'80s Pop Hits

[Slim]

In 1984 I spent a bizarre six-month Lost Weekend staying at a B&B in Northampton. It was a beautiful, hot summer. I had nothing to do. Video jukeboxes in every pub. People in FRANKIE t-shirts. Peter Powell and Janice Long on Radio 1.

No tune takes me back there quite so reliably as this one:

[captainkurtz]

That was a great fine and Cupid and Psyche is an immaculate pop record.

[Matt2112]

Halcyon days.  I miss them.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Great days indeed. My undying love for most things synthesiser was kindled back then. Some fantastic pop music in that decade and probably my favourite pop era. However, the other week I received one of those unsolicited Facebook posts which listed the top 100 album releases of 1976. I just couldn't believe the magnificence of the titles contained therein. We were truly so fortunate to grow up in our age of music.

[pxr5]

Music back then had so much variation: Pop/Rock/Disco/Country/Novelty/Punk/New Wave/Electronic/etc/etc and it made the charts a great, diverse pick of the the best tunes of the time. I'm not saying music was better back then, just more choice.

We often watch those old TOTP shows that are on TV a lot. Great memories.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Music can be a TARDIS. Each time I hear the chorus of Antmusic I can sense myself entering the Cross Keys pub and nervously approaching the bar hoping that I would be served without huge embarrassment. I think a pint of lager was 35p. I was 20 but looked about 15 and remember vividly being asked for proof of age on my 21st birthday. So many songs from those days and earlier transport me to the time. Songs and Tabac aftershave. I might look online to see if it's still available for a nostalgic sniff. I don't know why I wore it then as I probably hadn't started shaving yet.

[Slim]

Another one from that same time. I'm lounging on my bed upstairs in the B&B. I have a copy of NME in front of me, and Janice Long's R1 show in my ears, courtesy of the cheap radio Walkman that accompanies me everywhere. Back in those days R1 "borrowed" the FM frequencies from R2 in the evening, an arrangement that seems archaic now.

She plays this - a brand new single by The Smiths. Always loved this and every time I hear it, it's all about that exact time and place, one early evening in August 1984.

[pxr5]

I love The Smiths - much maligned due to their "depressing" and "miserable" songs. But actually some of their songs have great tunes going on and a delve in to their albums shows how good they actually are. The Queen is Dead is phenomenal.

[Slim]

I love The Smiths - much maligned due to their "depressing" and "miserable" songs. But actually some of their songs have great tunes going on and a delve in to their albums shows how good they actually are. The Queen is Dead is phenomenal.

Yes that was my favourite Smiths album for sure, I listened to it over and over again in early '85 when it came out. And it's more relevant today than ever.

[Slim]

It's not an exaggeration to say that this one was life-changing for me. I first heard Annie Nightingale play it on her R1 show over the Christmas Holidays at the end of 1983. I was quite intrigued by it. Then on the New Year's Day edition of The Tube, 1st January 1984, the video (below) appeared.

Although Rush always had, and always will have a sort of honorary status as my favourite band, in real terms Prefab Sprout gained that distinction for quite a few years from early 1984. Their album SWOON came out in March and it became the soundtrack to that year, for me. When I wasn't playing it on my HiFi or my radio cassette, it was playing in my head anyway. It's still the cleverest, the most distinctive, the most original album I've ever heard.

I saw them a few times over the next couple of years - at the Mayfair in Newcastle, the City Hall and in Birmingham. Always spectacular.

[Slim]

[Slim]

Perhaps the definitive One Hit Wonder

[dom]

I know it was a cover of a 60s release but this is a magnificient piece of pop

[Slim]

Speaking of one hit wonders, I loved this. Over 40 years ago.

[Slim]

Looking back at the tunes I've posted here it's clear to me that I'm much more interested in the first half of the '80s, in chart music terms. Live Aid was something like a climax, a high water mark, to me. After that Stock, Aitken and Waterman came along and TOTP was more about people in business suits or smart blazers performing manufactured and much more conventional music.

Spandau Ballet are a sort of microcosm of that. Their early stuff is much more interesting than the classic popular music style of their later years. I can't deny that True, Gold et al are strong songs but they have more in common with Shirley Bassey or Matt Monro than their early influences.

But here's one that I remember seeing on The Chart Show in 1988, and someone has kindly preserved that broadcast for posterity on YouTube. I bought her album after seeing this. Good record but this is the standout tune by a long way.