Here's a challenge. I think this song is better than any song in the current top 40.

The song is Blow Monkey's This Is Your Life (the 1988 original ersion). Give it a listen and tell me any song in the current top 40 comes close to this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxk3wEb_R7s

Now that is POP MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I like James Morrison - I Won't Let You Go (that's in the top ten) but it's not in the same league as that Blow Monkey's song! The best of the 1980s sounds better than most of the modern pop chart stuff, I reckon.

In my opinion the 80's had the best music, I was in my teens during the 80's si a little biased but to put that song up against any of the current top 40 is a bit much because its not the greatest 80's choice

in my opinion you could have chosen any singles from

The Jam
Culture club
Wham
Duran Duran
Frankie goes to Hollywood
A-Ha
Communards
Debbie gibson
Tiffany
Madonna
Michael Jackson
Kajagoogoo ( too shy )
Pat Benatar ( Love is a battlefield )
The Clash
Bananarama ( cruel summer is fantastic )
Dead or Alive ( You spin me round )
REM
Blondie ( call me )
Human League
Roxy Music
The Eurythmics
Level 42
U2
Wet Wet Wet

and the list could go on and on and I still would not list the song you listed.

Again Music is very subjective

Agreed by me, 1980s was the best time for music. Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Prince, Wham!, the underground stuff, the birth of hip hop >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Anything being done these days.

how could I forget Prince ( or whatever he's called nowadays )

the 80s in general were a pretty bad period for music, especially compared to the 70s and 90s. you had a lot more crappy "produced" music both in the studio and live on stage. overproduction, drum machines and keyboards replaced musicianship. that's not to say you can't make great records with those things, but in the 80s those things allowed some of the worst music to be made

some of the acts listed were the exception. many "pop" acts could still play, but the likes of SAW and novelt records run the charts

whilst i wasn't a huge fan of grunge, it was that and britpop that made music much better in the 90s. it just went downhill a bit after then, with more computer based music replacing artists who could play instruments. there's a lot to be said for a real band getting together and jamming and creating music together

I think there is good and bad music in every decade. I like a lot of those 80's bands but there was bad music in the 80's as well just as there is good music now.
I like a lot of acts who play live instruments but I've never bought the idea that live instruments equals good music whereas computers equals bad music. You can make a good song (or a bad song) with either. Live instruments and computers are really just tools. They're not inherently good or bad, it's the song that matters.
You can have a band like Nikelback that uses live instruments that is horrible.
I also think it's not an either or, you can combine live instruments with drum machines and computers to often create something interesting. I wish artists could do more of that instead of going all the way in one direction or the other. One of my favourite bands is Garbage which combines the two.

I do not think that the 1980's was much better or even the best decade for music but it is probably better than the modern day in my opinion because you did not have as much manufactured music.

I guess you're right if you're talking about pop or chart music, although there was manufactured music in the 80's as well. But overall 80's chart music was better than current chart music. But today there is so much high quality alternative and indie type of music, that there is still plenty of great new music to enjoy.

I liked that back in the 80s most of the artists could play instruments, even many of the solo acts. Madonna was a drummer!!

in every decade there are phenomenal artists/bands and also a lot of old tosh...EVERY decade!

You just need to find it. I think this decade could end up the most intriguing by the end. LOOK at the new talent coming out, the legendary singers still celebrated/making comebacks etc. and also you have all previous decades showcased on radio!

So yeah

It's a good song on first listen.

But some songs from this week's top 40 that I think prefer:

Dappy - No Regrets
Delilah - Go
Rihanna - Cheers
Emeli Sande - Heaven
Rizzle Kicks - Down With the Trumpets
Ed Sheeran - You Need Me
Wretch 32 - Don't Go

That's just down to opinion though. Obviously, if you grew up in the 80's, you're not going to like those songs. A couple of them (Go and Heaven) rip-off or sample 80's songs aswell, I think.

Queen ruled the 80's. Thats good enough for me.

that is true! Madonna still plays some drums in sessions today! and of course guitar she has grown with too.

Whereas many solo acts this past few years in mainstream music cannot do that which can pee me off but hey! You can also say that about solo artists in the 90s, 80s, 70s etc. always

That's true. But that's because in her time, you had to work your way up by playing small clubs before you could get a deal. But now it seems acts that sort of come out with songs written by others without going through paying all their dues.

The 80s in general was a great period for music in my view, because drum machines and keyboards dominated...awesome. Human League, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys and SAW, I salute you!

For me, one of the highlights of the 80s was that pop dominated and it was produced by talented, skilled and brilliant producers. For me, SAW were one of the best. They wrote, arranged and produced some of the best pop of the decade. Keyboard dominated, rhythmic bass lines, interesting percussive layers/ostinatos and driving four-to-the-floor bass drums were the order of the day. MMMmmm love it! Fantastic!

The arrival of grunge and britpop in the 90s was a hugely depressing time. Thin textured tracks featuring out of tune vocals and aggressive/harsh guitars and lyrics was a total turn off for me. Thankfully, Steps and others emerged out of the myer that was grunge/indie music in 1997. They offered a positive way out. They offered a bright, uplifting, positive sound which I lapped up.

Thank you Pete Waterman.

You don't have to prove anything. Eighties music trounces modern music.

exactly !

80's wasn't the best time for music - it was a good time for sure with many classics, but the "best" time is really whatever time you enjoy the most i suppose.

But I must agree with the choice of the Blow Monkeys though, although I tend to prefer this one ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBYrygaunM4

but then there's always hue and cry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gxMvb9VrzY

Well off the top of my head Clash, Jam and Bowie were very much 70's

I can't agree with this at all. I love 80's music but the more organic kind that also had some live instruments. I like the 80's bands like Duran Duran and Culture Club that wrote their own music and were more eclectic. Not a fan of producers and the boring repetitive four to the floor stuff. That's what's wrong with music of today. it's all dominated by producers and repetitive beats. Purely keyboard music is boring to me. I love some guitars.

