The 1980s. Golden age of pop, right? YES! says Nick Parkhouse. So why do we have to hear the same handful of songs over and over again? What about all those forgotten 80s pop gems?
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If you’re old enough to remember any of the 80s, I’m sure that if I played you a great number of these records, you’d recognise them. You’d probably get somewhere near all the number ones; perhaps most of the top fives; maybe fewer of the one hit wonders who made number thirty-eight with their only release in 1982.
Given that there were several thousand chart hits – I won’t say “brilliant records”, as Black Lace boast four of them, including both the Conga and the Hokey Cokey – I can never understand why we generally only ever hear about three dozen of them. Go to any wedding reception, 30th birthday party or pub retro-night and you can pretty much take a playlist of the Eighties records that you can expect to hear over the course of the event.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’. Check. ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’. Check. ‘Tainted Love’. Check. ‘The Only Way Is Up’, ‘Don’t You Want Me’, ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ – check, check, check. Perhaps, for variety, you’ll get ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, ‘Billie Jean’ or ‘Karma Chameleon’. You should be so lucky. (Ahem.)
Now, don’t get me wrong. These are all brilliant records in their own right and I have nothing personal against Soft Cell, Boy George or Whitney Houston. (Well, perhaps I will make an exception for Whitney.) What saddens me is that there are literally hundreds of other mega-selling, instantly recognisable songs that lazy wedding disco DJs and presenters on middle-of-the-road radio stations up and down the land could play instead.
Just for once, would it hurt for Dave’s Mobile Disco to play Wham!’s equally brilliant ‘Freedom’, or ‘The Edge Of Heaven’, instead of leaving us hanging on like a yo-yo? What prompts Sarah Slick on SameFM to batter Frankie’s ‘Relax’ to death and not ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’, or ‘Rage Hard’? What determined that the two-week-chart-topper-of-the-early-80s of choice would be ‘Tainted Love’ and not the equally poptastic ‘Happy Talk’, ‘Goody Two Shoes’ or ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic?’
Other than the output of an array of terrific one-hit wonders, for every ubiquitous 80s standard, you could easily pick an alternative song from the artist’s catalogue to enjoy. My favourite Duran Duran record is the number-nine-but-never-bloody-played ‘New Moon On Monday’, most of which you could sing if prompted. Billy Ocean is Britain’s biggest selling black artist of all time, but you’d struggle to recall hearing anything other than ‘When the Going Gets Tough’ in the last twenty years. What about the brilliant ‘Caribbean Queen’, or ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car’? It took David Gray to remind everyone how brilliant a record ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ was, thanks to Soft Cell only having one song on any compilation album. Ever.
One of my favourite emotions of them all is that rush of excitement that I get when I hear the first few notes of a record that I love that I haven’t heard for ages. Nothing will get me to my feet after two bottles of Pinot Grigio at a wedding faster than hearing the drumbeat introduction to the Bee Gees’ ‘You Win Again’. Sitting in the car, my arm has an entirely uncontrollable reflex action to turn the volume up if I even think I hear the synthesised introduction to Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect’. I can’t believe I am alone in the joy of unearthing a hidden gem. So, as time passes, and the general consensus for what are considered “acceptable 80s records” shrinks ever smaller, it is time to stop the rot.
Clearly, not every record made in the 1980s was a work of genius. And for the slow dance at a wedding disco, I’d probably still rather stagger slowly to Jennifer Rush’s ‘The Power of Love’ than Marti Webb’s theme from ‘Howard’s Way’.
However, with echoes of the 1980s sounding in everything from Friendly Fires to Little Boots (Hesketh’s duet with Phil Oakey sounds so alarmingly like a Human League single I had to check the sleeve notes), the decade’s output has never been more popular.
With literally several thousand chart hits to choose from, isn’t it time we revisited the Eighties in a less superficial way and championed those hundreds of silver and gold records that have been buried under the weight of mass-radio landfill?
Nick Parkhouse
I cannot BELIEVE you didn’t mention A-ha. *stares*
Hee. No, your argument’s righteous. In fact, even while we’re talking about A-ha: I’m bored of hearing ‘Take On Me’ and occasionally ‘Hunting High And Low’, but never ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’, ‘I’ve Been Losing You’, ‘The Blood That Moves The Body’, ‘Manhattan Skyline’… And can people stop playing ‘Holiday’ and ‘Vogue’ and perhaps move on to some of Madonna’s other 9 million classics? What about ‘Into The Groove’ or ‘Open Your Heart’, for once?
