8 Bands You'd Only Know If You Were Alive In The 80s

[DrStrangelove]

8 Bands You'd Only Know If You Were Alive In The 80s

Many have debated which decade produced the best music, we propose that the 1980's produced some of the best music and bands in the history of music. Here we give you eight reasons that this was an amazing decade for music.

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[Chester Rabbit]

I was only alive for 89 and even I know Bananarama, Devo, Talking Heads and Depeche Mode. Heck Depeche were still a thing in 2005. You couldn?t go a day without hearing Precious on the radio.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

Did you really put Depeche Mode and Journey on that list? Granted, most of us post-90 people only know Journey because of that one song, but Depeche Mode? Most people I know have at the very least listened to Enjoy The Silence, Personal Jesus or Just Can't Get Enough, and countless bands have covered them. And their new stuff is played a lot on popular radio. I myself have listened to them since I was 12 years old.

 

[UNHchabo]

Did you really put Depeche Mode and Journey on that list? Granted, most of us post-90 people only know Journey because of that one song, but Depeche Mode? Most people I know have at the very least listened to Enjoy The Silence, Personal Jesus or Just Can't Get Enough, and countless bands have covered them. And their new stuff is played a lot on popular radio. I myself have listened to them since I was 12 years old.

I'm also surprised to see Talking Heads, since they got a ton of airplay on normal pop radio in the late 90s, as opposed to groups like Devo and Bananarama, who I only heard on the "80s Hour" or special shows like that.

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

There's a rather criminal lack of the smiths in that list! Shame on you sir!

 

[Kinitawowi]

8 Bands You'd Only Know If You Were Alive In The 80s

...And Were In The USA For Most Of That Time, Otherwise You Wouldn't Have Given Two Shits About Oingo Boingo And You'd Only Know One Devo Song.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Oh come on. Journey, Depeche Mode and Hall & Oates aren't so obscure that no one who wasn't born in the 80s hasn't heard of them. Particularly when they've had songs on the soundtrack to various GTA games...

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

The Patrick Bateman quote served to remind me of why I can't stand Phil Collins.

 

[C117]

Ah, Oingo Boingo. A rather quirky rock band with songs such as "Dead Man's Party" and "Little Girls"... and then the frontman, Danny Elfman, went on to compose the theme to The Simpsons, the soundtrack to almost every Tim Burton film ever (including Batman, A Nightmare Before Christmas, and Corpse Bride), and some other soundtracks, for example the Men In Black trilogy, the first two Spider-Man movies, and Dick Tracy.

 

[Covarr]

Come on, I knew five of those, and I was born in '89.

Here's the thing. In any given time period, there's two kinds of bands:
1. Those who survived the test of time, and therefore people would know them even decades later.
2. Those who didn't survive the test of time, because they weren't good enough to bother knowing decades later.

The first group doesn't match the article title, and the second isn't really worth writing about.

P.S. Thanks

P.P.S. Seriously? Depeche Mode? everyone knows them.

 

[Jazoni89]

Come on, I knew five of those, and I was born in '89.

Here's the thing. In any given time period, there's two kinds of bands:
1. Those who survived the test of time, and therefore people would know them even decades later.
2. Those who didn't survive the test of time, because they weren't good enough to bother knowing decades later.

The first group doesn't match the article title, and the second isn't really worth writing about.

P.S. Thanks

P.P.S. Seriously? Depeche Mode? everyone knows them.

Same here, 89, and I listen to some of them regularly.

I know so much about the music before I was born, it's crazy, even the obscure as hell stuff. I guess if you wasn't truly invested in old music then I could understand why you have never heard some of these.

 

[Jazoni89]

Really? I thought you were going to actually give us a more recognizably 80s list not a load of bands people really do still come into contact with today.

A better list would be;

Quiet Riot
Def Leppard
Europe
Cinderella (i could make a whole list of popular late 80s hair-metal that the 90s made look like gay pirates)
Winger
Spandau Ballet
Tears for Fears
Ultravox

I can do one better...

Bauhaus
The Teardrop Explodes
Killing Joke
My Bloody Valentine
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Dinosaur Jr
Pixies
Galaxie 500
The Sound
The Chameleons
The Fall
Joy Division
Echo and the Bunnymen
X
The Cocteau Twins
Primal Scream
Happy Monday's
The Stone Roses

All bow down to my glorious music taste, your welcome.

 

[Jazoni89]

Really? I thought you were going to actually give us a more recognizably 80s list not a load of bands people really do still come into contact with today.

A better list would be;

Quiet Riot
Def Leppard
Europe
Cinderella (i could make a whole list of popular late 80s hair-metal that the 90s made look like gay pirates)
Winger
Spandau Ballet
Tears for Fears
Ultravox

I can do one better...

Bauhaus
The Teardrop Explodes
Killing Joke
My Bloody Valentine
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Dinosaur Jr
Pixies
The Sound
The Chameleons
Echo and the Bunnymen
X
The Cocteau Twins
Primal Scream
Happy Monday's
The Stone Roses

All bow down to my glorious music taste, your welcome.

Those bands are to good to just be "80s bands" though, most of those are more like "The pre-90s rumblings". Actually apart from soundgarden that's most of the defining bands that led to the sound of the 90s that were pretty active in the 80s. Screamadelica was 1991, The stone roses were late 89 to 94. My Bloody Valentine again were most popular 90s and post 90s and only started making any kind of release in 1988.

I agree with Primal Scream, and Stone Roses to a extent, but the others I disagree with your sentiment. Though I do admit some of them were pretty avant-garde for the time, especially bands like Dinosaur Jr, and say Swans.

Also MBV were making music since like 1983, as a Post-Punk band, before going Shoegazing (as it was to be called in the 90's) with 1987's ecstasy and wine Ep's.

 

[octafish]

Jesus these lists are bad. First a most violent Vietnam conflict films with no Platoon, now an obscure eighties band list with bands that have huge followings or are hugely influential. Ridiculous. Adam and the Ants, Ultravox, Pseudo Echo, Mi-sex, Joe Dolce, maybe Scorpions and Twisted Sister, these are what should be in a list like this not fucking De-Vo.

-Octafish- Spud since 1983-

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

None of these bands are even remotely obscure. I was born in '88, didn't start really caring about music at all until my freshman year of high school, and I still knew every single one on the list. Hell, most of those bands still get regular airplay on the radio here. I hear songs by Journey and Talking Heads at least a few times a week just driving to and from work.

These lists are some kind of joke, right?

 

[Kenbo Slice]

I was born in '91 and I know who all these are.

Also I'm pretty sure everybody knows who Journey is. Including people born in the 90's.

 

[Icehearted]

I was born in '91 and I know who all these are.

Also I'm pretty sure everybody knows who Journey is. Including people born in the 90's.

Yeah, I thought that was a strange one to list since it was part of the iconic conclusion to The Sopranos, which was then parodied all over the place, and this was only a few years ago.

I think this could have been a more obscure list of distinctly 80s sounds. Don't know what young people know about anymore, but groups like Huey Louis and The News or Thompson Twins, Mel and Kim seem like they might be a little more known to aging Gen-X folk. Then again pop-culture comedy make references to this stuff all the time, and since so many newer groups are just churned out for cash and lack originality older music has gotten a lot of younger fans. Add this to YouTube and one can safely say we've all seen "Whip It".

This has me thinking about a conversation I had with a friend about how kids these days will never know what it was like when MTV didn't suck.