Never Gonna Give You Up -- the commercial tenacity of '80s music

Rock 'n Roll had a huge impact on popular music, and you have to give credit to radio stations and disk jockeys who played certain types of popular music in the 1970s and 80s. And for continuing to play it.

And as for music from the 1940s, we did hear it in the background and on "Easy Listening" stations in the 1980s. I also remember television commercials for album collections of the Big Bands targeted to my parents' generation. And you also had Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald among others still singing their songs from pre-Rock 'n Roll days. Today we might have tribute bands of Fleetwood Mac or the Genesis touring. In the '80s, there were "Big Bands" playing the music of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller for people in their 50s and older.

I've been in two venues in the last 6 months where, by chance, there was live music. Both acts were all people in their 20s. Both exclusively played 80s music, one more pop oriented, the other all new wave. Also went to a wedding with a duo singing and playing instruments at the cocktail reception and it was all 70s-80s soft rock. Also 2 young people, and in all three cases it was young people getting into it the most on the dancefloor, etc. I thought the same thing, "we didn't listen to 40s music in the 80s." Still, I love it. It was great music.

BonniePrinceCharlie (R1), interesting that you recall hearing '40s music in the '80s. I heard music everywhere back then as a teen, and it was never ever the '40s. The local cheap laundromat in my college years played late '50s / early '60s and that genre was called "the oldies." The Big Chill soundtrack was a hit in the mid 80s and it featured Motown-era classics, also considered "the oldies." But never did I hear songs earlier than that, post-WWII songs, in a public/commercial setting. Not the way we all hear the omnipresent '80s music today.

It’s the new old people music.

They play it everywhere for old people now.

I once read that one Houston song, can't remember which one, repeated the "hook" something like 37 times in 4 minutes. The "ear-worm" aspect of 80s pop is what keeps it persistent in culture.

I remember 60s Motown being hugely popular for a while after the 25th Anniversary special aired in 1983. The 50s nostalgia from the 70s also lingered a while. 40s music? No. Yes, there were still one or two big band radio stations on the dial somewhere, for the old folks. You'd see the commercials on TV for compilation albums and cassettes - again, for the old folks. But it wasn't ubiquitous the way Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, The Police and Billy Joel still are today. And Prince, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Bon Jovi, ....

The 80s saw the birth and/or rise to prominence of several influential genres, the two biggest being hip hop and new wave/alternative. Both originated in the 70s but really exploded in the 80s. Hip hop of course has never gone away, and alternative morphs into new sounds constantly, but new wave specifically has regular revivals, and acts popping up each decade like the Killers 20 years ago or Chappell Roan today bringing it back for new audiences. Just a hugely dynamic and influential decade for music. Contrast with the 90s - grunge, anyone?

You can tell how old the ad execs are by the music they put in to their commercials. The 80's did have a subgenre ode to the '50's in music and fashion-Stray Cats, Sha Na Na, X, Eddie and the Rockets, the Rockats, the Cramps, and Buster Pointdexter. The 90's had the 40's resurgence with big bands and Swing dancing- Big Bad Voodo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Royal Crown Revue, and Brian Seltzer Orchestra.

R8, I once won a $10 bet that Tracey Ullman's hit song "They Don't Know" was not, in fact, a 50s or early 60s remake. It was so faithtful to that sound and song structure, but Kirsty MacColl wrote it and released it on her 1979 album. There were a few other '80s hits like that. Morning Train by Sheena Easton was another one... very retro.

Doo wop was influential on 80s music. Billy Joel did a whole album (An Innocent Man), and Madonna and Phil Collins, among others, also played around with that sound.

Pop music became more ingrained in the popular culture by the 80s due to more accessibility and technology. In the 40s, popular music was more adult oriented and something that was typically heard live in a dance club, on a radio program or in a movie. In the mid-50s, pop music started becoming more youth oriented and 24/7 music-only radio stations started becoming more common. Also, TV gave music artists more and wider exposure. In the 60s, youth culture exploded and the music industry cashed in on that. At the same time, technology made music more portable. No longer did you have to sit in front of the family radio or put on a record to hear as song you liked. You could listen to it in your car or on a pocket transistor radio. Pop music was becoming more and more ubiquitous in daily life. So the music from 50s and the 60s had more opportunity to linger and stick around in the public sphere. By the 80s, music had become a driving force in the common experience. MTV, Walkmans and boom boxes helped keep the music of the day (and the more recent 60s and 70s stuff) in the forefront of everyday life. The life cycle of pop music became longer and didn't disappear from the culture as quickly as earlier eras did.

