There comes a point in the lives of most people when they develop an interest in music, and at first it's generally (but not always) the music that happens to be popular at the time.
The first song I ever bought for myself was the Men at Work hit "Down Under." I bought it in 1982 at Zayre's, a local discount/department store, on a 45 RPM record for something like $1.75. Maybe it was less, I can't remember.
I was in seventh grade at the time and the music of that 1982-84 era really shaped my taste for years to come. I still listen regularly to Men at Work, and particularly to lead singer Colin Hay, who has had a great solo career over the last 35 years. I even met him once.
From Men at Work I quickly branched out to The Police, Steve Miller, Duran Duran, The Fixx, Flock of Seagulls, Billy Joel, and a whole host of other artists whose 45s and cassettes I would regularly purchase. These were songs that had strong melodies, interesting lyrics, and quite often the combination of synthesizers and saxophones that I liked.
What about you? What was the first song or full-length album you bought? When did you buy it, and more important, why did you buy it? Feel free to comment directly here on the blog, or on whatever social media channel you use to access us (Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn).
Before we jump into yet another five-item list here on the ol' blog, let me point out something.
The title of this post is "Five quintessentially 80s songs." Not "THE five quintessentially 80s songs." Just five of them from what is presumably a much longer list.
So don't get your panties in a bunch complaining about my choices, which by the way are exquisite. If you have additions, please, add them in the comments.
I suppose I mean at least three things by the phrase "quintessentially 80s":
These are songs that define or really capture some part of the decade's vibe and feel.
They are songs that may still be listened to and enjoyed by many, but that I submit could only have been hits in the 80s.
And they're songs that I like. As I always say, I'm pushing the keys here, so I make the rules.
Anyway, in no particular order, here are five quintessentially 80s songs:
I Ran - Flock of Seagulls
I have this belief that no discussion of 80s music or culture is complete without at least a passing mention of Flock of Seagulls. They weren't especially huge, as New Wave bands go, but lead singer Mike Score's hair and their overall sound were very much representative of what was going on in one segment of pop music in, say, 1982 and '83.
My friend Mel was a huge Flock of Seagulls fan and had all of their music on cassette. This was before the CD era, of course, but long after vinyl had stopped being cool. Ironically, vinyl is ultra-hip and cool today, which just goes to prove what Mark Twain said about history not necessarily repeating itself, but it sure does rhyme a lot.
Down Under - Men at Work
There are probably few people in the U.S. (or even the world) who still listen to Men at Work as frequently and as enthusiastically as I do. Their sound is dated in many ways, but I guess that's why I like it. "Business As Usual," the album on which "Down Under" appeared, could only have clicked on a global scale as it did in the early 80s, largely as a reaction to much of the blandness that proceeded it on the pop charts in 1979 and '80.
This particular tune resonated with millions partly because it helped bring about a massive wave of interest in Australia, a continent we had all sort of collectively forgotten about for several decades prior. Suddenly it was like, "Hey, remember Australia? They're all so cool down there! And how about that Crocodile Dundee?"
Greg Ham's flute riff defines this song for many, but it doesn't work without Colin Hay's voice and phrasing. The original version of this song, as Colin likes to point out, was much darker than the pop version that swept the world. But no one was really interested in dark and dreary at that point in history, so the cheery remix prevailed.
Come On, Eileen - Dexy's Midnight Runners
If someone brings up the topic of 80s one-hit wonders, this is your go-to band. I never quite got the whole overalls-and-bandanna ragamuffin look they were going for, but that's OK because this tune is one I can listen to again and again.
By the way, lots of misheard lyrics in this song, including the very garbled first stanza. For the record, it goes like this:
Poor old Johnnie Ray Sounded sad upon the radio Moved a million hearts in mono Our mothers cried, sang along Who would blame them?
Not Shakespeare, I guess, but better than, say, Vanilla Ice.
99 Luftballoons - Nena
We're talking about the German version here, not that weak English-translated "99 Red Balloons." Nena is Nena only when she's speaking der Deutsch and showing off her hairy armpits. (And for what it's worth, the English translation wasn't a direct translation, so it's not even the same song, really.)
