80s Music

[Zzzptm]

My wife and I had a weekend road trip to head down to see an old friend performing in a play. (Musical version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and it was great fun.)

For the trip, I made a playlist of about 180 songs from 1985-86, mostly pop tunes. About a third of the tunes were album rock and metal songs that didn't make it to the top 100 for the years in question and I left out the majority of the pop ballads due to them being SOOOO ballad-y.

After making it through nearly the entire playlist, I have the following observations:

1. The Roland DX-7 synthesizer piano was EVERYWHERE on just about any song that was on the radio, like it was a pre-requirement for airplay. And if the song was a ballad, there were only 2 piano presets approved for ballad use, it would seem.
2. Same for gated drum effects, whether applied in the studio or done via drum machine.
3. Horn sections got replaced wholesale by synthesizers - one can hear the squanchy "fwap" sound on the edges of the synthesized horns.
4. Everything sounds so much like everything else. About the only distinguishing feature in most songs was the singer and the hook.

That's the sum of most of the pop and pop-metal of that era. The pop-metal all had similar guitar sounds and standard gimmicks.

Album rock tunes could escape that uniformity somewhat. Against the background of all. that. pop., guys like John Mellencamp and Bryan Adams are like oases in those deserts. I wouldn't normally reach for those two, but if it's a choice between them and the likes of Phil Collins or Corey Hart, sign me up for Mellencamp or Adams.

And when a metal or punk tune came on, it was a rush of blessed relief. No synthesizers, no worries about what will test well with the 18-25 crowd or anything like that. Electronic Dance Music from the period had loads of synths, sure, but they leaned into using them to make good dance beats, not chart hits, so there's an honesty in those synths that's absent from Animotion or John Parr. Pop-metal was OK, but not anywhere near as good as the underground stuff.

40 years later, much of that true 80s metal has aged well. Bands may have strayed, but they've all pretty much come back to the standard sound that works because it's damn good. I'd also say that EDM tracks like Afrika Bambataa's "Planet Rock" also stand the test of time because they're not catering to a fad.

Bands that have enough money will hire actual horn players now because they sound so much better than even the synths of the 2020s.

Very few 80s pop tunes have been able to stand the test of time. Those that do tend to have some kind of endearing quirk that slipped past the QA teams at the major labels, I'm guessing. But if I never hear another Phil Collins song from No Jacket Required again, it'll be too soon.