They can play it everywhere because the cool kids all listen to their music on a Sony Walkman these days. Get with the times people!

80s music manages to be fun but has emotion to it.

A lot of music today is so sterile and cold sounding. Then there’s the obvious auto tune and at this point probably AI. It leaves you empty.

At the end of the day, a lot of people want real singers singing real songs.

I agree R13.

You even heard that "rap" so called music they have now? It's just talking! Anyone could do that.

A good song will endure.

We hear 70s and 80s music everywhere because the baby boomers want to hear it and control so much of what we hear. Plus, they raised their kids on Fleetwood Mac, etc., and their kids decide that music sounds better and now they're playing it too.

I'm 62 years old and I'm sick of 80s music and never want to hear it again. There's a whole thread on here about "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics and I think, yep, that's another song I never want to hear again. I swear I've heard it thousands of times.

[quote]And as for music from the 1940s, we did hear it in the background and on "Easy Listening" stations in the 1980s.

This is nonsense. I didn't grow up hearing Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney in the supermarket. I had to find out about those people later on. It's just bizarre to me to go in the supermarket and consistently hear music from 50 years ago because that wasn't the case when I was growing up.

R3, it may have been due to that fact that my Dad was a big Glenn Miller fan and my Mom was a fan of Frank Sinatra. So, I was attuned to picking it up.

In New York, there was a great program on Saturday nights (I think) broadcast by Fordham University's radio station. The host (passed away now) rebroadcast programs from the 1920s and 1930s. It's archived and great to listen to...

We had Muzak in supermarkets until the 90s, so while it wasn't necessarily old people music, a zippy, string based instrumental cover of a semi recent pop hit was never gonna tickle the youngs either. (Flashing on the now-shuttered Treasure Island on Broadway in Boystown and a muzak cover of When The Rain Begins To Fall by Jermaine Jackson & Pia Zadora that lead into an equally obtuse muzak version of a Taylor Dayne song. And they say you don't remember weird shit when you're stoned.)

Also, we have been coasting on fumes creatively since at least 1990...

Worth factoring in is the sea change in sound that was rock and roll, which exploded onto the scene in the mid-1950s. Growing up in the 80s, I remember hearing a ton of music from circa 1955 onward, which seemed old but relatable, but not much music from before then, which sounded downright foreign to my teen ears.

R20 - I agree - I would even say early 1950s music is relatively unknown to my ears.

But the explosion of rock n roll is also tied to the explosion of television and having visual recordings of artists singing hit songs allowed them to stay in the mainstream consciousness. That's why I think nobody knows hit songs from early 50s, 40s or 30s.

And you have to remember - it also coincided with teen culture which was a new thing that exploded in the 60s with baby boom.

I would love to see another creative boom in music like we did in the 80s - but I just don't think it's possible. The 80s had so many new sounds and experimentation.

It feels like we've really tapped out on creativity - fashion, music, film - just retreads of previous stuff. And I know AI is coming but I just can't get excited about a machine's creativity like I can with human creativity.

[quote] That's why I think nobody knows hit songs from early 50s, 40s or 30s.

I was born in 1963, and people of my generation heard that music growing up at least from one source...television. Before the advent of cable tv, we had the three networks, then the local channels and PBS. The networks and those local channels all played movies from the 30s and 40s with the music of those eras. I'll name a few...

"Happy Days are here again:" Before "YMCA" and its new association with that imbecile, there was this song and its connection to FDR

"Chattanooga Choo Choo"

Frank Sinatra songs with Tommy Dorsey and his band

[quote]We hear 70s and 80s music everywhere because the baby boomers want to hear it and control so much of what we hear.

Baby boomers are in their 80s now. I don't really think they control much of anything today. People are talking about young people listening to this music, not elderly people.

80s music, which this thread is about, was marketed to Gen Xers who were teens and young adults in that decade. Baby Boomers, born 1945-63, grew up listening to 60s and 70s. Pop music and it's offshoots like rock and hip hop is marketed to teenagers who are recognized as the real taste-makers for that genre of music. In the 80s baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s, the oldest turned 40 when Michael Jackson and Madonna dominated the airwaves. Boomers at that time largely listened to Adult Contemporary and classic rock and pop from the era they grew up in.

