? I haven’t listed to anything new since, like, 2012, so that’s going to be challenging.
Looks like I’m in the minority here, but I loved ‘80s music at the time (to the extent a pre-teen kid with a Casio keyboard can love music) and will still defend it as not sucking nearly as bad as you all contend. OK, we can all agree that Livin on a Prayer karaoke is brutal. And some/many of the MTV pop stars and hair metal bands actually did suck. But for me, the ‘80s combination of overdriven guitar, over-the-top synth, over-reverbed production, and singalong choruses is both nostalgic and actually good music in its own way. Is it really any less authentic than some of the prog pretentiousness of the ‘70s or the self-indulgent brooding of the ‘90s? It’s like, I know this is schlock, but it’s our schlock. Plus, I’m coked to the gills, I own a Marshall JCM 800 full stack on payments, and I am almost certainly going to get laid tonight. Fuck you, Gorbachev.
Part of it might be that when I was learning to play music (mostly guitar) my idols were always of the power chord/arena rock variety rather than anyone you would call serious songwriters. My ambition was always more to entertain than to actually make good music. Considering my talents never really progressed beyond that, maybe that explains a few things.
And finally, to anyone who says ‘80s music is shallow, repetitive, juvenile, chauvinistic, and lacking in serious artistic merit, I say:
Andrew McIntyre
Thanks for starting this fun conversation, Caleb! I'm with Eric: I continue to enjoy 80s rock and pop music, and actually quoted Whitesnake in a recent Law360 column. Sure, the repetitive percussive tracks can be a bit much. I don't listen to these tunes for their complex drumming. Who does? I'm most interested in the expansion of harmonic progressions 80s rock and pop music ushered in, and how such harmonically more complex music lent itself to melody construction. (I'm equally interested in the rejection of smooth melodic voice leading by some rock groups in the early 90s.) 70s pop and rock music stayed closer for longer to the tonic. 80s pop and rock strayed farther for longer from the tonic. One scholar's assertion that Thriller in one album was "emblematic of all of the key changes of the 1980s" ably sums up Jackson's contribution to the evolution of harmony. I see this album made your list, Caleb. Thriller is an interesting album, although I have always disliked its title track.
I've gone retro in the last year, enjoying a new six-in-one unit (LP, CD, cassette, FM, aux-in, bluetooth). Queen and John Rutter (SATB choral, many works from the 80s) CDs are on the shelf at present. While I haven't listened to John Adams or Philip Glass in ages, both were instrumental in furthering opera in the 80s. Wild stuff. I wish I knew more about 80s jazz.
Nick Byron Campbell (Arizona, Wages, Left Vessel)
I've definitely grown to appreciate the 80s more with age. But not so much the super pop stuff as some of the early alternative, transitional music of the era. REM definitely fits into that (I think Green is a phenomenal record in particular - in the song "Get Up" you hear a lot of what is about to happen in the 90s, for example).
I'll throw a random one in here that's meaningful to me –Band of Susans – NYC band formed in the 80s that came out of the same scene that birthed Sonic Youth and at one point featured a young Page Hamilton on guitar (who would go on to form Helmet).