80's comeback?
 

there are a few new bands out there that i am listening to heavily right now. a couple examples are the french duo chromium and the austin natives Ghostland Observatory. now the reason i quickly got into these bands is because I grew up like a lot of you Dallas natives listening to the 80's at 8 on 94.5 FM the edge (tell me im not the only one!) and some of the jammin synth/guitar play and funky lyrics i heard then are coming out of my speakers now in the form of these new bands....if you know what im talkin about im lookin for more music like this so let me know whatcha got and if you think this style is here to stay!

I think there's gonna be some form of synth-pop kickin' about for a good long time. Checkout Does it Offend You Yeah?, !!!, and Cold War Kids. To go little further out there and definitely less poppy check out Black Moth Super Rainbow.

The 80s comeback has been in progress for at least 5 years, both in fashion (bleh) and music.

exactly, if anything i think the 80s 'comeback' is on the verge of ending in my eyes. there's not much left from that decade that hasn't been revamped for this decade.

as far as incorporating synths into rock music that never really stopped after the 80s either, it just stopped being popular in the mainstream. the only thing that really changes are the tastes of the current generation of kids and passive listeners who turn to the tv and radio to know what to buy and keep the so-called mainstream thriving.

This. It's been going on for about a decade at this point and definitely in its final stages. I've really enjoyed it though.

I hope we get a 90s comeback

i do believe a 90s comeback is inevitable as well. especially when new members started identifying themselves as 2nd generation nirvana fans haha

I just don't see what, if anything, was distinctive about 90's culture, besides the whole grunge pseudo-genre/sub-culture, which, musically, really hasn't quite left us yet.

i don't think it's so much about style so much as reaction. what really distinguished the 90s for me is how it seemed to strip itself away from the excess of the 80s.

when i think back to the 80s i remember cheese. lots and lots of cheese. self indulgence and arrogance to the point of hubris. a future so bright you didn't just wear shades you figured you already knew how to dress like the primitives you'd be meeting in tomorrowland.

a lot of people i've talked to said the only distinguishing factor of the 90s was that it was depressing. to an extent that's true but it's also due to taking a harsh look at the reality of our situation. there wasn't going to be a magic change in 2000. people weren't going to be riding around in flying cars.

i wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a change more along those lines in mainstream pop culture in the near future. a shift to a more honest reflection reality as opposed to perpetuating technicolour dreams. especially when everyone wakes up the same in 2013.

Exactly! We went from

http://dietrichthrall.files.wordpres...04/stryper.jpg

to

http://img2.allposters.com/images/73/039_32231.jpg

The music being played on the radio was amazing too

Ricky Martin fan are we? I'm betting it was the Backstreet Boys actually

You have no idea

Haha :D

The memories.... The terrible terrible memories.

I quote in agreement.

Truth. The good and the bad are still with us.

He wasn't really that big until the really late 90s though. Like 99 when that song came out. By that time I started having my own taste of music. The next year I would be introduced to trance music and everything kinda changed after that. This is the kinda stuff I remember :





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP95btX8NJE

I think, like every decade, the 90s have their distinguishing characteristics that are becoming more and more apparent with time. The internet boom is a huge one and grunge, which you mentioned, is another well-known but less significant one. As far as other very 90s things go here's a little list of things off the top of my head:

• Gangsta rap
• The explosion of rave culture
• Phat pants
• Celtic tats
• Body piercing
• Zillions of novelty items involving greys (aliens)
• Zines
• The explosion of fancy coffee
• Britpop
• Chunky shoes
• Indie crime cinema
• Distressed typography
• Extreme sports
• Extreme everything else
• The re-legitimization of facial hair
• "Magic eye" posters
• The birth of CGI special effects
• The birth of computer animated kids movies

I remember the morning clubs. Opening at 6 in the morning, playing mostly techno/trance and serving only water. Ridiculously expensive water that is.

Thinking music and the 90s, it wasn't just grunge and rave which was distinct from that decade either. I mean, there was an explosion of electronica genres. IDM for example, like Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy". You don't find stuff like that in the 80s and it hasn't been popular in this decade either - at least I didn't notice.

