The 1980s

What are you sayingyou dont like my hair?

Key defining pop music styles to consider here, include: New Wave and Post-punk Synthpop Stadium Rock Hair metal Dance music House and techno Hip-hop & Electro Dance pop PRINCE MADONNA MICHAEL JACKSON Other influencing factors include: LIVE AID 1985 MTV the emergence of the Music Video Synthesizers drum machines - Sampling technology Developing digital technologies the birth of the CD

New Wave
During the late '70s and early '80s, New Wave was a catch-all term for the music that directly followed punk rock; often, the term encompassed punk itself, as well. In 1

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retrospect, it became clear that the music following punk could be divided, more or less, into two categories post-punk and new wave. Where post-punk was arty, difficult, and challenging, new wave was pop music, pure and simple. It retained the fresh vigor and irreverence of punk music, as well as a fascination with electronics, style, and art. Therefore, there was a lot of stylistic diversity to new wave. It meant the nervy power pop of bands like XTC, but it also meant synth rockers like Gary Numan. There were edgy new wave songwriters like Elvis Costello, pop bands like Squeeze, tough rock & rollers like the Pretenders, pop-reggae like the Police. This era also spawned a major UK Ska revival, headed by the Specials, the Beat and Madness.

Synthpop & New Wave

By the early '80s, new wave described nearly every new pop/rock artist, especially those that used synthesizers like the Human League, the Eurythmics and Duran Duran. New wave received a boost in the early '80s by MTV, who broadcast endless hours of new wave videos in order to keep themselves on the air. Therefore, new wave got a second life in 1982, when it probably would have died out. Instead, 1982 and 1983 were boom years for polished, MTV-radio new wave outfits like Culture Club, Adam Ant and Spandau Ballet. New wave finally died out in 1984, when established artists began to make professional videos and a new crop of guitar-oriented bands like The Smiths and R.E.M. emerged to capture the attention of college-radio and underground rock fans. Nevertheless, new wave proved more influential than many of its critics would have suspected, as the mid-'90s were dominated by bands from Blur to Weezer that were raised on the music. KEY NEW WAVE ARTISTS & RECORDINGS ARTIST KEY RECORDINGS The Police Duran Duran Every Breath You Take Rio RECORDING DATE 1983 1982

KEY SYNTHPOP ARTISTS & RECORDINGS ARTIST KEY RECORDINGS

RECORDING 2

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DATE 1981 1981 1983

Depeche Mode Soft Cell The Eurythmics

Just Cant Get Enough Tainted Love Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

Post-punk didn't aim for such success, yet it proved to be a mercurial phenomenon anyway. Many of the groups were short-lived, and those that did continue -Talking Heads, Adam & the Ants, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Cure - altered their sound and attack as they grew artistically. Two other bands, Joy Division and Bauhaus, continued in new guises - New Order and Love & Rockets, respectively - and started to explore new stylistic ground. Most of these groups began moving away from the claustrophobic doom that distinguished early post-punk, moving toward cleaner, dissonant attacks. Post-punk never died out, but it faded away in the mid-'80s, as its offspring began making records. Goth began as a sub-genre of punk but moved in a more experimental direction. Wailing vocals, angular guitar parts and tribal, tom tom heavy drum betas characterised the style. Like punk, Goth was a lifestyle. The music featured dark lyrics and its fans favoured black clothes and took an interest in Victoriana and horror, etc. Goth faded in the 90s but influenced the Industrial scene and its offshoots, eg. Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson. KEY POST PUNK ARTISTS & RECORDINGS ARTIST KEY RECORDINGS The Cure New Order Siouxsie & The Banshees The Hanging Garden/Love Cats Love Will Tear Us Apart Candyman

POST PUNK & GOTH

RECORDING DATE 1983 1980 1986

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Stadium Rock
The mighty supergroup rockers of the 1970s continued to draw spectacular audiences in the 1980s and expanded to include bands outgrowing the post punk and new wave movement. Pink Floyd had released The Wall in late 1979 which proved a huge success and resulted in a film and multimedia stage show. Queen produced hits including Another One Bites The Dust and Radio Ga Ga. Dire Straits bemoaned the MTV generation in Money For Nothing. The US rockers Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Kiss spearheaded the American stadium posse. KEY STADIUM ROCK ARTISTS & RECORDINGS ARTIST KEY RECORDINGS Dire Straights Bon Jovi Money For Nothing You Give Love A Bad Name

RECORDING DATE 1985 1986

See extensive notes on this subject with the 2009 Special Focus notes.

