Believe it or not, I have given this issue a lot of thought over the years. I think it boils down to the fact that the 80s were probably the worst decade in history of modern pop music — by a mile!
In fact, I don’t even think that’s debatable. If you took a list of the top 25 worst chart topping songs of all-time, that list would be dominated by music from the 1980s.
This is just my rationale. It does not include any selections. Please don’t read any further if you’re not interested in the rationale. There is nothing sadder than seeing a grown man cry, especially about reading.
“They” always say do you always love the music of your teenage years the most. They also say that you will marry your mother. Finally, they always say that you get more conservative as you get older. None of those things are remotely true for me.
I think the music of my youth was largely garbage, I married a girl who could not be more different than my mom if she tried and I’ve never been less conservative in my life than I am right now.
Maybe a better way to put that last one is I’ve never been less trusting of conservatives than I am right now.
As for the music, I have this theory that teenagers and kids in early 20s — college kids — determine what is cool and what is not cool for the entire culture.
Then, all of the fashion houses along with the movie executives, record companies, etc., try to fish that hole.
Wherever there are young people with disposable income, there will be lots and lots of advertisers looking to court them and separate them from their parents’ money.
The problem is the record companies by their very nature can’t stop, so to fill the void they will typically put derivatives after derivatives after derivatives in there and before long, instead of NIN you end up Filter.
Also, teens are fickle and their tastes change. Additionally, it’s a short period in someone’s lives and new teens are there to replace them all the time, so the attitudes and preferences change quickly, which causes the fishing hole to move — often dramatically.
So, you have this natural tension between what the record companies want – which is stability and predictability in the market please – and what young people want – which is fresh new music that reflects their ever-evolving feelings/experiences.
I always look at the 80s as the first time the record companies had full control of the industry and fully understood how to exploit that control. Also, MTV’s impact cannot be overstated.
Unfortunately, that corporatization of the music led to a lot of very cynical measures, which in turn led to a ton of unfortunate outcomes.
One of the cynical measures would be to take really great artists and water them down for mass consumption. That’s what you saw with Starship and Heart. It’s also what we saw with legendary acts like Lionel Richie and Stevie Wonder.
How could an artist do something as amazing as Superstition and really, just a few years later, do something as pathetic as I Just Called to Say I Love You?
It would make more sense had it happened the other way. You’d have an artist that scuffed around for a bit and then found his voice. However, that’s not what happened there. Everyone’s music got demonstrably worse. It just all got so syrupy and inauthentic and plastic-y, and well, chintzy.
If I could pick one instrument to represent the music of the 1980s, I would choose the keyboard, and that’s not good.
In the UK, things were a little bit different. They are different culturally anyway and MTV hadn’t taken over there yet. They went a different route and, in my view, had far better outcomes. However, that’s a discussion for a different day.