Eurodance **** like Rednex "Cotton Eye Joe" is another example .. Or New Agey crap like Enigma's "Return to Innocence". We got Downtempo and Trip Hop like Massive Attack and Portishead.

Boybands also became really popular in the 90s. Black Metal got popular too and while that genre is still around today, it's usually in some more advanced evolved form. There's lots!

While many don't like to use the term IDM anymore (I still do), I don't think it has gone down in popularity at all. Sure it had more exposure at the time that it exploded (MTV's short-lived Amp show had something to do with it), and then regressed to a more underground genre, but believe me it's still going strong. In fact many elements of IDM (such as glitch) have worked their way into mainstream music over the past decade.

But you're right, many different styles of electronic music were born (or at least became known to the masses) in the 90s.

Don't forget the entire Swing dance comeback fad that came into fashion around the mid-late nineties with bands like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Cherry Poppin Daddies. Every other bar seemed to be advertising "Swing dance" lessons then and people wearing zoot suits. If I have to choose one form of music to make a comeback now I would actually go for this....I can live without another revival of grunge.

edit: I am sorry to be a bit negative on the eighties comeback but it just seems to me that alot of it was just a cut/slash of old eighties hits with a new beat or people just redoing hits that really should never have been redone..at least it seemed like that for a while..

That's not what they mean it all... It most certainly has nothing to do with covers of old crappy 80s songs coming out. I think they meant there is an 80s comeback in terms of the revival of post punk, bands like The Killers, Interpol, Editors, etc. and I guess the revival of the synthpop sound a ton of music from the 80s had.

Really though, these days I'd say in terms of music all of the older decades are making a comeback. Lo-fi comes straight out of the garage rock of the 60s. You've got the hard rock and psychedelic rock of the 70s with bands like Super Furry Animals. I think a lot of bands are looking for something new and unique, and in doing so, look to the past for inspiration that doesn't come directly from their peers.

You're right, there's a bit of 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s (because it hasn't left yet) in new music today. Current metal, prog and psychedelic/experimental bands are hugely influenced by the 70s. As you said garage rock but also a lot of indie rock/indie pop is influenced by the 60s. Punk, hardcore, post-punk, electro/techno, pop etc. are influenced by the 80s...and so on. It's all happening at once. Some say because people have run out of ideas. That may be true for bands that sound like replicas of bands passed, but I think in general it's only natural to be influenced by music of the past to some extent. Everyone has their musical idols.

I remember when Melody Maker & NME tried to start a New Romantic revival in the early 90s. :laughing:

Yeah you know I phrased that kind of weird... I think it's that music is just much more readily available today and it's so easy to find all sorts of obscure music that there's more artists with hugely eclectic lists of influences than before. And the ones that don't look up the older stuff are in turned influenced by other newer bands that do in an endless cycle of influence :confused: Something like that is what I meant to say.

You are right. There was a rather large eighties revival in the 00's..but then that makes sense if you think of the 20 year rule (such as in the 90s there was a bit of a 70s revival going on for a bit). Although I think I see more of the 90s starting to creep into the music culture and I would not be surprised to see a full revival of it in the 00s.

Sorry about the poke at the 80s remixes/remakes but you have to admit that for a bit, every other song coming out seemed to pretty be this for a bit, especially in the dance music scene. At least here it was/is.

And yes there was a nice revival of synthpop especially with the bands you mentioned and others such as The Sounds and Melody Club.

Eh I don't think so. it hasn't really happened until recently. All that's really been popular this decade was hip hop/rap, alternative rock, post-grunge, pop punk, pseudo-emo, mallcore (bands like Slipknot, Disturbed, Marilyn Manson), and metalcore and musically, none of those genres really draw many influences from the 80s unless you count those god awful 80s song covers. I did, however notice that 80s fashion is making a slight comeback (mainly just in women's clothes though).

