Songs that define the 80's

Hells Bells

So many to choose from, and several of my favorites have been mentioned already:

"99 Luftballoons"
"Dancing in the Dark"
"The Time of My Life"

And anything Petty wrote in any era, but especially "I Won't Back Down"

Great thread, Flashlight!

Not sure what it has to do with partisanship, or was that just to keep it in the RR?

Can' t believe I didn't have a Blondie song on my list. And Call Me is probably the right choice, though I think Heart of Glass and The Tide is High are contenders, too.

Sheesh, this could be endless...10, er, 12 more...

Tom Petty - Free Fallin'
Run DMC w/Aerosmith - Walk This Way
Jessie's Girl - Rick Springfield
The Heart of Rock and Roll - Huey Lewis and the News
Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top
Boys of Summer - Don Henley
Saving All My Love for You - Whitney Houston
Bust a Move - Young MC (just baaaaaarely an 80s song)
Modern Love - David Bowie
Fortress Around Your Heart - Sting (incidentally, probably my favorite pop song of all time)
True Faith - New Order
Ordinary World - Duran Duran

I Need A Lover was a 70's tune.

Just some great tunes submitted by all. Really brings me back. In high school we would tool around in either a 70 red Camaro or a 69 blue Mustang. Blaupunkt stereo and all the cassettes we could afford. Some of the albums/groups that we listened to were:

The Cars
AC/DC Back in Black
Journey
ZZ TOP
Zeppelin
ASIA (Super Group!)

Really good stuff.

Never actually heard this but perhaps I should for self-preservation purposes:

let me lead with the claim that the 80's produced almost all of my very favorite music. I have a theory that for most people the music you heard between roughly age 13-15 and age 25-30 is the "best" music for whatever reason. Technically for me the "80's" probably actually started about '76 or '77 in terms of that magic period for music in my own mental "hall of fame"

Also, I have to submit that there's two groups here - there's great SONGS (very many of which are "one hit wonders" and great albums

In the former case, I'd list things like...

Life in a Northern Town
Come on Eileen
One Night in Bangkok
Our House
True
Heart and Soul
Key Largo
Missing You
At This Moment
Keep Your Hands to Yourself
99 Luftballons
In a Big Country (didn't notice at the time it was an anti-suicide song)


And that's just off the top of my head

in the latter category, you can start with a few that were actually in '78 or '79 but which supplied a soundtrack for life into the 80's

Seger's Against the Wind, Nine Tonight, and The Distance
Xanadu and ELO's Time (which I still listen to a lot)
The Alan Parson Project: Turn of a Friendly Card
Journey: Escape
Styx: Paradise Theater
REO Speedwagon: High Infidelity
AC/Dc: Back in Black
Foreigner 4
Billy Joel: Glass Houses
Stevie Nicks: Bella Donna
Tom Petty: Damn the Torpedoes, Hard Promises, and Full Moon Fever
U2: War, The Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, Rattle and Hum
Prince: Purple Rain and 1999
Def Leopard: Pyromania
Michael Jackson: Thriller
Queen: The Game
Fleetwood Mac: Tusk
John Cafferty: Eddie and the Cruisers
Supertramp: Breakfast in America
John Cougar: Scarecrow (this one has worn more thin with me though, too much radio on a few of these songs)


Finally, songs that were by established artists that stick with me (that didn't come from one of those albums)...

Sledgehammer
Dirty Laundry
She Blinded Me With Science
Will the Wolf Survive
Sweet Child o' Mine (which I didn't appreciate so much at the time as i do now)
Brass in Pocket and Back on the Chain Gang
Don't Stand so Close To Me (honestly didn't much like The Police but this is the exception)
Once in a Lifetime (which I hated, along with Burning Down the House, at the time)
In the Air Tonight (partly because of it's use in Risky Business)
The Power of Love (Hughy Lewis)
China Girl and Let's Dance
When The Going Gets Tough and Get Into My Car (Billy Ocean)
Don't You Forget about Me
Shout, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Head over Heels (could have listed this album but I don't know the rest of it)
What a Fool Believes
We Don't Talk Anymore
Cool Change
Centerfold and Freeze Frame
Allentown

And it's certain folks will name dozens of more I should have mentioned; honestly this just scratches the surface

ETA: I overlooked a lot of soul and R&B stuff I liked a lot also...

On My Own (which reminds me I should have mentioned the Doobies more)
Word Up
You Dropped a Bomb On Me (cheesy as hell I know)
Always
The Night Shift
Workin' My Way Back to You, and Cupid
Shining Star
Still
The Second Time Around
How 'Bout Us and Try Again
Oh No

And again, I could go on and on here...

I hate that song with the fire of a thousand suns.

For those that missed this, check out the documentary if you can. It’s well done.

Get thai'd, you're talking to a tourist
Whose every move's among the purest
I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine

Worst song of the 80's: We Built This City

it's dreck

That one is pretty shitty, but I think we can do better, er, worse. This site ranks these three songs above We Built This City on the suckage list, and I have to agree...

Hangin' Tough - New Kids on the Block
Girl I'm Gonna Miss You - Milli Vanilli
Party All the Time - Eddie Murphy

Dear God, these were awful.

My childhood memory of that song was being dragged to furniture store after furniture store, and every motherfucking furniture store had that song as muzak.
Every one!
You'd walk in the door, and the song would just be starting!
I don't know how they did it!
So, yeah, when I hear that song, I think of being really stressfully bored, and staring unimpressed at ugly 80's couches.

It is pretty awful, but it's very, very 80s.

For a second I thought of "Think of Laura", lol.

My Sharona - The Knack (technically 1979)
Centerfold - J Geils Band
Tom Sawyer - Rush
The Heat is On - Glenn Frey
Panama - Van Halen
Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
Danger Zone - Kenny Loggins
Pour some Sugar on Me - Def Leppard

Essential.

Only for workouts.

Agree with Nova on Come on Eileen and Our House, though Madness probably deserve more rep for House of Fun.

It was so very 80s that it played at every disco I was at as a teen - Uptown Girl by Billy Joel.

Tainted Love - Soft Cell.

Don't Leave Me This Way - The Communards (even if Jimmy Somerville is a whiny little Ian Hislop lookylikey)

Eternal Flame - The Bangles

Chain Reaction - Diana Ross

Stand & Deliver and Prince Charming - Adam And The Ants

Oh, and I didn't appreciate it in the 80s because I never saw the music video until 1993 when it was on every damn night in our favourite uni bar (they had a Laserjuke) in the "Risque" section... Poison by Alice Cooper.

Manic Monday

Actually that reminded me of I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats, but that was '79.

AAAANNDDD now I'm thinking about the school shootings again. Hence my sig change. Kids don't deserve to worry about that being the lesson of the day.

approve of all three

Approve.

and We Got the Beat

and Who Can It Be Now

Yes.

for me you can run from around '73 to around '93 and get a lot of quality. after that it's a lot higher shit to quality ratio

I really neglected Queen by only mentioning one album
Besides what's already been mentioned...

One Vision
A Kind of Magic
Princes of the Universe
I Want it All