1979-1983 seems like an interesting period for music. It's moving away from 70s culture, but it's not yet the "DX7 neon Huey Lewis 80s" (1984-1990) that pop culture obsesses over.
1979-1983 seems like an interesting period for music. It's moving away from 70s culture...
This album released January 1982 has the most neon of any Huey cover.
Symbolically I mean. Power of Love and Hip to Be Square captured the mid-late 80s zeitgeist.
Im a bit obsessed with that exact time period right now
honestly the only period of pop than can go toe to toe with, say, 1965-1969. just an astonishingly creative time
that album is a bit too new wave for my tastes
I started with a 3x3 and am unhappy with everything I'm excluding in a 5x5
Zapp
Iron Maiden
I see you are a fellow man of taste and culture
Great time for music honestly
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punishment of luxury
kinda dystopian sound.
It was Reagan's first term where the malaise was still hanging on. The "laser grid big 80s" began in his second term.
That was a really unique time. A lot of good music , videos, movies etc in that short time frame.
Really up until about '88 it was awesome. After that other influences became obvious and alot of what made the 80's great started to fade away and replaced with what would become the sounds of the 90's.
78-84 - New wave, analog synth, skinny ties
84-88 - Big 80s, yuppies, digital synth
88-93 - Neighties, new jack swing, Saved by the Bell
1983 was a pretty good year.
Gang of Four - Entertainment!
The Sound - jeopardy
Fehlfarben - Monarchie und Alltag
brutal death metal - broke
brutalist art pop - bespoke
It was a period before gated reverb drums oversaturated rock and pop music, which was why it still had the raw but slightly polished energy
You guys are treating this like someone who thinks everyone instantly started wearing flannels and listening to Grunge when Nirvana showed up in the 90s. People were still listening to pop shit like Queen and Olivia Newton John from 1979-1983. About the only artists who were mainstream were Blondie and Duran Duran, and it's really just one song from either.
*About the only artists who were mainstream that any of you posted
OP here, I wasn't saying it changed on a dime in 1980, I was saying 80-83 was unique *because* of it being transitional
The Police
Talking Heads
The Human League
not mainstream
The Cars, too, they were played on mainstream FM rock stations as much or more than any of them. Clash got a decent amount of airplay with "Train In Vain" before they hit it big a couple of years later with "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay...". The funniest part of that era was the more legacy/mainstream acts trying to stay hip/current, which usually meant ditching the facial hair, a spiky haircut or two amongst the band members, and some wardrobe tweaks. J Geils Band had the "new wavy" keyboard player as did a lot of other bands. One of the best ones to make the transition was Alice Cooper with "Flush The Fashion"; "Clones" was a minor hit on FM radio with its Cars/Numan combo sound.
youtube.com
New wave Cooper is so underrated. For me? It's DaDa
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Geogaddi came out in 2003
I know and heartbeat city came out in 1984
I made that 3x3 before this thread was posted so there are anomalies I just thought it was a neat coincidence
1979-83 has to be the greatest run of music ever, so much was going on, you had early hardcore, post-punk peaked in that period, then a lot of early indie, dunedin sound, jangle pop, early synthpop, new wave, DIY Punk, early lo-fi... etc.
It was like doing what would become much more established in the late 80s early 90s, but in a more raw and interesting way since the definitions hadn't been cemented yet, and everyone was free to still experiment. It also had a lot of intersection with the mainstream too at times. The start of alternative music. Mark Fisher called it "Popular Modernism". To me it's like a second 60s psychedelic revolution, in the spirit of how that period of music was full of experimentation and it would be rewarded by the hippie subculture who enjoyed weirder sounds and even mainstream audience listeners who were obsessed with innovation, modernism and what would be perceived as revolutionary or "the future" (the whole hippie idiom of out with the old in with the new galvanized that whole gen to accept more avant-garde art forms, the fact the Beatles could put Revolution 9 on an album and be the biggest band in the world was a sign of the times).
Exactly, funny I read this after I made the comparison with the 60s level of experimentation. Yeah '79-83 was a perfect sequel to 65-69
in the late 70s the doors were broke open, many of these acts would not have been able to get a record deal a few years earlier for being too weird, crude, or unconnected. that's punk's greatest legacy.
You get it, those who were too early like the Residents, Velvet Underground, Red Krayola, Debris', the Modern Lovers, Jack Ruby, Monks, Milk n Cookies... etc. Tended to go completely obscure or start and get a very small audience that went nowhere.
They were all bands that were too early to the alternative music boom, some of them like Residents and Red Krayola have said that when punk happened it was a massive opportunity, as they finally had a market for their weird shit. It's why most of that new wave / punk / alternative music seems to coalesce around 77-78, because it had been building up for ages, but only had a chance to be widely distributed and commercialized around then.
Modern Lovers made their first album in 1972, but it only got released in 76, and had a massive audience by then. If it had gotten released as early as intended it would have probably gone nowhere. There were also bands who were interested in music who just got into it because now they had a funnel to do their weird shit through (for example Chrome and This Heat).
You had this kind of a thing going on in the 60s underground psychedelic scene, some bands like Pearls Before Swine, the Fugs, Red Krayola, Godz... etc. Did alright for the time, as there were enough "hipsters" who kept looking for more "far out" music and the culture just perpetuated this thing where people were telling each other "deep psych" and what was cool rather than the posers that came in after the summer of love.
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youtube.com
1982 synth funk with a rather later 80s sound
i love cheesy dance music that is seemingly centered around the year 1983. they experiement and they arent afraid of failure at all
Saved, everything I know from this is great but a lot I've never heard of
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I wonder if the anon who made this chart is still around. a part 2 would be gnarly.
This is more mid 80s-mid 90s than 79-83
You know I had even typed out "I know this isn't the exact same specific time period" but backspaced because I was hoping posting it would summon the chartmaker.
The economy didn't really take off again until 84. Things were still really shit his entire first year and a half in office--technically the recession ended in August 82 but the effects took time to be noticeable. That's why I remind you that Trump also can't just press button, undo Biden's mess overnight it will also take time to fully turn things around.
Simply the best music era
Talking about 1979-1983 music without mentioning Scary Monsters (and super creeps) , or Let's Dance, is very retarded.
I’ve been really into 1970-1973 lately. There’s a lot of good 60s hangover rootsy, raw rock music.
I'd argue some of the culture shifts are already in place since 2024. Wokeshit declined a lot compared to 2016-2022.
sure il make one
The Biden stimulus bill was a last throw to keep wokeshit funded but that money ran out once Republicans had the House back in '23 and were controlling the purse strings.