I honestly think the 80s revival will be in full gear in the 2010s considering that there was a 50s revival in the 80s, and it already is starting to make a comeback considering that synthpop is just now making a strong comeback. The 80s were pretty much just a modernized version of the 50s (new wave and glam bands were directly influenced by 50s rock n roll/rockabilly, and in turn, I think the 2010s are going to be a modernized version of the 80s considering that electropop (which is basically modernized synthpop) is starting to become very popular, and I'm predicting that electropop along with a few other genres of electronic dance music is going to phase out hip hop/rap/urban pop around 2010 or 2011. At least I hope so.

this is what you get when you rely on the tv to tell you what's trendy. had you been turning to the net for the last decade you'd already have been sick to death of the synthpop 'revival' by now.

sure the mainstream can try shoving electropop down our throats but i figure that will last about as long as it takes for the generation of Miley Cyrus fans to realize they've been getting spoonfed garbage for their entire youths. not unlike the same kids who got sick of the hairspray in the 80s and embraced the rawness of grunge when it finally appeared.

that's not to say grunge will make a comeback. at least i hope not. although i'll be really surprised if raw emotion doesn't end up surpassing synthetic pablum in the near future.

Progressive rock should become mainstream again. Ze' End!

i loved the radio in the 90's and as for the music in general...i seem to remember hearing vocals and guitar play that i thought were the last traces of great rock and roll in America not to say there isnt rock these days but it doesnt sound anything to me like the 90's, 70's and some of the 60's....the classics. I am impressed by some of the vocals coming out these days and i hope progressive rock explodes soon. The Mars Volta has been tearing it up for a few years now...the volta and Bands like them need a big break

Pretty much everything you mentioned there is very much late 90s/early 00s and in the case of Marilyn Manson you're talking about someone whose peak was actually in the mid 90s. It's true some of that music lingered into the 00s like some 80s music lingered into the 90s, but there has definitely been an 80s revival going on this entire decade. Check out any one these people who were releasing retro 80s sounding music in the first part of this decade (and even in the late 90s in some cases) for reference:

• Fischerspooner
• Ladytron
• The Faint
• The Knife
• Interpol
• !!!
• The Darkness
• Andrew WK
• Hot Hot Heat
• The Rapture
• Liars
• Peaches
• Miss Kittin & the Hacker
• The Strokes

I always thought The Strokes were more influenced by (or played music in the style of) 70's music, e.g. proto punk, post punk, art punk and power pop bands, but blended with a modern and/or futuristic sound. Most of the early music of the 80's was pioneered during the 70's anyway, like New Wave. The way I look back at the 80's is there was a paradigm shift, MTV came along and killed the Rock and Roll Zeitgeist of musical experimentation. If Rip Van Winkle was born in the 50's and fell asleep during 1980 and suddenly woke up today I think he would be hard press to say any of the good music has progressed since what he heard during the 70's.

then i would get his foolish self away from the front of the tv and show him how to use youtube.

then again, what would be considered 'the good music'?

I agree but nevertheless they have also released 80s sounding music ("12:15" for example) and did so in the early 00s.

I don't want it to explode. There are a lot of great prog bands right now, a really strong movement. We all know what happens when genres explode. Over-saturation and watering down of the style. No thanks. Keep the good shit sub-level. I'm not saying I don't want good bands to get recognized. But just look what happened to punk, emo, and many types of electronic to a lesser extent.

Just because the "12:15" video was film in an actual real tank from "Tron" doesn't necessarily make the music 80's - nice try though.

I've never seen the video. It's the song itself that I'm talking about. But if the video looks like what you describe then I guess that just highlights the fact that the Strokes themselves are aware that the song sounds like an 80s throwback.

But it's not like they strickly adhere to the whole 80's sci-fi motiff. The band was beamed aboard the tank. That means they were using special efffects used in Star Trek and someone in the 70's would be fully aware of Star Trek 60's vision of future technology of being beamed by the Transporter not the kind of technology they had in the 80's like they used in Tron where the people were atomized by a laser and then reconstructed inside a computer, where the people materialized the same way a graphic artist would create CGI.