Were the 80s really that bad?
Yes.
I was born in the 80s :). If you'd ask me, I'd say all music, everything that came out in the 80s was just awful. Even now, there is really not much from the 80s that I like at all. Given I didn't really "grow up" in the 80s I still find the music embarrassing.
I started listening to music seriously in the mid 90s and there was MTV to dish it out. Every now and then, I'm subjected to 80s music at pubs (yes even in the year 2008) and mixed tapes in peoples cars. And, I can't but cringe. The 80s were full of that synth sound and cheesy and bad - no matter how you look at it, it was bad. Let's not even go into the clothes and the hairstyles.
Let's try to find one artist or an event that happened in the 80s that changed music. There was so much music being produced in the 80s, there were a billion and one genres of metal alone - Black metal, Doom metal, Death metal, Folk metal, Glam metal, Hair metal. Goth metal, Speed metal, Thrash metal. There was so much pop music produced and nothing out of it all is worth remembering.
In the beginning of 80s the new wave of metal,
british metal was at it's peak, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Venom, and Saxon, Judas Priest all released an album this year, this was the year AC/DC released their Back in Black, but, then something happened.
Yamaha released the Yamaha DX7. At the time nobody knew what a big mistake it was, this single abomination would become the weapon of mass destruction of music. The Dx7 was not only used by untalented people but, all the people producing great music till the 80s would come to use the DX7 and create the worst music in the history of humanity. Pet shop boys, beastie boys and even Queen gave in. I'm not a big fan of the Eagles but. how will any
Don henely fan would ever forgive him for this?
Starship's nothing's gonna stop us now borders on disgust, The sacrilege was not limited to glam bands, it took over pop too. There was no restraint in the usage of the sync -- producing nauseating sounds like,
Let's hear it for the boy and kenny loggins
footlose. How can we forget the sounds of
Air supply I even confess to buying this album :(. Let's not even talk about what
Warrant,
Sebastian bach,
Motley crue,
Cinderella and
Twisted sister were doing. Even
The great Ozzy osbourne could not control himself. And these were the most popular and most money making bands of the 80s. The 80s also gave us
New Kids On The Block and
Duran Duran.
There was also Poison and Whitesnake were providing a saving grace but, nothing worth remembering. Then came
The final countdown this has to be the most played and the worst rock song of all times. This song epitomists everything about 80s music. They had some new toys and were dying to use them, no one knew how to use these instruments and the synth was the most overused instrument in the 80s.
When I think of the 80s, I think of exaggeration, The popular music was so over the top. Grand over reverb-ed sounds. And, the synth. The synth found it's way to almost every song that was ever produced in the 80s. The worse part was not that the music was so bad, but, that everyone producing it thought that they were so good.
All wasn't bad. There were handful of artists producing good music throughout the 80s - R.E.M continued to produce good music, U2 released the Joshua tree, Tracy chapman released fast car in 1988. There was Minor Threat, who were so far ahead of their time that no one got them. The iconic moment that we were looking for was Thrash metal. Thrash grew in the alleyways of America when the populous was busy listening to cheesy metal ballads like
Home sweet home,
Headed For A Heartbreak,
Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone),
Every Rose Has Its Thorn.
Thrash metal evolved from speed metal and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal at the beginning of the 1980s, although Black Sabbath's 1975 song "Symptom of the Universe" is often regarded as the earliest example of a thrash metal riff, it was bands such as Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth who spearheaded thrash metal. This was indeed 80s gift to us. Thrash was underground till the very end of 80s. It was not until when Metallica released Black in 1991 that Thrash saw popularity, most fans of Metallica's earlier music consider Black to be the album where Metallica "sold out" and left the real thrash scene.
The other gift of the 80s was Guns and Roses, GnR was formed in 1985, but it was not until 1987 that GnR saw popularity, Appetite for destruction is without doubt the best debut album ever. GnR produced a sound which was accessible to almost everyone. Along with Metallica's Black they made rock the new pop.
80s was also the time when grunge was growing in the underground garages, Soundgarden struggled throughout the 80s and gained popularity in the early 90s, I think if it were not for the really cheezy bad music of the 80s we'd never have had the music of Nirvana, Soundgarden, Metallica, Megadeth and everything that followed. So, we do owe something to the 80s.
Update:
Also worth mentioning was Sinead o'connor, which, does not count because she made like one album. And, how could I have forgotten Micheal Jackson. He was the sole artist who rocked in the 1980s