80s music

Within The Realm is my favorite DCD album so that makes the 80's worth it for me on just that one disc,..and there are others that have been mentioned. Echo, Simple Minds, Ultravox, XTC,  etc...are also excellent bands from that time.

Edited by dr wu23 - November 17 2013 at 10:01

I forgot Tears for Fears, the B52s and The Thompson Twins(great pop)!!

TheGazzardian wrote: Oh yes. The prog, the pop, the others, what's not to love? XTC, Cardiacs, Univers Zero, Talking Heads, Rip Rig + Panic, This Heat, Tears for Fears, The Police, Peter Gabriel, Rush, B-52s, King Crimson, Marillion, etc...

You did a pretty good job of summarizing what was good in the so called '80's music.  I should throw in Joe Jackson and The Psychedelic Furs.  Plus Toto's Dune soundtrack and The Eurythmics 1984 were fairly progressive.


Edited by Slartibartfast - November 17 2013 at 15:37

The Smiths

It's funny as a teen in the eighties I was mostly listening to YES, GENESIS, RUSH, King Crimson with maybe a bit of the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and ELP thrown in. In other words the same bands that first got most of you into this mess. I didn't discover or hear about Gentle Giant and Marillion until towards the end of the eighties and as for Marillion didn't actually hear them until around 1991 or so. As for eighties music in general I still have a soft spot for it since I still listened to the radio and still paid attention to what was popular(to some degree anyway).

For the most part I'd say a lot of eighties music was fun(and yes that includes Genesis). You can't take it all too seriously. It was all about flash and being stylish and "fitting in." Prog wasn't allowed to fit in because it wasn't cool. It wasn't hip. It needed the help of the internet to sneak its way back into the music scene. A lot of 80's music admittedly hasn't worn so well with time. I've heard people call a lot of it "cheesy" among other not too complimentary terms. And you know what? A lot of it was cheesy but maybe that was part of the fun. Some of those songs could only have been made in the eighties and maybe that's a good thing. So yes I do like 80's music(in moderation anyway)if for no other reason that for nostalgia purposes.


Edited by Prog_Traveller - November 18 2013 at 21:10

Prog bands (those listed) did their worst in the 80s (apart some relevant exceptions like, IMO, 90125 and the Pink Floyd releases. For Tangerine Dream the 80s are represented by a number of non-essential soundtracks, Bowie did some good pop music and Kate Bush did excellent things....but I still hate the 80s and the standardized Yamaha DX7/Fairlight sounds.

No vote. Many of the 70's prog dinosaurs fell into decline and the devastating effect of the punk/new wave and the beat of new electronic instruments was palpable.

But even these years had some excellent output. So I won't say yes or no, even though I prefer the 70's and the recent years.

What's not to like about the 80's?

I grew up in the 80's so yeah, I love the music.  As a side note, Invisible Touch was probably one of the most important albums (along with the associated videos) in my life time. 

Some of my favorite albums of all-time came from the '80s.