Reasons to Reconsider the 80s

OOD PLAYLISTS

Reasons to Reconsider the 80s

The decade mounts a defense.

1980s | THE GOOD STUFF HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

OOD Playlists is where the songs get gathered by year, artist, mood, place, memory, or whatever else makes them belong together. The list matters, but the reason for the list is the post.

This one exists because I’ve spent a lot of years talking about 80s music like it was one big neon disease. That’s satisfying, and it isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s lazy.

The playlist is the evidence for the defense. You can watch it on YouTube or listen through YouTube Music using the links at the bottom.

I was the perfect age for 80s music. That’s the annoying part.

I was somewhere between 15 and 25 for the decade, which means that music should hit me right in the sentimental machinery. It should be impossible for me to hear it clearly. It should all be wrapped up in first cars, bad hair, part-time jobs, movie theaters, girls I was too scared to talk to, and the general drama of being young enough to think every song was somehow about me.

Some of it is.

But I have to be honest: the 80s is one of my least favorite decades musically.

There. I said it.

I know that’s wrong in some official cultural sense. The 80s have won. They’ve been recycled, merchandised, playlisted, rebooted, Halloween-costumed, and Stranger Things-ed into permanent victory. People love the 80s now in a way that sometimes makes me feel like maybe I lived through a different decade.

Because when I think of 80s music, I don’t just think of the good stuff. I think of the stuff that makes my teeth hurt: songs with too much shine on them, drums that sound like they were recorded inside a shipping container, keyboards trying to do emotional work they weren’t qualified to do, and videos where everybody looked like they’d been styled by a committee made of cocaine and hairspray.

And yet, that isn’t the whole decade.

That’s the point of the playlist.

I made it as a corrective—not because I suddenly decided the 80s were secretly the greatest musical decade, because let’s not get stupid. I made it because I’d catch myself talking about 80s music like it was one big neon disease, and that’s lazy.

The decade gave us plenty of junk. It also gave us “Age of Consent,” “The Killing Moon,” “The Whole of the Moon,” “Crazy Rhythms,” “This Is the Day,” “Everyday Is Like Sunday,” “I Wanna Be Adored,” “Alex Chilton,” “Gardening at Night,” “Bizarre Love Triangle,” “There She Goes,” and “A Million Miles Away.”

That’s more than not nothing.

That’s a decade mounting a pretty good defense while I’m still busy complaining about leg warmers.

This isn’t meant to be definitive. It isn’t a museum exhibit, and it isn’t “The Best Songs of the 80s,” because that kind of list always turns into a fight between people who think music history is something you can win.

It’s more personal than that. It’s a list I can put on when I need to remember that the decade had shadows and corners and weird little rooms. It had college rock, post-punk, jangly guitars, and bands making music for people who didn’t want to stand in the middle of the party but didn’t want to leave yet either.

And yes, it had some big, obvious songs too.

I’m not pretending “Purple Rain” doesn’t belong. I’m not pretending “In the Air Tonight” doesn’t still work. I’m not pretending “Don’t You Forget About Me” didn’t attach itself to a whole generation’s adolescent brainstem and refuse to leave.

Some songs become obvious because they’re overplayed. Some become obvious because they’re great. Some are both, which is irritating but true.

The funny thing is that my problem with the 80s might not even be the music itself. It might be the costume people put on top of it later. The decade got reduced to a look: neon, synths, big hair, Rubik’s Cubes, mall montages, prom scenes, and boom boxes.

But the actual decade was messier than the souvenir version.

The same decade that gave us glossy nonsense also gave us Sonic Youth, The Replacements, The The, The Feelies, Dead Kennedys, R.E.M., New Order, The Cure, The Waterboys, and The Stone Roses. It gave us music that was nervous, bitter, romantic, strange, funny, angry, and sometimes beautiful in a way that didn’t ask permission first.

That’s the 80s I can still deal with—the version with good songs hiding in plain sight. The version that reminds me my taste has always been suspicious of whatever everybody else was doing, but not pure enough to avoid “Jessie’s Girl.”

That’s probably the most honest thing about this playlist. It isn’t cool all the way through.

Good.

Neither was the decade. Neither was I.

I made the list to remind myself not to dismiss the whole thing just because some of it annoys me. That may be a useful habit outside music too, but let’s not turn this into a life lesson and ruin it.

Sometimes you just need a playlist that says:

Fine. The 80s weren’t all bad.

Here’s the proof.

Think I’ve left out the song that proves—or destroys—the entire case?