I guess this was designed to be an anti-war song of sorts, which would make sense from a German band working in the early 80s. They lived in a place where the Cold War was being waged on a daily basis.
But what everyone really liked was the beat of the song, and specifically the synthesized bass line. The song could have been about floor wax for all it mattered, and none of us knew what Nena's German lyrics meant anyway. A worthy addition to any list of great 80s songs.
Video Killed the Radio Star - The Buggles
Nowadays, this songs only gets mentioned as the answer to a trivia question: namely, what video was the first one ever played on MTV?
But it's a good tune in its own right and it gets heavy rotation on my iPod (to which you're probably responding, "Of COURSE it does.")
Technically, "Video Killed the Radio Star" doesn't even belong on this list because it was officially released in 1979. But because of the MTV connection, and because of what it represented, it deserves a place here. It tells the story of the passing of one era and the dawn of another, which reminds me that there really was a kind of collective anticipation as the 70s were ending and the 80s began.
Of course, by the time the 90s rolled around, all we had to show for the decade were crates of unsold parachute pants and a hole in the ozone layer caused by the use of millions of metric tons of Aquanet hairspray, so I'm not exactly sure what everyone was so jazzed about.
(1) Parachute Pants
I never wore them myself. But I liked the fact they even existed. Here's a photo:
How many times in the 80s did I say to myself, "It would be perfect if I had a zippered pocket just above my right knee to carry this object around, but darn it, these stupid Bugle Boy jeans just don't offer what I need!" (The answer, by the way, is zero. I never said that to myself. Nor did any other sane person. By the way, nice white socks, Mr. Model.)
(2) The Music
You actually can't classify every piece of popular music released from 1980 through 1989 as "80s Music," because it's all so different. (The same is probably true for any decade.) There was late-era disco, New Wave, hair metal, second-generation punk, etc. I liked almost all of it.
(3) The Hair
We rocked us some pretty rad hair in the 80s. Most guys I knew favored the parted-in-the-middle-and-feathered-back style. Early in the decade, girls used their curling irons to dangerous extremes. Later in the decade, they just teased up their 'do to record heights. Then there was the Flock of Seagulls guy:
That's Mike Score. He's bald now. So it goes...
(4) The Blatant Disregard for Anything But Making Money
This is not the most socially redeeming feature of the decade, but it was pretty funny to watch. No one even tried to pretend they had anything resembling altruistic motives (see Gecko, Gordon).
(5) The Ties
For whatever reason, we in the 80s decided that neckties should be no more than about 2 inches across. Which isn't necessarily a bad look. Except if you take it in this direction:
In which case, it probably doesn't work. (I also never liked tying those things. I like the appearance of a wide-tie knot much better. I was either ahead of or behind my time, depending on how you look at it.)
(6) Young Mike Tyson
Before the prison term. And the ear biting. And the face tattoo. Before all of that, there was just Iron Mike. And he was fearsome, both as a boxer and as a human being. Will Smith even did a five-minute rap about him that white people loved. Mike not only beat people, he destroyed them.
I miss that Mike. He was fun to watch. As long as you weren't the poor guy he was punching in the head.
(7) 80s Malls
There are still malls, of course, but they're different now. 80s malls had their own hip aura. They were the place to be, socially. And they had Chess King. And Spencer's Gifts back before it got scary. And Orange Julius (it was required by law in the 80s that all malls must have at least one Orange Julius store.) My daughter works in a mall now and I don't enjoy going there nearly as much as I used to. Maybe because malls also lost their bookstores. I could spend hours in a mall bookstore.
(8) David Hasselhoff
The Hoff is still around, I know. But he doesn't look like this anymore:
Simply put to all of you kids out there, our Hoff was way better than your Hoff.
