I didn’t comment on the Level 42 – time for a reappraisal post. There was a reason. Back in the day I loved them, saw them 3 times and thought they were great. I didn’t want to criticise them because of their time they were very good. However today they sound very dated and I wouldn’t contemplate listening to them.
This got me thinking that strangely there is music much older than Level 42 that still sounds great and has aged really well. A lot of 80’s music hasn’t aged that well, is it because of the instrumentation, the production or both? Linn drums for example are an abomination and synthesisers in the wrong hands do not aid a good tune.
60’s soul, 50’s Rockabilly and Jazz sound great. Hell even records from the 20’s and 30’s. What was it with the 80’s?
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Baron Harkonnen says
Well Sigue Sigue Sputnik come to mind. But they were shite in the 80`s, they did make a lot of the other acts look good though.
Steerpike says
Interesting question Steve. I think maybe it was the way the instruments were used rather than the use of the instruments per se. After all, much synth music still sounds great but when synths are used for riffs and bass lines – not so much. Gated drums, the Fairlight, overuse of saxophones and other brass – it was like trying on all the costumes in the dressing-up box at once.
There was good stuff too, mind and I strongly suspect we will look back in disdain at the autotuned pop sounds of today. I already do.
Vincent says
Totally right. The prototypical 80s sounds sound really dated and thin these days. Linn drums, DX7 synths, slap-bass, cocktail bar sax solos – all a bit cringey.
Moose the Mooche says
Bloody soprano saxes were on everything in those days. Unless you’re John Coltrane, leave it ahhht,
fitterstoke says
….or Lol Coxhill….
fitterstoke says
Q.E.D…….
duco01 says
Or John Surman – catch him at about 2:20 into this video clip of the NDR Jazz Workshop, 1969. Nice!
Vincent says
As an experiment I listened to an album not heard in maybe 25 years: “Face Values” by Phil Collins. Hard work. “But Seriously…” was even worse.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Must We Fling This Phil At Our Pop Dads?
Martin Hairnet says
I have been thinking about this a bit with regards to effects pedals. Digital delay, for example, is one of my favourite effects, but has it been rendered naff and passe by The Hedge? You still here it used a lot by bands like Emeralds and the Durutti Column, but these are hardly mainstream. It’s as if U2 marked their territory with the delay pedal, making it difficult for others to follow.
You could probably make similar arguments for chorus, phase and distortion, although distortion is so widespread and ingrained in rock and pop’s DNA it probably hasn’t suffered in the same way.
Uncle Wheaty says
This was my favourite single from 1986
Still a great tune but the production is very dated.
Number Six says
Something from 1986 that still hasn’t dated to me.
Douglas says
I know what you mean @stevet – even non-standard stuff has the whiff of all those 80s characteristics. RevCo’s “Big Sexyland”, which is some kind of Industrial EBM*, sounds great except for the occasional flourishes sadly typical of that decade.
Part of the answer surely lies in people desperately wanting to be hip. But nothing ages faster than fashion, particularly when done artlessly. Nancy Mitford had the right idea – when getting her photo taken she always wore plain “timeless” clothing, never anything fashionable (or “U”, I guess).
The other part of the answer is why that only happens with some music, eg 1980s synth and/or sax, and not others, eg Krautrock. I suspect it’s to do with the presence or lack of any real supervision or scrutiny: the easier it is to get a record out, the easier it is to churn out sh!te. In the early 70s studio time was at much more of a premium than it was 15 years later, thanks to the explosion of technology, media and “easy” money. So to take the Krautrock example, the German AOR market of the late 60s was drenched in Schlager-musik, which drove so many youngsters mental that they had to invent something else, something good.
*(for those of you who like your music categorised to within an inch of its life)
Rigid Digit says
Is it down to standardisation of studios, equipment and recording techniques?
The decade also saw the rise in status of the “go to” producer who could sprinkle fairy-dust over any old tosh and get it to the upper reaches of the Top 20
Trevor Horn, Nile Rogers, Steve Lillywhite, Steve Levine, Stock Aitken & Waterman – yes the producers name was (almost) as important as the Band actually writing/playing the song (if they actually did?)
Tiggerlion says
The Stone Roses.
I was carried along with the excitement, too. At the end of the eighties, a decent rhythm section playing an old-fashioned drum kit and bass guitar sounded like fresh air. The Stone Roses had an excellent rhythm section. But, listening now, that’s all they had. Their debut still sounds like air but air in an empty hollow shell. There are no real tunes, just retreads of sixties ones. Or ones repeated on the album itself. The guitar flutters and flatters but falls flat. As for the vocals, oh dear. The most horrible thing about them is that they aspire to euphoria but have to be disguised by John Leckie’s clever production. Never has a voice sounded less authorative when attempting to be grandiose. I went to Spike Island. They were dreadful.
I still like Fool’s Gold. It’s title seems apt.
Moose the Mooche says
Miss, he’s doing it again!
Tiggerlion says
I know. Inserting unnecessary apostrophes is unforgivable. Predictive spellcheck can’t cope with its it’s.
retropath2 says
I like the 80s and it’s sounds. On a good song it is just so right, but it can’t make a bad song good, and there were a lot of those in that decade so maybe it’s just the mindset. I can’t stand 60s kitchen sink orchestra and brass added to the majority of pop. Or 70s fuzz guitar, to make dreck sound cool. (Yes, I am talking to you Richard Carpenter and your dead sister.) Or 90s crap sampling from old songs well known
Rob C says
Foil lined biscuit tin based ear sodomy. Gnats with stacks. Teeth torture sound up the Woodstock sinus canals. Weeping tree hairstyles trying to grow inwards to undensify your mind.
