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Rating: Essential History of Electronic Music
X. Those of Synth Pop and Other Melancholies
The '80s were, essentially, the same throughout. Anyone who attempted to find any fragmentation in them received the most bitter disappointment: in the era of Siouxsie's Post-punk, Hüsker Dü's Hardcore, and the second Canadian industrial era, the unrivaled phenomenon capable of engulfing all other trends was Synth pop. Following in the footsteps of dance phenomena by KC & The Sunshine Band, Donna Summer, and the Bee Gees, popular music donned a synthetic attire without overdoing it, through a simplification of melody aimed solely at attracting the greatest possible number to the dance floor. It was the decade of padded shoulders, black vests, lacquered big hair, the era of few phenomena like Duran Duran, Tears For Fears, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell, but also of the many flashes in the pan like Baltimora, a-ha, Q Lazzarus, Buggles. The formula was very simple: a collective with a very basic knowledge of music composition, a good sound engineer, a sex symbol updated to the '80s capable of reviving the clean and in-tune singing tradition of the '60s. Perhaps with too much self-indulgence, a sequence of numerous easy-listening phenomena emerged, all centered around the same few chords, similar sounds, and overall monotonous vocal timbres. The scene appeared paradoxically brutish, hopeless, too full of national-popular references inaccessible to investigation, an incense burner able to dispense the ephemeral scents of the ballroom. What remains?
Now, for those who lived through these years, such a question isn't even legitimate, because it's not legitimate to try to formulate a sensible answer. The '80s were, in their continuity of intent, the most identifiable years. In the blurred image of Tony Hadley trying to hum about the sound of the soul or in a cartoon where Morten Harket plays between the real and the surreal, anyone who lived through the '80s reflects jealously on their past, without logical connection, with an unsuspected attraction to the transience of time. These years sounded without highs or lows, so similar to themselves as to appear as a long melancholy lullaby, ordered by sequences of synths and electronic percussion: no longer the Malebolge of the '70s, the labyrinthine distortions, the taste for fragmentation, the chaotic experimentation. In the '80s, the decadence of modern popular music was manifest in action.
Nothing in the celebration of this era can be subject to concrete judgment: the task is entrusted to the memory of those who wore this decade. Those who haven't even been granted a shred of its garment, feel free to do so at your leisure with an album like "Organisation" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Dark, perhaps moving from the childish lullaby of "Enola Gay" to the caressing tone of "2nd Thought", from the restless fate of "Misunderstanding" to the minor prank of "Motion and Heart", from the D'Annunzian chiaroscuro of an arcane memory to the distinct notion of a sacred, inexplicable, interior belonging, to the ineffable myth that were the magnificent '80s.
If you didn't like this review you can wait for the next chapter or go back and make another choice!
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Enola Gay (03:34)
Enola Gay
You should have stayed at home yesterday
Ah-ha words can't describe
The feeling and the way you lied
These games you play
They're going to end in more than tears some day
Ah-ha Enola Gay
It shouldn't ever have to end this way
It's eight fifteen
And that's the time that it's always been
We got your message on the radio
Conditions normal and you're coming home
Enola Gay
Is mother proud of little boy today
Ah-ha this kiss you give
It's never going to fade away
Enola Gay
It shouldn't ever have to end this way
Ah-ha Enola Gay
It shouldn't fade in our dreams away
It's eight fifteen
And that's the time that it's always been
We got your message on the radio
Conditions normal and you're coming home
Enola Gay
s mother proud of little boy today
Ah-ha this kiss you give
It's never ever going to fade away
03 VCL XI (03:50)
[I NEED HELP!!!! - Dave]
styling I work real hard
stop trying to bother ?
so sweet ? I feel so hard
you sow silence in the face of our
?
it's kind hard but they don't stare
what is the place we're living in
I can't ?
when I said it to all the deaf
I say ?
say that I say
I say ?
?
say ?
06 The Misunderstanding (04:53)
Well we know where the true one lies
And you can't say it's our imagination
Just because we cannot find the proof
We've shared this thought for some considerable time
It's increasingly unlike the rest
For as we get older we've become less aware
Security lies at the heart of our lives
Attaching ourselves to ourselves
We're extinguished but we're still alive
Misunderstood but our intention is good
We were not questioned on our replies
It does you no good
Though you think that it should
And it would given half a chance
If there's compassion in your hearts
Now that you've seen enough
We've given of our best
For God's sake you know
Please please please please please please please please can we go home
Is this the time or place to say goodbye
Regardless I'll find my final cue
We'll sneak out the back door and close it
09 Stanlow (06:41)
Eternally
This field remains
Stanlow
No heart or head or mind
No season could erase
We set you down
To care for us
Stanlow
A vision fading fast
A million hearts to one
So restrained
She turns away
Stanlow
I've seen her face in every day
The same routine along the way
Tonight in the rain
Alone
And then again it's been so long
Since one single promise kept
All to say to
Reason
We wanted a heart
To say what we want to
A morning comes just as it left
A warmer feeling seldom owned
And tonight
All I see
Alone
And as she turned we always knew
That her heart was never there
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