The 80’s rule.

[dante]

At home we have our Google radio locked into Gold Fm 104.3 FM. 24x7. It plays 80’s music. There’s no station dedicated to the 90’s. Beyond that into this century it’s open slather. The only reason we hear contemporary stuff is when reality singing show ‘The Voice’ does it annually season. Note in recent years the judges have included such notaries such as Seal, Kelly Roland and Boy George.

I’m sitting in an airport lounge about to go on a holiday so to read on the plane I purchased latest edition of Classic Rock magazine. Featuring AC/DC, Foreigner, Slash, David Gilmour, Black Crowes etc. all 70s/80s - although one could argue he started fame in the 60’s. Hell - he’s still releasing albums ! So is Jethro Tull FFS!

So what is it about that era of music ? 70’s was great for Prog and Fusion. Great music was obviously happening in the 80’s. With the upgrowth of synths and combining them with guitar, and recording technology reaching a sonic peak.

I’m interested in others opinions on a topic that’s probably already been done to death, but worthy of more pontification in our twighlight years.

[nebelfuerst]

To me, the decade lost its value for describing music. Without electronic instruments, the sounds were limited. With first electronic guitars and its amplifiers, new music styles were possible. Rock wouldn't work without eguitars with overdrive-amps.
With synths and electronic effects, so many musical styles evolved, so that 90's music was rock, pop, acid, techno/trance. In germany, 90's was the decade of loveparade with 303, 808 and 909 driving many songs. Some friends prefered "unplugged concerts" at the same time.
In the 90's I would have counted about 10 different music flavours. Today I have to listen to a lots of radiostations (or channels like di.fm) to find out, how exacly my kind of music is called.
Nile Rodgers was the godfather of guitar with Chic decades ago and delivered a masterpiece with DaftPunk some years ago. DaftPunkt isn't 70's, they just combined Nile's talent with the growing pool of new possibilities.

[Gordon Gekko]

Yeah but Rodgers is a fag

[astroman]

Expert Sleepers company logo is a simplified version of the symbol Simon Le Bon wore on his jacket in Duran Duran‘s New Moon on Monday clip...
I still enjoy the DX-7, but missed the Waldorf Microwave. 1980 was my 1st visit to Greece... good times

[dante]

One of the few albums I like from this century Duran Duran’s Astronaut had Nile’s production chops all over it. So there’s that. My first trip to Greece was 2024, was great to finally see Europe incl Italy, France and Croatia- good times indeed. My first proper keyboard was the DX7 in 1983, but I think a coffee stain killed its midi. For my latest keyboard, I went the late Dawman’s route and got something AKAI MPC based (key 37) and sample his Zebra presets into it.

Anyhow regards music history I’m gonna go with the Nebelfuerst theory that gear innovations propelled great music , but now that anyone can have almost any sound, it’s all a bit diluted.

[Sounddesigner]

There's only a small handfull of songs from the 2000's on up to now that i'd play 30 years from now. There are PLENTY of songs i still play from the 1990's/80's/70's/60's and even the 50's wich was before i was born.

Today's music is disposable and without longevity like many old classics that still get Radio play. I'm very open-minded with a wide range of taste, i love many Genres from many era's but when it comes to the 2000's on up something went wrong and music generally does'nt sound good any more. Every aspect of it is off from Composition to Engineering to Singing, etc, it's not natural IMO, and this generation seem to be lost and without understanding of what makes music authentic and great sounding to the ear. The fundamentals have been lost IMO.

We have more and better tools today and are not limited with instance counts or limited in any way other than imagination. With the superior gear we get worser music. It's not just fake-news, we get fake-music as well .

[dante]

Live mixes have improved with technology, as Ive taken to those to boost my classic rock collection.

For example Pink Floyd's 'Pulse' from 1995 is mind blowing, get that and replace 1/2 of your Floyd CD collection. Aussie late 80's band 'NoiseWorks' did a live concert in 2008 at local Crown Palms and it also blows away their records for power and punch.

I recently obtained 'Curtain Call' - U.K's final concert in 2015. Got a few bad reviews so Im hoping Im not disappointed when I receive my bluray player to listen to it.

There are a few other examples if you wish to go down this path as well.

[valis]

Our ability to shape the frequency and dynamics has gotten to the point where we obsess over adding back "grit"/"color", noise and "glue" that was lost in our move to digital. I agree that the engineering on remasters and other past works revisited shows our progress.

Focusing on what would sound good with a boombox in the 80's made the vocals and melodic hook stand front in center, and did a world of good for pop and mainstream rock. Something to remember for those who lament its passing.

However I actually revisit a lot of the psybient, IDM, downtempo and drum&bass that I've enjoyed in the last 20-30 years and I still like most of what I enjoyed when it came out. And much of this wouldn't translate as well to the 'boombox' theory of 'why that music was so good'. In fact much of this stuff wouldn't have worked at all before electronic music became the norm at all, and yet here I am listening to mostly this for much of my adult life.