So, like, yeah, Nick. Yeah.
You know, its amazing how many people sing songs from the eighties at The Speakeasy (the bar I work at) Maybe its just the midwest, Nick, but no one seems to have forgotten the classics where I live. They like to sing them anyway. Of course, that might be because a lot of modern pop is sound modified so no one can sing it with an ounce of authenticity…. Or it might be because its great music. *shrugs* I’ll leave it to you.
Great post!
While I like those old standards we hear everywhere, I miss hearing those less-played tunes which were equally as good, and in some cases much better.
And now I have New Moon on Monday going through my head, accompanied by memories of the video.
Great post and a superb point… although actually, I think it’s an argument that extends beyond the 80s, and includes music from ALL eras, including this one. What about the 70s? Did The Damned release any records beyond “New Rose”? Did the Buzzcocks do anything by “Ever Fallen in Love….”? You wouldn’t think so to listen to the radio would you? Think about how records end up in the charts now. How many come from out of the blue, and how many are orchestrated by the record companies through careful pre-release airplay? I like the democracy that can see a song like “Livin’ on a Prayer” hang around the download top 100, but at the top end of the chart it’s really very nailed down, isn’t it?
Good point though, and I look forward to your tie-in compilation album
(and great point about “The Blood That Moves The Body” Queenie… marvellous record.)
(I also love the fact that the eBay advert below is trying to sell me a dump truck. £425 for a 1 tonne truck? sounds like a bargain to me!)
Oh yeah Nick, I’d rather smooch to the Howard’s Way theme, or perhaps Alone by Heart. Power ballads are skill.
Alecya, which karaoke songs are most popular at your bar?
Aravis, I have to now YouTube that video…
Swiss, I LOVE the fact that downloads have democratised the chart. No such thing as a ‘release’ really, except that those have PR campaigns and organic chart placements don’t. We are living in fascinating times for showbiz…
I remember the days when I used to sit at my dad’s stereo system taping the charts. Oddly enough, the one song that really stands out for me (I liked it) was taping the Howard’s Way theme thing.
Always there…… your love is always there!
etc.
ahem.
…or how about Anita Dobson’s Eastenders theme classic, “Anyone Can Fall in Love”?
Marvellous.
I remember our school disco smooch song of choice being ‘Cherish’ by Kool and the Gang. Again (and to illustrate my point) I am not sure I have heard that song since failing to pull on the dancefloor in 1985.
Queenie – ‘I’ve Been Losing You’, all day long. Brilliant.
Swiss – ‘Every Loser (ft)Wins’. Heh heh heh.
I’ve just spent 15 minutes looking for ‘Something Outta Nothing’ by The Banned (EastEnders band from 1986-ish) on YouTube. Uh-oh. Nick, you have spread a terrible sickness. (but a fun one…)
That’s cos you have to search for Letitia Dean and Paul Medford, not for The Banned, innit.
Whilst we’re on the subject, the video for Stefan Dennis’ “Don’t It Make You Feel Good” is a touch of class….
Honestly, the bar caters to college guys so there’s a lot of “Crazy Rap” by Afroman and “F*ck Her Gently” by Tenacious D. But if you count the people who honestly want to sing?
“Alone” by Heart (one of my favorites, and i love to sing it)
“Electric Avenue” Eddy Grant
“The Lady is a Tramp” Frank Sinatra
“What’s Up?” 4 Non Blondes
“Sister Christian” Night Ranger
“I Need a Hero” Bonnie Tyler
Its stuff like that. Lately had a lot of old school rap too, Warren G, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre…
And older rock like Ozzie, Alice Cooper and the like. And of course there’s always a couple of drunk girls who want to sing “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry or “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morrissette.
But it does tend more towards the older, better stuff in general.
I tell you, “Alone” is the very epitome of the Power Ballad genre (although that weird other song Heart did about wanting a fella to impregnate them at a motel was just plain wrong).
It’s a great point, but you’ve used some lousy examples to illustrate it, in my humble opinion. Oh, and ‘Do the Conga’ is brilliant.
Give us some other examples then, Richard. NB: Black Lace is outlawed on grounds of public decency, but anything else.