Sure there's been some
amazing music this last decade, and yes there were some great songs in the 70's and the
60's. But there's one type of music that is routinely dismissed by the critics as shallow,
contrived and irrelevant. And that's why I love it. Yes I could only be talking about
cheesy 80's pop music!
The bizarre thing about the
80's, at the start, musicians were very ugly. For every Madonna and Duran Duran
there were ten Flock of Seagulls or Thompson Twins. Just look at those early videos, most
groups look liked they were just kicked out of a Berlin drag queen convention. But as time
went on, video did kill the radio star. The Material Girl and Duran Duran started selling
millions of albums, virtually on the strength of their videos, meanwhile ugly groups like
the Seagulls flew away into obscurity. The message was loud and clear. Madonna is nicer to
look at than Cyndi Lauper, and no one ever mistook Howard Jones for Simon LeBon. Obviously
that trend is very much alive today with the Britney's, Christina's, Backstreet's and
N'Sync's selling millions of CD's.
There are two reasons why I
love the 80's music. The first being it was the music I grew up with, so there's a strong
nostalgic feel to it. The other reason is that I realized that most 80's artists had very
little musical aptitude or training at all. Armed with nothing more than synthesizers and
a bizarre appearance, they could hood wink enough people to get a top ten single. But
only one hit single mind you. The 80's were the age of the one hit wonder. You couldn't
fool all the people all the time as it turned out. So I took great pleasure when Mr.
Mister out-charted Phil Collins, or Bananarama kicking the Pointer Sisters ass.
If you're a fan of the 80's
music, I strongly urge you to download
Kazaa or
Morpheus or
BearShare. They're all
free services. Basically what you do is share MP3's with other people. You want a Go-Go's
song? Type in Go-Go's and all the Go-Go's songs that people are sharing will pop up and
you can download it. It may take awhile, but eventually you'll find that hard to find
obscure 80's song.
It could take awhile to download, why not take this time and ponder the
universe and your place in it...
The first person who can identify the 80's
Song of the Week, (and who sings it) will win a free bottle of water!!! Wow!
Email me your
answers.
