The 1980s
Below are our 16 articles in the 'the 1980s' category:
Although it seemed like a mere document of the indie movement when it appeared in 1986, it’s really only in retrospect that the importance of C86 has been understood. What was ironic was the fact ...
The concept of the charity record wasn’t exactly new in the 1980s. Before that former Beatle George Harrison had released The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, and his one-time colleague Paul McCartney ...
With the rise of rave culture, dance music emerged from the underground. Since then it’s become one of the most important forces in music, not only on its own, but also influencing not only rock and ...
In the 1980s the label “indie” came to represent two things. It began as a way of describing artists who released records on the small, independent labels that began to proliferate at the end of the ...
As if in response to the austerity both in the clothing and music of the punks and post punks, the New Romantics burst floridly onto the scene at the beginning of the 1980s. Part of its joy, in ...
Just as punk reacted against the dinosaur of rock sparking post-punk, the New Romantics and Goth, so heavy metal experienced its own musical revolution. Metal was in the doldrums, as its two ...
The rave scene grew out of the warehouse parties as they exploded into popularity. Where the parties had been relatively contained, the rave scene, with dances often held outdoors in fields, was ...
MTV changed everything. It arrived in America in 1981 airing music videos 24 hours a day seven days a week (it kicked off, aptly with Buggles’ hit Video Killed the Radio Star), a continuous stream ...
The Cure might well be the most influential cult band in the history of rock. Although many see them as a Goth group (in large part because of a dour period and the black hair and makeup of leader ...
Goth stands apart from most movements being one that’s not only lasted for more than two decades, but continually grown during that time (punk remains, but has never achieved the lasting popularity ...
Electro is a term that falls in and out of fashion. In the mid Noughties it’s a kind of dance music. But in the early 1980s – in Britain at least – it referred to bands whose music which was often ...
It was a magic time the period of 1988 and 1989, when the underground dance party scene, fuelled by the drug Ecstasy, began to come together. The sense of community and the atmosphere brought to mind ...
If the Cure became the perennial high priests of Goth then the Smiths were the idols of indie. Singer Morrissey who openly talked of being celibate in a very sexual age wrote extremely literate often ...
The story of Rough Trade is one that illustrates how a small independent label can become an influential force in music. What brought it to that position was its insistence on only releasing good ...
Each decade of British rock has enjoyed its defining music television programmes. In the 1950s it was 6.5 Special, the ‘60s had Ready Steady Go and the ‘70s had enjoyed the Old Grey Whistle Test. For ...
The first question of course is what exactly is ambient music? Although to some, like musical explorer Brian Eno (who’s released a number of ambient albums and originally coined the term ambient), it ...