And I still look for great 80's playlists when I'm driving or working as well.

[Nestor]

I think your question led us to a very complex answer, I don’t think I can fully answer it anyway because I guess, there are many views and points to consider. I can, nevertheless, add some interesting and pretty obvious points to the discussion:

First:
Technology. When people have too much, they loose focus and momentum is lost. In old 70s and 80s days, most musicians would actually play some instruments in a pretty masterful way. When you play an instrument very often, let’s say, every day of your life, you “will” come up with interesting ideas that will pop up spontaneously and will be great. There are many great examples, for instance, of amazing bass lines that became the foundation of some of the most sought-after songs of those days, so it is true. For instance, Good Times from Chic.

If you pay attention to the statistics and you follow also your own investigation, you’ll see that there are less people playing instruments today than they used to be in the 70s. Yes, there is more virtuosity than ever, but this does not necessarily translate into “music creativity”, it is more like “instrument gymnastics”, which I find tiresome. Music, in the terms we like to think about, great “music” really, I mean, meaningful sounds, inspired sounds, something that will reach your emotions straight inside yourself, there is not much out there in the virtuosity world.

I get tired listening to many of the virtuous players of today scene, particularly those seen in YouTube because they are extremely technical but lack the spirit, yet, you listen to somebody like the amazing all-creative Jeff Beck, already gone and... wow...

So, this is one of the reasons for me why the music of the 70s and 80s was generally better. Today, people don’t longer play instruments like they did long ago, and so, they tend to do everything through electronic means instate, and the virtual world gives you so, so, sooooo much, that you get easily lost in it and do nothing instate.

Second:
Samples, loops, encapsulated music, prerecorded stuff, chord progressions apps like scaler, Captain Chords, Cthulhu, ChordPotion, Orb Composer, Hookpad, auto-generative apps (there are tons of them), and all kind of sequencers and things of the like that truncate your inspiration because they have already their own vibe, it is somebody else’s idea, they are already enclosed bits, when you are supposed to come up with something that comes from nothing, which is real creativity, something from within yourself connected to what you feel and want in that very moment.

I don’t mean you could not, eventually, do something meaningful through these means and get something done truly nice, but, if this is your ONLY means to compose music, if you always depend on devices, gadgets and the so to compose something, you are boiling your creativity and getting away from yourself.

Well, this is what is happening exactly today, that is why you have many, many songs that sound amazing in terms of mixing and mastering, but empty of any spirit, no essence at all, they mean nothing and are not connected to any human experience.

Before this period, you had people like Amanda McBroom, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Elton Jhon, (to name just a few that we all know, and of course, we could extend this list to many countries around the world in different languages, like Francis Cabrel in France, for instance), all amazing composers!

It seems that the more electronic power we have to compose, the less we eventually do, this is so true. We have the best of the best today, anything at hand, and I hear the crappiest music today than ever before in history, of course, there are many exceptions, but there is so much rubbish out there… bahhh.

Third:
Utterly social confusion through the last 20 years in our planet! Social media is destroying the minds of the young, you made disagree, well, be welcome to disagree, I deeply disagree with you so. I think Tik Tok, Facebook and the like are actually harming psychologically the present young generations to levels never seen before, I’m talking about a serious disaster here. This is a very deep topic I will not get into here, of course, just name it. Anyway, let’s say that ego stupidity has sky rocketed in people’s minds and this is NOT good for creativity, people are getting away from themselves, they are getting away from their own beings. “Meaning” is lowering by the minute. Should I perhaps mention here the amazing book called “Man’s Search for Meaning”, written by Viktor Frankl, the creator of Logotherapy. If you have never read this piece of gold, please, do, it is an incredible human experience you will never forget and it is a short book.

If you are not connected, you will compose silly things, or, at least, something YOU ARE NOT LIKING. If what you are doing is not something that drives you mad of joy, if it does not make you feel strong emotions, if you don’t cry or have some sort of a catharsis or similar doing it, you re composing crap, and you know it because you are tempted to delete it. Of course, it has happened to me hundreds of times and when it happens, I delete it because I know it is a lost war I am fighting for, I will be losing lots of time and get frustrated, I better will wait till real inspiration comes to me, and if it does not, I better don’t do anything until the time is the right one.

Let us be honest. Most modern composers of popular music sometimes don’t like what they are doing and keep going on with it because they have to come up with something fast, so they come up with something heartless, mediocre, hollow of any remarkable meaning and…, great sounding, which is puzzling.

Mankind is in such a confusion right now, in such a chaos that I have never before in history seen such a societal dissociation, so it is difficult to expect great creativeness in such condition.