Why 80s music is bad

Personally, the '80s figure prominently in my collection, but well behind the s. The poll is here --you have to answer it to see overall results. Unsurprisingly given NPR's demographic, the s scored high, with top year figuring in 9 percent of all responses.

More surprisingly, the s also did quite well, with grunge and alternative both scoring 4 percent. There was also a little uptick in the year punk broke for the first time scored 4 percent. But the s were a bleak wasteland, however, with all years scoring 1 percent or less except for , which scored 2 percent. I had a hard time answering the question. But a best year? Once again, we find ourselves victim to the twin demons of progress and affordability. As digital synthesisers began to exit the lab and enter the mainstream, they started to crop up all over the place as musicians recognised the potential to imitate existing sounds and conjure ones that had never been heard before.

Here we had a new technology that was widely available, but not yet widely understood. Though musicians eagerly embraced the new technology, they rarely strayed far from their default factory sounds. Some of those tones may kinda hold up today, however it would be a good while before folks figured out how to make synthesisers sound like anything other than the aural equivalent of the wardrobe from Miami Vice.

Through the internet we can access and critique a vast cultural world, full of eddies and currents. We curate our own walled garden, avoiding that which confuses us. True, cable TV introduced some degree of fragmentation, but it would take a while to trickle down to the average consumer and today is in an apparently terminal decline. The kids who grew up with the 80s as their wonder years have been conditioned to think of their entire upbringing as a guilty pleasure at best.

But survivors of the post-Me Decade carry a lot of it. Their heroes did regrettable things, like introduce too many synths into the sound and dance with a teenaged Courtney Cox. The Linn drum and the advent of the sampler blinded everyone with science.

Esteemed artists from Paul McCartney to T Bone Burnett have remixed and even substantially re-recorded albums from their 80s catalogues, allowing fans to re-evaluate the material free from the production techniques that define most 80s music.

But we should resist the temptation to see synth-pop itself as a mistake. The one-, two- and three-hit wonders that did it as their native artform did it wonderfully.

That is not just a less Human League 80s but a less human version of the decade. The songs are what matter, one keeper at a time. Our confusion about how to think about 80s music lies largely in the costume-party aspects.

Because, when it comes down to it, there are two sets of 80s. But only one of these lends itself to homage — or parody, depending on your view. And, come to think of it, you can dig the Bruce Springsteen who made Nebraska and the other guy who suddenly appeared on MTV.

Everyone reacted to the end of the Watergate-riddled 70s and the dawn of a new political and social era in different ways. The future was so bright, we had to wear shades — and if Timbuk3 meant that ironically, not all of us were so sure.

The music world may not have agreed with the president on much, but there was accord on at least one thing: in pop, it felt like morning in America. Explore all of the classic albums of the 80s on vinyl. Get ReAL.