The 1980s were a critical time for rock music, and the decade saw two of the most pivotal albums of all time come along at just the point that the genre needed them. I started high school in 1980, just as we were awakening from that long national nightmare called disco. The dreaded singer-songwriter era of John Denver, Seals and Crofts, and Bread had come to an end. And rock and roll, having been kept alive by acts like Springsteen, the Sex Pistols, and Van Halen, was pissed off and ready for a comeback.
Early in the decade, punk had finally gone mainstream, at which point it really ceased to be punk anymore. Some former punks morphed into New Wave and created a new British Invasion. Bands as diverse as Roxy Music, Bananarama and the Clash all shared airtime. It was watered down by the time it reached us, of course: America knew the Clash for "Should I Stay or Should I Go", not for "London Calling."
One of the two pivotal albums mentioned above, "London Calling" came out in December 1979, and gave notice that the 80s would be different. It was a groundbreaking disc, and in my opinion is one of the Top ten albums ever. But even if we in the States didn't get the really good British punk firsthand, the various groups' newer stuff helped us discover the old, the way kids in the 50's first learned about R&B from Elvis and the Everly Brothers.
The bands that I remember most from the eighties didn't all start then, but reached a certain height during that decade before Rap took over everything. U2 burst on the scene, and continue to break new ground today. Van Halen changed lead singers and yet continued to give us great music. Judas Priest showed that a metal band could survive through the seventies. The Cult (no, not Blue Oyster Cult) gave us a sound we'd never heard before. The Smiths were (and are) in a class of their own. And Springsteen finally got the recognition he deserved.
But toward the end of the decade things were looking dicey again. For reasons still unknown to reasonable people, country music began to get much more airtime and country acts began to crossover to pop radio stations. Much of this can be blamed on Garth Brooks, but it was alarming regardless of the reason. Punk was gone, metal had fragmented into dozens of subgenres and the old rockers were, well, old.
Just in the nick of time, the rock gods sent us the second pivotal album of the decade (and it also belongs in everyone's Top Ten of all time). In 1987 Guns N' Roses released "Appetite for Destruction," singlehandedly proving that not was rock not dead, it was still able to go places we never dreamed of before. "Appetite for Destruction" took all the anger, pain, alienation, and hope that rock had always stood for, turned it up to a volume that made your ears bleed, and told Garth and his country cronies to take their hillbilly selves back to Appalachia.
So although the 80's are remembered mostly for MTV, "Thriller," and "Purple Rain," the decade was much more than that. During the 80s we not only got "Appetite for Destruction" and "London Calling," we also got Springsteen's "Nebraska," U2's "Joshua Tree," and a whole bunch of catchy tunes from the Go-Go's and the Bangles that no guys would admit they actually listened to. In the end, the 80s gave us something few decades have: enough good rock to satisfy almost everyone.