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So we jived through the 50s...
We couldn't remember the 60s...
We were born in the 70s (well, I was, anyway)...
Which brings us to the most maligned decade of the latter half of the 20th Century. Quite unfairly, if you ask me. The 80s were ace. They gave us Jet Set Willy, The A-Team, Back To The Future, The Queen Is Dead, Frank Miller's Daredevil, Rubix Cube, Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love, Moonlighting, John Byrne's Fantastic Four, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Total Eclipse Of The Heart... and all they asked in return was our souls. Sounds like a perfectly fair trade to me.
Anyway, as usual, this isn't a list of Best Songs FROM The 80s... just Best Songs ABOUT the 80s. Don't make me have to explain that to you again.
10. David Bowie - 1984 / Eurythmics - Sex Crime (1984) / Tina Turner - 1984
Having said that, let's start with three songs that were actually recorded in the devilish decade, each dealing with the year George Orwell predicted fascism would run rampant. In reality, we had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan... phew, lucky escape there, eh, George?
9. John Mayer - 83
Apparently we're all supposed to hate John Mayer because he's a precocious pretty-boy who's had his hands (and, no doubt, other bodily parts) all over Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston and a dozen other Hollywood bimboids. Ah, good on him. I'm not jealous. (If he ever goes near Kate Winslet though, I'm calling him out.) Anyway, this is probably the best song he's ever recorded, from early in his career, before he went all rockstar cliché.
8. Kid Rock - All Summer Long (1989)
Ah, but if it's rockstar cliché you're after, look no further than Kid Rock, bringing the obscenity of his expense account to this video with speedboats, tattoos and pretty girls. Not a bad tune though, despite the fact that he owes most of it to Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At least he's not afraid to own up to the thievery...
7. Randy Travis - 1982
A more respectable face of American Mid-West musicianship, Randy Travis arrived on the scene in 1985 when Marty McFly was just beginning to travel in time. Here Randy's experimenting with a little cross-chronal communication of his own, calling on the phone company and the post office to help him contact the girl he left behind in 1982. Probably Kim Wilde.
6. Camera Obscura - Eighties Fan
The word 'wistful' was invented for this song. Elsewhere in Scotland, Stuart Murdoch is seething with jealousy at lines like these...
Run away to a bed and breakfast
Console yourself with the Reader's Digest
Ringing the Yellow Pages all alone
And for a certain kind of girl, there's no greater chat up line than this...
You say your life will be the death of you
Tell me, do you wash your hair in honey dew?
5. Manic Street Preachers - 1985
Trust the Manics to pour scorn on the decade of their teenage riot, remembering a year in which Orwell was proved right and the Civil War failed. Still, from misery comes hope...
In 1985, my words they came alive,
friends were made for life,
Morrissey and Marr gave me choice.
In 1985, in 1985.
4. Regina Spektor - Dance Anthem of the 80s
What killed the 80s music scene? If you'd asked me in 1989, I'd have screamed "dance anthems". S-Express, Technotronic, Black Box and their sordid, wailing ilk. (I quite liked MARRS and Pump Up The Volume, but it was a grubby, guilty kind of like, and I knew it was wrong.)
Regina Spektor remembers a much more enticing 80s dance anthem though... if only they'd all sounded this good.
3. Ash - True Love 1980
Ash narrowly missed out on last week's list due to the fact that their debut album was called 1977 and kicked off with the sound effect of Lucasfilm Tie Fighters to celebrate the year of their birth.
Those Ash boys grew up fast though... look at what they were getting up to by age 3!
2. Denim - I'm Against The Eighties
Another artist who really should have made it into last week's list (check out Lawrence's heartfelt 70s tribute The Osmonds if you don't believe me), particularly when you consider that he's not actually that fussed about the decade in which he first shimmied onto the indie-pop scene...
Well I’m against the ‘80s bands that couldn’t play
I’m against the ‘80s singers with nothing to say
You heard it on the radio
You saw it on the TV
You still went and bought it
Guilty as charged, m'lud.
1. Bowling For Soup - 1985
And so we reach, unarguably (don't even try), the greatest ever song ABOUT the 80s... and a promise fulfilled to Bowling For Soup's Jaret Reddick that if I ever compile such a Top Ten, his band will be Number One.
No contest...
Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on MTV
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
Cuz she's still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985
Audio & lyrics below, full video on the link above - worth watching, even though the record company don't want me embedding it. After all, there's a danger you might like the song and want to go out and buy it... and that'd never do.
Oh, and Richard Thompson does a pretty mean cover too.
So that was the 80s, my coming of age. What's your favourite song about this decas horribilis?
Don't worry, only one more week to go...
