by Kathleen Small

Created on: July 02, 2007

You Need to Read This If:
- You were born in 1988 and spent the 80's soiling yourself and learning the alphabet.
- You spent 1979-1989 in a Russian space station after which you had a chip implanted in your brain that puts you to sleep any time you're exposed to VH1, TBS Saturday morning movies, or radio stations that spin, "best hits of the eighties, nineties, and today."

- You spent 1979-1989 in a coma and awoke with a renewed passion for truth and beauty after squandering the first 20 years of your life pursuing material wealth and pleasures of the flesh.

The music of the 80's embodies cosmopolitan kitsch and kaleidoscopic influences, a kind of electric baroque period of excess slipping tongue to the international community while wearing a leather tuxedo. Generally we can divide 80's musicians into 3 groups: One-Hit Wonders, Today's Heavy Hitters, and Immortal Gods.

Exemplary of the 80's: the one-hit wonder that produced a single infectious riff, drank deeply the sweet nectar of success, and then faded once again into obscurity: Michael Sembello's 1983 chart-topper "Maniac," for example; today he's Warden "Fandango" Sembello, hosting tours of Alcatraz and moonlighting as himself at a trans-gender lounge in Chinatown. Remember "Owner of a Lonely Heart," by "Yes"? No? That's OK. Their parents don't either. The Pet Shop Boys? They own a pool cleaning company in Wisconsin. REO Speedwagon invested in asbestos and lost it all, poor fools. The moral of the story: buy an 80's dance hits compilation and you'll find out what sweet dreams are made of.

Many artists whose careers blossomed during the 80's continue to reign supreme with talent everlasting in today's music industry: Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Elvis Costello, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, Madonna. If you're a fan of their later work, chances are you will appreciate earlier work, too. Bonus: By listening to older albums you earn the right to say, "Yeah, I dig Clapton. Especially the EARLY stuff." That feels good at a party.

Walking the tightrope between sustained profitability and the septum-jarring thud of total failure, Queen, Journey, New Kids on the Block, Billy Idol, Blondie, Men at Work, ZZ Top, Guns'N'Roses, and Twisted Sister left the true glory days behind at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1989, but continue to hold their heads up high in the musical world. You hear them remixed in the new Timberland joint, or Chevy commercial, or in the opening credits for Vince Vaughn's latest period drama.

Thanks to websites that offer unlimited free radio with hundreds of station options, buying music isn't the gamble as it used to be. You can hear at least clips, if not full-length versions, of every song on an album before spending a cent. Patronize these sites, find a tune you dig, and then do "Fandango" Sembello a favor and actually pay the 99 cents for "Maniac." Dango needs a new tasseled hat.

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