*About the only artists who were mainstream that any of you posted
1979-1983 seems like an interesting period for music. It's moving away from 70s culture...
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
bump
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