Hip-hop

House and Techno

Many music fans were happy to see disco die in 1980, but the truth is that disco never passed on. It spawned a new generation of dance music that branched out and evolved into the global phenomenon known as house music. So how exactly did disco give birth to house music? Here's the story 4

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* Larry Levan started spinning disco records together at those crazy Paradise Garage parties in New York. * Soon after Disco Demolition Night (when white kids killed disco at a White Sox game), Chicago started developing a new, electronic, drum-machine happy sound. * Frankie Kunckles brought his gay-friendly crate of thumping disco tracks to Chicago and the kids got into it. Stuff like "Let No Man Put Asunder" from First Choice rocked the Warehouse in 1983. * Soulful, bangin' disco tracks collided with what-the-hell-sounding beats from Jesse Saunders, Farley Jackmaster Funk and a bunch of other DJs, remixers and record producer types in Chicago. * All the kids wanted to buy the records that were playing at the Warehouse in Chicago, and after some abbreviating -- the house music label was born. In Detroit, Juan Atkins (/Cybotron), Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson originated a techno touch alongside the Chicago house music sound.

House music is uptempo music for dancing, although by modern dance music standards it is mid-tempo, generally ranging between 118 and 135 bpm. Tempos were slower in house music's early years. The common element of house music is a prominent kick drum on every beat (also known as a four-to-the-floor beat), usually generated by a drum machine or sampler. The kick drum sound is augmented by various kick fills and extended dropouts. The drum track is filled out with hi-hat cymbal patterns that nearly always include an open hi-hat on eighth note off-beats between each kick, and a snare drum or clap sound on beats two and four of every bar. This pattern is derived from socalled "four-on-the-floor" dance drumbeats of the 1960s and especially the 1970s disco drummers. Producers commonly layer sampled drum sounds to achieve a more complex sound, and they tailor the mix for large club sound systems, deemphasizing lower mid-range frequencies (where the fundamental frequencies of the human voice and other instruments lie) in favor of bass and hi-hats. Producers use many different sound sources for bass sounds in house music, from continuous, repeating electronically-generated lines sequenced on a synthesizer, such as a Roland SH-101 or TB-303, to studio recordings or samples of live electric bassists, or simply filtered-down samples from whole stereo recordings of classic funk tracks or any other songs. House bass lines tend to favor notes that fall within a single-octave range, whereas disco bass lines often alternated between octaveseparated notes and would span greater ranges. Some early house productions used parts of bass lines from earlier disco tracks. For example, producer Mark "Hot Rod" Trollan copied bass line sections from the 1983 Italo disco song "Feels Good (Carrots & Beets)" (by Electra featuring Tara Butler) to form the basis of his 1986 production of "Your Love" by Jamie Principle.

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Electronically-generated sounds and samples of recordings from genres such as jazz, blues and synth pop are often added to the foundation of the drum beat and synth bass line. House songs may also include disco, soul-style, or gospel vocals and additional percussion such as tambourine. Many house mixes also include repeating, short, syncopated, staccato chord loops that are usually composed of 5-7 chords in a 4-beat measure. Techno and trance, which developed alongside house music, share this basic beat infrastructure, but they usually eschew house's live-music-influenced feel and Black or Latin music influences in favor of more synthetic sound sources and approach.

Pop Trends solo artists

The 1980s also saw the rise of three major solo pop artists: Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince. Madonna quickly became the pop queen of the decade with Michael Jackson as King. Jacksons Thriller album (produced by the legendary Quincy Jones) became a huge overnight success producing hits including: Beat It, Billie Jean and Human Nature. Madonnas Like A Virgin and True Blue also produced worldwide hit records, she was soon to become the biggest selling female artist ever. Prince produced some of the most stylistically varied and interesting pop music, drawing on Funk, Jazz, Pop and Rock influences to create major hits including: Purple Rain, Kiss and I Would Die 4 U. KEY POP ARTISTS & RECORDINGS ARTIST KEY RECORDINGS Prince Madonna Michael Jackson Sing O The Times Like A Virgin Thriller RECORDING DATE 1987 1984 1982

Further important bands/artists to consider include: Bananarama (they were huge biggest selling girl group) Wham! The Police Simply Red 6

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Phil Collins Culture Club Grace Jones (check out Living My Life one of my favourites) British SKA REVIVAL: The Specials AKA, Madness, The Beat LINKS: http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/ - FABULOUS guide to dance music styles, history etc.