Unit 11 -- Music of the 1980s

Unit 11 – Music of the 1980s

 The 1980s brought about new styles of pop music as well as the rise of rap as a popular genre. Digital and other technologies continued to influence music. Music videos, broadcast on MTV, were important promotional tools and artistic statements that became linked to popular songs. As the music industry continued to consolidate in the hands of an ever smaller number of trans-national corporations, it became more diffucult for musicians to break into national success at the mid-level. As a result a small number of superstars of pop music dominated the mainstream. An independent, underground emerged to counter this, and would emerge in the 1990s as alternative rock.

 

Country Music continued to grow in popularity, becoming the best-selling music genre in the U.S., and continuing to incorporate pop and rock influences. Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, Clint Black, and Reba McEntire are among the big names in country music in the 1980s.

Many singers who had started in soul and funk in the 1970s turned to a “post-soul” adult contemporary format in the 1980s. Songs like Lionel Richie's "Endless Love" exemplify this tren.

1980s Pop

 



Pop music in the 1980s forged new styles out of existing genres (including hard rock, heavy metal, new wave, and rap) while a handful of megasuccessful pop stars dominated the commercial music industry. Synth-pop descripes the sound of pop songs exploited synthesizer sounds as an alternative to the guitar as the basis of much rock music.

 

Here are a handful of the pop stars who forged new styles and trends in dance, music and fashion by pulling together a variety of influences.

 

·         Michael Jackson's album Thriller (1982) crossed genres, commercially and artistically innovated with music videos, and broke racial barriers. It was his second collaboration with his producer Quincy Jones that reinvented Jackson as a modern pop star after his earlier Motown-style work with the Jackson Five and his early solo work. Thriller produced a number of hits, one of which was the song "Beat It." The "Beat It" video exemplifies both Jackson's style and a number of trends of the 1980s. The video is well-conceived, telling a story with artistry and integrity in the process of promoting the song. Jackson's videos of this era are described as short films. The guitar solo was provided by Eddie Van Halen, the heavy metal guitarist, in an example of the fusion of genres out of which Jackson and others created a new pop sound in the 1980s. In the 1970s, white rock and black soul/R&B had been considered rather distinct genres, so this collaboration was more striking at the time than it seems today. "Beat It" was actually a rather important instance of crossing genres that had been largely racially segregated. Jackson also became the first black artist to have his work on MTV (due to its "rock-only" format, MTV long resisted playing music by black artists because it was not considered rock). The mass choreography at the end, when Jackson convinces the street gangs to dance instead of fight is exemplary of his work. Jackson's styles and dance moves were also influential in popular music and culture. He became known as the King of Pop.

Michael Jackson, Beat It

 

Along with Michael Jacskson, Madonna and Prince, represented pop stars who were canny at creating their public images and reinvinting them over time in order to stay fresh, start new trends, and keep people guessing. Madonna was well known for proviking controversy, and like to play with cultural perceptions about women, often confounding people's assumptions and expectations about what gender and sexuality. Her early work shows influence of synth-pop ("Like a Virgin") while later in the 1980s she drew on a variety of sources including gospel ("Like a Prayer") and gay subculture ("Vogue").

 

Madonna, Like a Virgin

 

 

Bruce Springsteen expressed working class concerns with roots-based rock.

 

 

 

Paul Simon’s Graceland engaged with world music as well as American roots in collaboration with the African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

 

 

Rap

 



Rap became a popular and commercially successful enterprise while continuing to be the musical expression of urban hip hop culture, which also includes graffiti and breakdancing. Rap began as music played by DJs at block parties and clubs in Black and Puerto Rican communities the Bronx of New York City in the 1970s. They used many of the same techniques as disco DJs, and much of the music they played was disco and funk. Rap DJs became adept at isolating the dance breaks in popular songs and using turntables and other technology to loop those sections of the song, so that dancing at party could go on continuously. MC's spoke, rhythmic patter over the music to help keep things going. The rhymed, rhythmic raps that MC's developed had their precedents in a number of sources, including a similar practice in reggae, African-American poetic traditions (in which one puts down and insults an opponent in verse), the spoken vocals of James Brown, and even the preaching styles of black church services. Like funk, rap is reminiscent of West African music in the way it lays down a percussive beat as its foundation and then layer a vocal on top.

In the 1980s, Run-D.M.C. brought rap to the popular mainstream, where it became popular with white youth. Public Enemy continued a tradition of social consciousness in rap with songs like "Fight the Power," which demands social justice during a time in which government policies and demographic trends had left urban black communities and their youth impoverished, underserved and lacking in opportunities. Rap, graffiti and other aspects of hip hop culture, provided a means to speak truth to power using the only things at hand--the sounds images in one's environment. Sounds sampled from existing recordings could be combined in new ways to make a new statement or commentary. "Fight the Power" is an especially heavily-sampled rap song.

Public Enemy, Fight the Power