There was a brief 1940's mini-revival in the 1970's with Bette Midler and the Pointer Sisters. Also the women of Chic, though their music was not from the 1940's, often wore suits and hats reminiscent of that time,

R24 - ah yes - I remember hearing Chic's remake of Bing Crosby's hit "Le Freak" in the late 70s. Same energy and faithful to the original.

Dressing in period costumes to sing contemporary music is not the same thing as singing in the style popular from that period. Bette Midler was genuinely reviving and reinterpreting some of that music, but the Pointer Sisters and Chic were just playing dress up. In the early 80s Adam Ant dressed like a pirate but he wasn't singing pirate music.

One of the big differences to me is that in the 80s, pretty much all genres were represented in “top 40” music. There was a much broader reach and variety of what were the big hit songs. A hit song reached probably 75% of the population and could have been from any genre. And everyone still remembers them today because they were so universal.

Today’s music is so fractured into different subgenres and people only listen to their specific niche. You don’t get the broad hits like you used to. I can’t name a single Taylor Swift or Beyoncé song from the last decade for example. Not one.

In the 80s, there were dozens of new hit songs every few months. Today, there seem to be about 15 hit songs per year. The current top ten on Billboard features several songs that have been there for more than a year!

It’s no wonder young people are looking to the past for new music - and with everything ever recorded at their fingertips, it’s not hard to find.

R28 - I thought you were bullshitting - WTF is this crap? Lose Control has been on the charts for 98 weeks and is still in the top 10?

#9 is Die with a Smile - a song that was out 8 months ago?

Who the fuck is Alex Warren and the Ordinary song? Never heard of it.

I knew it had become bad - but holy fuck. This is a shitshow. But the whole Billboard website is a site - way too many charts and repetitive crap!

That’s the thing. You look at the top 10 a couple weeks ago and it was literally more than half Morgan Wallen, songs I hear because I listen to country, and then I have never heard of any of the other songs (Shaboozey aside). Then the people who like those songs have likely never heard any of those Morgan Wallen songs.

In the 80s practically everyone knew every top 10 hit in the hot 100.

Exactly, R30. There was a pop-culture cohesion to the Hot 100 back then, with actual "Top 40" radio stations that would play it all -- but it's become increasingly fragmented ever since the 2000s.

A lot of the longevity is said to be due to streaming, streaming, streaming... some young people have low curiosity and are just jukebox-requesting their favorite song 100x.

There have been very few crossover Country songs since the 80s. Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Juice Newton all had big hits on the Top 40 charts in the early 80s. Probably more I'm forgetting.

R32, yep. I remember when Ronnie Milsap, Alabama, and especially Kenny Rogers had multiple crossover hits, country and pop Top 40. '80-'82 were the peak years for that.

R8 Don’t forget Mambo No 5!

R31 TikTok is definitely changing that. TikTok is the new radio.

My younger sister and my Gen Z cousins didn’t know shit before the 2000s.

Now they’re playing me old songs.

I mean Connie Francis has a hit song right now in 2025 because of Gen Z and TikTok.

Meanwhile... Asian pop (K-pop, J-pop, etc), all of it, has truly become a genre where if it isn't already 100% AI, it might as well be.

There has been more pop crossing into country lately, but there have been country hits on top 40 radio too. Morgan Wallen has had a couple big crossover hits, also see Walker Hayes and of course Shaboozey.

And I second the AI observation. JFC so many of these songs sound sooooo AI generated and the same. Auto tune sounds like an opera compared to this shit. It’s just a giant meh-fest.

Morgan Wallen? That's the best we can do?

Wow - pop music really is dead.

r32, I was a teen in the 80s, and I had no clue Juice Newton was a former country singer.

There was some country crossovers in the 90s as well: Shania Twain, Faith Hill, LeeAnn Rimes, Tim McGraw. Sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s Billboard started including country songs in the Hot 100 chart along with pop and rock songs, I think.

R38 Sorry, huge Morgan Wallen fan here. Love the guy.

R41 - racial slurs, drunken arrests, MAGA - what's not to love, am I right?

Jesus weeps.

R35 Great for Connie! Billions of views! She deserves it, although she does not need it!