What Music DEFINES The Eighties?


Reagan and Thatcher and their neoliberalist ideology was probably the worst thing of the eighties, with massive cuts in public services, privatization, deregulation, anti-trade-union laws, etc. In the nineties, after the collapse of stalinism, neoliberalism got a further boost thanks to the general feeling of "there is no alternative" and "history has ended". This neoliberalism has lead to a major increase in inequality (rich getting richer, poor getting poorer) and a bubble economy which goes from one crisis to the next. And nearly all politicians are heavily influenced by reaganism and thatcherism, and still see no other cure for the problems neoliberalism created than to apply even more and harsher neoliberalism.
Truth.

and it sucks to be us regular folk who always get hurt by neoliberalism.

Billy Joel, Donna Summer, Lipps Inc (Funkytown), Gary Numan (Cars), The Cars, Christopher Cross (Sailing)


Also keep the politics out of this thread please. This is for good music memories.
Agreed.

But I did have to say that Reagan was the ONE bad thing about the Eighties.
 
Politics is pretty divisive. Do you think that government can give you good music? Does government create something like the pandora?
 
Politics is pretty divisive. Do you think that government can give you good music? Does government create something like the pandora?
Shit.  The only things our government gives is is NOT GOOD stuff.

All the good stuff, they take away.
 
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For me Motley Crue...'GIRLS,GIRLS,GIRLS'...that song represented the glam-rock era of the 80's in the states.
 
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Politics is pretty divisive. Do you think that government can give you good music? Does government create something like the pandora?
Shit.  The only things our government gives is is NOT GOOD stuff.

All the good stuff, they take away.
Like guns and violent video games :p   ?

Also the entire acdc back in black album if it hasn't been mentioned already .
 
Politics is pretty divisive. Do you think that government can give you good music? Does government create something like the pandora?
Shit.  The only things our government gives is is NOT GOOD stuff.

All the good stuff, they take away.
Like guns and violent video games :p   ?

Also the entire acdc back in black album if it hasn't been mentioned already .
No.  More like social Security, Medicare, trade deals that favor the United States and don't cause jobs to be shipped overseas....etc etc etc.

Fortunately for me, I no longer have to worry about jobs going overseas, since I own my own company...but it is a bummer to see people I love losing their jobs left and right.

For me Motley Crue...'GIRLS,GIRLS,GIRLS'...that song represented the glam-rock era of the 80's in the states.
Good pick!
 
Politics is pretty divisive. Do you think that government can give you good music? Does government create something like the pandora?
Shit.  The only things our government gives is is NOT GOOD stuff.

All the good stuff, they take away.
Like guns and violent video games :p   ?

Also the entire acdc back in black album if it hasn't been mentioned already .
No.  More like social Security, Medicare, trade deals that favor the United States and don't cause jobs to be shipped overseas....etc etc etc.

Fortunately for me, I no longer have to worry about jobs going overseas, since I own my own company...but it is a bummer to see people I love losing their jobs left and right.

>For me Motley Crue...'GIRLS,GIRLS,GIRLS'...that song represented the glam-rock era of the 80's in the states.
Good pick!
Only brought it up because this is a music thread .
 
What do guns and violent video games have to do with music?

I only brought up Reagan...because he is totally associated with the Eighties.  And because of the review I read once, on the song "Walking On Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves...whhich said the song was a perfect song for a decade in which winter lasted ten years in the White House.

Being as I never liked Reagan...and the passage of time has only strengthened those feelings...I thought it was a very funny quote.

This country began going downhill with Reagan, when he started giving away the farm to all the wealthy people...with the theory that...out of the goodness of their hearts (what hearts?) they would "trickle" some of the goodies down to the rest of us.

Trickle-down is an economic theory that has been practiced the last thirty years in this country...Reagan started it...and it has proven utterly disastrous to working families.

The wealthy long ago proved they would never trickle anything fit to consume...down to the rest of us.  It is the modern day version of "Let Them Eat Cake"...and history tells us how well that played out in the end.

all that said, let's get back to music...

And let's leave guns, violent video games, AND politics...for other threads, okay?
 
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Ah, hell,

Toni Basil did "Mickey" in Spanish, Nena did "99 Luftballons" in German, and, of course, the theme to National Lampoon's European Vacation was "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand...and in French. (And please forgive my inability to type the correct French letters with the little accent marks, as I really don't know them I don't even know what they are called!  I only learned about fifteen years ago that the squiqqly line over the "n" in some Spanish words was called a "tilde")

Lots of good 80's music done in languages other than English.  Don't need to dive into the Nineties to find it.

I think the first POPULAR song done in a non-English language might have been "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens in the 1950's.  Well, at least, popular in the United States.  Forgive the "Ugly American" thing but I just can't really make myself think outside of our own borders.  So I'm sure there were non-English popular songs prior to that...but I wouldn't know about them.

In either case, up above are three specific songs from the eighties, all very popular, all in other languages than English.

One in Spanish, one in Germen, and one in French.
 
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Nice!  I haven't ever heard this one before.  Very primal and gritty.  Seems very quintessentially "German" to me...(from my point of geographical view)...  No doubt this band must've had some influence on future bands (like Rammstein).  Thanks for the video, Moxie.
 
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