Black Celebration says
Parpy horns and handclaps. Think I Wanna Dance WIth Somebody, Higher Love and many more. They sound dated in a bad way. There was a mid 80s period where this was the formula – When the Going Gets Tough – another one…
retropath2 says
Higher Love? It’ s great. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the vid, with Winwood pretending to be merely a vocalist. If ever a man needed his hands on his organ.
https://vimeo.com/27818768
Haircuts none too clever, either.
Otherwise, top hole all round, says I
H.P. Saucecraft says
The eighties …. the eighties … they would be when, exactly?
Bingo Little says
The most 80s record of all time is surely Cupid & Psyche 85.
It commits every 80s sonic crime going, but it still sounds fantastic.
Black Celebration says
It’s still an extraordinary record that somehow doesn’t sound dated – but I agree that it should.
andielou says
But the eighties gave us synth music &, for that alone, all is forgiven.
deramdaze says
I did a rare (and stupid) thing on Friday. I bought a 1980s record for 99p from Oxfam…The Jam – The Gift.
It sounds awful, even more so because it’s influences were presumably mod/60s/Tamla. How do you go from the high watermark (the highest) of the mid-60s to the production on that record?
Given the political nature of some of the lyrics, it’s also bizarre that ‘Malice’ aside, the lyrics are almost entirely lost in the mix.
Hate the 1980s, which is why I lived then, and still do, in about 1964!
Alias says
I liked electronic music in the late 70s / early 80s – Human League, Robert Rental, DAF, Suicide and Soft Cell amongst others, I liked the electro stuff in the early days of hip hop,I’ve even got a Cabaret Voltaire LP. However, it soon became clear that most of it was crap. That did lead to to a reaction and you got artists like Dexy’s, the Pogues, Men They Couldn’t Hang and Billy Bragg emerging with their more organic sound. The Jazz dance scene sprung up and on the soul side of things the rare groove scene emerged.
I look back on those days with affection because I’m still listening to the stuff I first discovered back then.
Black Celebration says
I’d like to take issue with the OP. Songs from the 20s/30s/40s are *rubbish*. These were the songs that evacuated themselves in between the funny bits of Marx Brothers films. Anyone remember them toe-tappers? No – toes that should tap become inverted, like the nipples of any woman who the hapless Zeppo attempted to serenade.
There were also the songs that were performed at variety theatres across the land by an unfunny comedian dressed in a wacky suit with titles like “Ooh Mrs Harris, I’d Love a Cup of Tea” with lyrics that signal, via innuendo, impending anal sex (more often than not).
Why does the female voice sound so screechy pre-1950? Billie Holiday only became popular because you could hear what she was singing. Back in England, Vera Lynn cottoned on to this and hit paydirt, as we all know. You know the high bits in “Loving You” by Minnie Ripperton? – all the songs by female singers used to sound like that bit with some pathetic scratchy orchestration achieved by recording Tom and Jerry cartoon music onto a wax cylinder. And then some other unpleasant distant-sounding “ooo-oo-wah” vocals come in to kill all notions of tunefulness stone dead. Not good enough.
Even the worst song in the 1980’s – The Way You Are by Tears For Fears – towers head, shoulders and mullet above the best songs from the 20s/30s and 40s. Show me someone who disagrees and I’ll get the fire extinguisher – for their pants!
Moose the Mooche says
You’re quite right – Tarzan Boy by Baltimora absolutely shits on anything by Gershwin – a guy who never programmed a Linn drum in his worthless life.
mikethep says
Mr B C , your usual sound common sense and good taste has suddenly deserted you. Exhibit A:
Black Celebration says
Yes yes we can all add clips of undeniably brilliant music from that time to undermine the points I make above. My argument may not be watertight and easily ripped to shreds in mere moments. Fine. On reflection, this below might be a little bit better than Don’t it Make You Feel Good by TV’s Stefan Dennis :
http://youtu.be/qafnJ6mRbgk
Zanti Misfit says
I think it’s generally middle aged music snobs that have a problem with 80’s production values. Loads of people I know in their twenties/ early thirties see past the Fairlights and Linn drums and regard this period as a golden era of pop.
JustB says
I’d agree with that, except to say that the decade is probably no more or less a golden age than any other.
There is a certain rockism – only giving credence to music that involves physical plucking and thumping – that afflicts gentlemen of a certain age, though. Give it thirty years and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who makes a value distinction between a Fairlight and a Bösendorfer, a Linn and a Slingerland.
Diddley Farquar says
I think the reason certain records like Scritti Politti still stand up is that they approached the new technology in an imaginative way – Cupid and Psyche ’85 was state of the art at the time, done with intelligence and taste. It also usually worked better with dance-based material that was more cutting edge you could say – Prince, Gwen Guthrie, that kind of thing. What sounded bad was old style records dressed up in trendy clothes, just adopting the latest sounds for the sake of it in a superficial manner – i.e. rock, more old fashioned soul, ballads etc. It’s about how the latest techniques were used, rather than the techniques themselves, that was the problem.