80s Music

80s Music

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80’s Pop (soon)
80’s Hip Hop
80’s Country
80’s Rock

Music of the 80’s marked the beginning of the major marketable, cross-pollination of new and old genres of music. 80’s artists took risks and went against the grain with collaborations such as Run DMC and Aerosmythe’s groundbreaking classics “Walk this Way”. Michael Jackson, the undisputed pop king of the 80’s, featured rock god Eddie Van Halen on the Thriller album to lay down the infamous “Beat it” guitar solo. Funk legend Lionelle Richie collaborated with the country group Alabama on “Deep River
Woman”. Richie also collaborated with Kenny Roger’s on the song “Lady” which became #1 in 1980. And there are many more examples of this genre mingling.

The fact that so many artists from different genres collaborated is not unique to the 80’s, but the fact that it was able to capture the interest of so many and go pop cross-culturally around the world is truly phenomenal in retrospect. 80’s music speaks volumes of the pluralism and globalization that was just beginning to explode in the 80’s. This is now common place, but in the 80’s the magnitude of success for such a mixture was new.

There was a lot of experimentation and freedom for many artists to try new things. The 90’s and early 2000’s music have an unmistakable steady tightening of genre’s toward very specific markets each with its own plastic commercialized formula that makes much of the music sound artificial. The 80’s had a lot of new genres of music that (at the time) almost defied categorization and ended up defining what are now multi-billion dollar markets and world-wide cultural phenomenons.

Disco/Funk begat rap songs begat Hip-Hop culture. Electronic music group Depeche Mode were almost their own genre of music that spawned an entire subculture, goth which is now called “emo”. Hip-hop music is another 80’s upstart that never went away. Even though the first artist officially called “rappers” (Sugar Hill Gang) started in ’70’s Disco clubs, the urban phenomenon known as hip-hop that includes so many other urban categories didn’t take hold until the 80’s.

If your from Generation Y, born late 80s and 90’s (born during or after the commercialized rise of cable, the Internet and cell phones) then the following 80’s stars will seem like totally different people to you as they do for a Gen X, like my self:

Gen X: Michael Jackson Undisputed King of Pop, musical/dancing genius, creator of thriller, strange man - Gen Y: strange looking white guy possible Child molester

Gen X: Cindy Loper - “Girls just want to have fun” “True Color” Crazy hair -
Gen Y: Who?

Gen X: Wham - Awesome gay duo of the 80s - Gen Y: George Micheals is gay?

Gen X: Duran Duran - The Reflex | Gen Y: who?

Gen X: Madonna - 80’s Pop Diva | Gen Y: Damn, Madonna is old

Gen X: Prince - Musical Genius | Gen Y: who?.. oh, he played in the super bowl

Gen X: Whitney Houston - Incredible 80s R&B singer who had a terrible fall from grace | Gen Y: Crackhead married to Bobby Brown

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