I love grunge and alternative rock of the 90's. People say it's depressing, but it's honest. Life isn't always happy and sunshine and flowers.

live instruments doesn't equal good music and electronic music, in particular that made on computers as opposed to simply keyboards/synths, does not equate to bad music

but the use of computers in music allowed people to make music with less experience and knowledge of music, without having to learn to play an instrument, or even learn chords or notes

there is a good and a bad side to that. a few years earlier you had punk, which gave a well deserved kick up the arse to the music business, but for ever decent or popular band like the clash or the sex pistols you had a hundred that just couldn't play properly

similarly with the advent of sequencing and computerised music, you had both good and bad aspects. house music again gave the music industry a kick in the arse, showing that electronic music could be great and interesting and inspriring, and it created a huge dance scene that wasn't just about music but a different way of life to people, and a big change in clubs, moving from your meatmarkets playing shit like SAW and disco and god knows what else was in the charts, to music specifically made for dancing to in clubs

of course along with the good dance music came the bad, the ugly and the truely awful, and there are many offshoots of dance music that are unlistenable to many, such as cheesy eurotrance/techno, gabba/hardcore and minimilist

with live music with real instruments, people had to take time and effort to learn to play the instruments, learn the chords and notes, then learn chord progressions and learn to put the chords and notes together to create music. one person starting off, without the help of a studio, couldn't really create a full album themselves, with a full band sound. so you needed other individuals to play the bass, drums, etc to fill the sound out, and you certainly needed them to play live. so instead of one person sitting in a room/studio/bedroom fiddling away at a computer on their own, you had a number of creative minds together in the same room, experimenting, jamming and being creative to create music, often with the aim of creating good music, rather than commercial music. an aim to be the best band in the world

there are of course people who are very skilled at creating music who go down the commercial route with an aim to sell the most records instead of creating the best music, and that practice became more prominent in the 80s than in any previous decade, as a team of people could create music in the studio, fronted by another person or group, promoted by music videos without the need to have a real backing band or play live. in some cases the artists would make live appearances with either a hired bunch of session musicians, or perhaps more often a bunch of backing dancers

and that's when music started going down the toilet, with people creating music just to be commercial, and removing the live element, focusing on videos and dancing instead of the music

that then influenced other artists such as madonna and michael jackson, who didn't bother a fully live performance tour, and turned to miming and dancing to flesh out a show instead

so you could look back on the likes of SAW and blame them for not getting to hear michael jackson sing on tour. if people like SAW didn't make it acceptable, others wouldn't do it. you certainly wouldn't get away with miming onstage to thousands of people for over an hour in the 70s

it's one thing for artists who simply can't pull off a live performance as they were made in the studio acts, but quite another thing when acts that could perform live don't do it because a precident has been set by others

the 70s was a great period for music, both live and in the studio. keyboards became prominent and there were a lot of great electronic based acts such as stevie wonder and kraftwerk, but the 80s was an awful period for most, especially when many previously great artists created over produced studio works, and fleshed out live concerts with several additional session musicians along with the basic band. so take pink floyd who played as a 4 peice throughout the 70s, with the addition of a saxophonist just for the sax songs and 2 or 3 backing singers for some specific tracks on some tours, moving to having 2 or 3 additional players for almost every instrument, with an extra dozen people on stage playing the same songs. so the awfulness of 80s music wasn't solely in regards to the 80s bands, but the bands of previous periods who's music dropped in quality. compare 70s bowie to 80s bowie for a perfect example

I don't think legends making comebacks/still releasing music or radio stations playing songs from previous decades can really be used as an example of modern music being good. 'LOOK at the new talent coming out'-well, look is the right word...you're certainly not supposed to listen to them (i'm talking about the whores).


Bowie had one great album and one ok album in the 80's, compared to about 9 great albums in the 70's. Clearly he's an 80's act.

Roxy Music and Blondie were also much better and more dominant in the 70's.


The previous post, which is too long to quote, i'd like to acknowledge. Good post.

I make hip hop beats (using a MIDI keyboard and laptop) as a hobby, and I can't speak for everybody else, but for me personally, there's no way I'd be able to make them if I didn't know notes, chords, etc. Knowing about chord progressions, key signatures, etc. is absolutely vital in making sure the notes don't clash and so on. And no rappers will want to use one of your beats if all the notes are dissonant or clashing.

I was in my 20s for most of the 80s. Maybe that's why it is my favourite decade.

You do realise that sequencers only record midi information don't you? They don't actually write the music for you. And believe me Pro16 and Pro24, the industry standard sequencers in the '80s, were the most counter-productive, un-user friendly pieces of software possible and certainly weren't conducive for making music in the way that today's sequencers are.

Whilst I agree that being a gifted musician is a good thing you seem to think that people who make electronic music don't have this gift whereas people who make 'real' music do, which is obviously not true. You are overlooking the fact that electronic equipment can be as much an 'instrument' as a guitar or set of drums can. A good DJ or a good producer is just as skilled as someone who can play a guitar well, it's just the tools that are different.

Personally, I love the fact that electronic music in the '80s, and earlier, introduced a much wider palette of sounds and rhythms to music, broadening the boundaries of what music could be beyond the rather constrained definition utilised by guitar-based music at the time.

Absolutely right. There is a myth that somehow computers do all the work and you need to have next to no knowledge which is rubbish.

You need to be able to hear whether all the parts are in time, you need to understand chord structures/chordal progressions/keys and time signatures because they affect the melody. You also need to be able to create that rise and fall in music...the chorus being the highlight.