AT&T Tech Support 360Was 1980s music that bad?
A couple days ago, NPR's All Songs Considered asked listeners to vote on which year had the best music. (The poll is here--you have to answer it to see overall results.) Unsurprisingly given NPR's demographic, the 1960s scored high, with top year 1969 figuring in 9 percent of all responses. More surprisingly, the 1990s also did quite well, with 1991 (grunge) and 1994 (alternative) both scoring 4 percent. There was also a little uptick in 1977--the year punk broke for the first time scored 4 percent. But the 1980s were a bleak wasteland, however, with all years scoring 1 percent or less except for 1987, which scored 2 percent. The ASC folks tried to convince listeners that the '80s had some bright spots, highlighting bands like The Replacements, Talking Heads, Minor Threat, and, um, Escape Club.
The number of albums in my record collection by year.
I had a hard time answering the question. Certain albums stick out--I know that the Beatles' White Album came out 1968, Who's Next was 1971, and Modest Mouse's The Moon and Antarctica was 2000. But a best year? Impossible to say.
So I decided to look at the empirical data. Because I'm a music nerd, I keep a running spreadsheet of every album I own (vinyl and CD), including the year they were originally released. (You fellow music nerds know exactly what I'm talking about--don't pretend otherwise.) First I scrubbed the data, making sure that things like greatest hits albums and movie soundtracks, where the release date was years or decades away from the actual recording dates, were not counted.
Then with Excel's useful COUNTIF function, I discovered that 1970 is my personal winner, with 30 albums. By decade, the '70s were tops with 216 albums, followed very closely by--gasp--the '80s with 195 albums. Next up were the '90s (156), the '00s (112 with only seven years and eight months gone), the '60s (94), the '50s (9), and the '40s (1--can you guess which album it was?).
So no, the '80s didn't suck. You just have to dig a little deeper.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure.
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I Will Dare
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If you like, dig deeper.
Talking Heads--you know them, even if you think you don't.
For starters, how about REM, Husker Du, Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Meat Puppets, Black Flag, Social Distortion, Bad Religion, Camper Van Beethoven, Replacements, X, Los Lobos.
Keep going? Ok, Dinosaur Jr., The Smiths, The Cure, The Pixies, Mudhoney, Metallica (when they were good), Voivod, Dead Kennedys, Fear, MDC, Melvins, Faith No More...
oh heck, just go here:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/36736-top-100-albums-of-the-1980s
I always wondered why Soft Cell didn't get more airplay. They had many great songs.
The 60s had some incomprehensible breakthroughs (Beatles, Hendrix), but it's also overrated. The 70s are underrated (you always have to ignore the album charts, which almost always highlight the worst.) I understand why people hate the bombosity, but it's hard to deny Pink Floyd and Led Zep. And is there anything better than really good funk? Punk was nearly as revolutionary as the Beatles (yes, I'm comparing a movement to a band). It's hard to decide whether the 80s or 90s were worse. They had their moments, for sure, as Thund3erbox notes.
But I have to say that the aughts have been pretty damn good. It's just more fractured, which is fine with me. Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Tom Waits, Gorillaz, M. Ward, Wilco, Godspeed, TV on the Radio, Niko Case. There's a strong vein of sincerity in music today, which is a great counter to the disaffection that runs throughout popular culture. And the psych movement is as strong now as it's ever been.
As for the 80's, I think they do go under appreciated. Daydream Nation, Rain Dogs, Doolittle, Remain In Light, Psychocandy, Murmur, and Closer, just to name a few, all measure up to some of the top albums in any other decade.
Add: Circle Jerks, Bad Religion, Big Country, Slayer, Midnight Oil, Black Flag, Anthrax, Butthole Surfers, The Cure, The Damned, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Sepultura, Oingo Boingo, Suicidal Tendencies, I could go on all night. At best these bands had one or two minor 'hits' but were putting out first rate, compelling music.
From about 75-76 on, most of the music that was "popular" was appallingly bad, especially in the 80's. That doesn't mean that the 80's sucked for music. There was some fantastic music that charted between 92-96, but when the Spice Girls showed up not too long after that, things went downhill and haven't really recovered. Not coincidently, the dumbing down of America started around this time.
'70s were tops with 216 albums, followed very closely by--gasp--the '80s with 195 albums. Next up were the '90s (156), the '00s (112 with only seven years and eight months gone), the '60s (94), the '50s (9), and the '40s (1--can you guess which album it was?).
so in other words, you weren't alive in the 50s (1 album), very young in the 60s (94 albums), a teen something in the 70s (216), in your 20s in the 80s (195), in your 30s in the 90s (156), now you are in your 40s (112).
let me make a wild prediction. your collection of 2010-2019 will be less than 2000-2009. and 2020-2029 will be less than 2010-2019.
boy i should play the stock market!
or maybe you're just a typical citizen who discovers music in his teens, listens to almost as much in his 20s, less in his 30s, etc etc. no revelation here, dude.
So no, don't play the stock market.