I would make a small distinction between the '70s and '80s. During the '80s, there was the advent of music videos, which is very important. The music video allowed an entire generation to get closer to new-wave pop-rock music, however you want to call it. Here in Switzerland, we only had Mr. Fantasy with the legendary Massarini, who brought joy to my mom with his iconic videos, which delighted me and my sisters. Or I would watch some shows on French TV. So (speaking of the decade) it was the time for clips from: Grace Jones (a great artist for me), Roxy Music (Love is the Drug was immense), Ultravox, Depeche Mode, Sisters Of Mercy, Bauhaus, Killing Joke, The Cure, the fabulous and avant-garde Peter Gabriel (Sledgehammer), the sexy Blondie (Debbie Harry the most beautiful by far), the multimedia Talking Heads (Dude... check out the DVD of "Stop Making Sense", it's worth it) or Laurie Anderson (Dude... same with "Home Of The Brave"), The Clash with Should I Stay Or Should I Go (remember the Saudi guy dancing? Strummer... how I miss him!), Nina Hagen (African Reggae, Dude... it’s a song for you! I've been thinking for a while about writing a review on Nina Hagen...), the videos of Cult, Japan, DAVID BOWIE (and here I bow), U2 (the only ones keeping the rock flag high), The Pretenders, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Simple Minds, the pre-new-age ones from Mike Oldfield (Moonlight Shadow), the almost ridiculous ones from Teardrop Explodes by Julian Cope, those of Kate Bush (Baboushka), those of the poor man's Madonna Cindy Lauper, those of Eurythmics (Sweet Dreams are made of this...), those of Soft Cell, Suicide, the depressed ones from the fabulous The Smiths, not to mention the unreachable Joy Division... but the '80s were also the years of unrestrained hedonism, there was rampant fashion (remember the first great Versace models?) and there was the outing of the gay movement, and thus the industry played its part by churning out hugely popular bands on the music channels, the so-called "new romantic" groups like Gazebo (remember I like Chopin?), OMD (with Enola Gay a big hit, then disappeared), the glam Visage, Adam Ant & The Ants, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Bananarama (who looked like drag queens), etc., etc...
And then the pop of Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, Modern Talking, DAN HARROW! etc., etc.
The Italians: Neon, Gaznevada, the early Litfiba, CCCP, Garbo, Faust'O, Battiato...
In my opinion, the '80s had some merits:
First, it was the decade when women contributed the most; they had a great charisma and were truly respected. A golden moment that hasn’t repeated itself, at least not in the '90s. Second, the gay movement was finally accepted by the public. Sorry if that’s not much.
What the '90s did was to block the development of these two movements. They were the decade of virile machismo (I’m not critiquing, these are the facts translated into hard-core, techno, grunge, Brit-pop, metal, hip-hop).
What do you think?