(9) The Commodore 64
The Commodore was my first computer. I got it for Christmas 1983. In the following five years, I amassed an impressive collection of pirated software. And I met a kid online who, weeks after my friend Kevin and I went to his house, was arrested for running some sort of credit card scam using his Commodore. Cyber crime didn't originate in 2002!
I'm including a picture of a Commodore 64 only because it makes me happy just to look at it:
There was a time when I was pretty good at video games. This was approximately 1982 to 1984. Then I started a long, slow decline that continues to this day.
The result is that my kids make fun of my gaming skills, or lack thereof. This actually happened: Jack was playing "Super Mario Bros." on the Wii the other day, and when I asked if I could join him, he hesitated for a second and then said, "OK, but don't be sad when your guy dies."
Slightly offended, I asked what he meant. And he said, "Well, it's just that you're not very good."
Please note that I had never actually played Super Mario Bros. on the Wii before. Jack was just assuming my incompetence.
It turned out he was right, of course. Back in The Day (I find myself increasingly referring to The Day in conversation), I was pretty good at Super Mario Bros. on the old Nintendo NES system. But this new version of Super Mario Bros. is much more complex. Whenever I play, my character must look out of the screen, see that it's me controlling him, and decide it would be just as easy to commit some form of electronic suicide.
Now if we were playing the old Atari 2600, it would be a different story. I could play me some Atari 2600. Didn't matter what the game, I was probably pretty good at it. Combat? Pac-Man? Air-Sea Battle? Basketball? I was The Man at virtually every Atari cartridge.
The main reason for this was that I actually had time to play and practice. You can get good at just about anything if you have time to work at it. When I was 12 years old, I had time for everything. Teachers hadn't yet started doing that thing where they give two hours of homework to elementary school children every night, so time is the one thing we had in abundance (of course, my generation is also functionally retarded when compared with a lot of kids today, so maybe that homework thing would have been a good idea).
Do you remember that scene in the movie "Groundhog Hog" where Bill Murray is teaching Andie MacDowell to flip playing cards into a hat? He tells her, "Six months, four to five hours a day, and you'd be an expert." That's how it was with my friends and I when it came to video games.
It helped that my dad was a Gadget Guy. And by that I mean we had most of the cool new electronic gadgets of the 70s and 80s before anyone else had them. I was playing pong on my TV in 1977, thanks to the Radio Shack console Dad brought home one night. We also had the Atari 2600 long before most of the families in my neighborhood. So I was able to get pretty good at almost everything.
Then came the arcade craze. I spent a lot of paper route money pumping tokens into everything from Space Invaders and Centipede to Donkey Kong and Galaga. My friend Mel and I would ride our motocross bikes up to the game room and blow $3 to $5 (that's usually as much money as either of us had at any given time) in an hour or two. We would be wearing our 80s-style painters caps decked out with metal pins of our favorite New Wave bands like Duran Duran and Flock of Seagulls. We thought we looked cool. In reality, we must have looked like The Incredible Dork Twins.
My favorite game was one called Track & Field. You would participate in a variety of track events by repeatedly mashing a pair of buttons in rapid fashion to make your onscreen athlete run faster or jump farther. I was good at this game. Good to the point that I once played a game of Track & Field for a full hour on a single quarter.
Once I started high school in the fall of 1984, the time I had available for gaming dropped dramatically. There were sports practices, extracurriculars, actual homework assignments, etc. And the video game world quickly passed me by. I lost track of what was new and hot, and sadly the arcades started going out of business. By the mid-90s, video games cost upwards of a dollar to play and could only be found in the lobbies of movie theaters.
Now I'm reduced to the role of Inept Daddy. We'll be playing Super Mario Bros., and when I inevitably fall off a ledge or run into something I thought was friendly and die, one of the kids will give me the ultimate insult: a condescending head shake, a small laugh, and the words "Oh, Daddy." The message being: "We only let you play so we can laugh at you. You're more entertaining than the game itself."
Whatever, you little brats. Once they invent time travel and we go back to the 80s, I'm dragging all five of them to the arcade and I will school them. And I'll make them wear painters caps, too. Then my revenge will be complete.
