Loved and hated in equal measure, often underestimated, the 80s was an utterly gamechanging decade in so many ways. For music, too, it blew powerful winds of change.
The 80s changed everything. A shimmering, thrillingly mad landscape of hairspray, innovation and silly amounts of money, it’s hard to overestimate how deeply its waves penetrated music, culture, commerce and society. It was a decade of political turmoil and technological revolution. The Cold War. Live Aid. Two-handed tapping. VHS. The CD-ROM. Powerful corporations. Synthesisers. Liberation. Exploitation. Mobile phones. Underground scenes. Icons… So much in just 10 years.
Viewed in the context of its most famous, visually arresting ingredients, the 80s have sustained a powerful place in the hearts of those who were there – and plenty who weren’t. Familiar core elements that make it so lovable to fans (and laughable to those sceptics who maintain that ‘real music’ died with the 70s). Mötley Crüe. Poison. Synths and Simmons drums. The Final Countdown. Rampant excess. Kenny Loggins. Leg-warmers. Top Gun.
Above all, though, it was during this period that rock went truly mainstream. With the evolution of music-making technology, the blues foundations of the 70s gave way to pop sensibilities. This resulted in new waves of bands who reached well beyond rock’s existing followers. For a relatively short time, rock was young people’s music, in the way that hip-hop and urban music is now. AC/DC had their biggest-ever hit record. Metallica laid foundations that would send them stratospheric in the 90s. Artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and Dire Straits were colossal draws, with catalogues built for stadiums and megashows.
As they say, it was a different time. The world at large was in a strange place. With big-scale successes came conflict and tragedy. ‘Yuppie’ indulgence on the one hand, despots and famine on the other – the latter prompting 1985’s Live Aid concerts, a game-changing intersection with the media, politics and public fundraising. Meanwhile, industrial action raged in Thatcherite Britain. Miners went on strike. The Soviet Union slipped further with Chernobyl’s catastrophic nuclear explosion. The Berlin Wall came down. The Aids crisis raged. The internet was officially ‘born’. A hell of a lot happened, and it all helped fuel an incendiary mix of pomp and grit in people’s record collections.
The arrival of MTV led to a feast of beautiful, striking and downright bizarre style choices. Musicians looked different, they walked different. The gap between bands and fans began to shrink, with the public able to watch their heroes from the comfort of their sofas. The CD – and, crucially, the Walkman – made music properly portable for the first time. Suddenly, people could see rock’n’roll and carry it with them.
