Why Is DL So Obsessed With The 1980s?

Did you all come of age or something then? What an awful time to be a gay person.

• Polls here have shown that the average Datalounger is a gay male, about 46. But the '80's were wild. It seemed like everyone was young. The music was unique. You could interview for a job and probably get it. It seemed like the Sixties Part II; everyone was trying something different.

• Great music and fashion.

• Yes, people were adventurous in the 80s. I think everyone just lives through the internet now.

• Everyone was so beautiful then.

• Nostalgia for one's youth is such a tedious cliche.

• It's part of living, R5.

• Haven't notice that myself.

• The decade was actually pretty stupid - especially after 1985 - but at least you KNEW it was stupid. Yuppies, Don't Worry Be Happy, Live Aid, top 40 new wave crap, all dumb - but somehow harmless. At least there was an underground scene - hardcore, industrial, Batcave/Goth, indie - to offset the stupidity, which doesn't really exist anymore after the leveling effect of the internet. People who do similar stupid stuff today - walking with your face in a phone, Fakebook, watch "Girls", snark - actually think they're cool and with it. And everybody now is painfully self-conscious and constructed.

  Anonymous

• [quote] Did you all come of age or something then? certainly true for me, and i imagine a hefty portion of DL denizens. i think a person's teenage years are probably the most important in terms of establishing what makes them tick, and so everything they remember about that time-- the music, the movies, the fashion, the tv shows, the fads, major news events, their own personal experiences-- all take on major importance for the rest of their lives. it would be easier for me to describe 1986 in detail (as distinct from 85 or 87 or 88) than it would be to talk about, say, 2004 vs 2007 or 2009. the last ten years all sort of meld together.

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• [quote]At least there was an underground scene - hardcore, industrial, Batcave/Goth, indie - to offset the stupidity, which doesn't really exist anymore after the leveling effect of the internet. People who do similar stupid stuff today - walking with your face in a phone, Fakebook, watch "Girls", snark - actually think they're cool and with it. And everybody now is painfully self-conscious and constructed. So true!

• The 80's were really the last interesting time, with some spill over into the early 90's. I do take issue with the idea that people were beautiful then. They really looked pretty scary on the whole. Especially late 80's early 90's.

• "What an awful time to be a gay person." Yes, unlike you, you has yet to be anything more than a gelatinous unformed nobody whose life experience can be reduced to a single phone text.

• lol, R13!

• Don't worry, OP - that will change in the next couple of years. (See the 90's music thread for a taste of things to come.)

  Twentysomething%20%2890%27s%20And%2000%27s%2C%20Please%29

• Looking down into your acid eyes I see a thousand wild nights Rubbing your hand in the softest way Across your necklace of bites The streets are deserted, and so is your mind We're so sick of the sight of each other We've done this many times Remember way back when We were so shy and naive Remember on the day you Lost your youth upon the beach And the demon kills an angel As you came over the bed So this is the big deal The ultimate feeling They claim in those books you read The feeling of skin against skin As you feel youth slide inside And you shut your eyes in a wild relief As you watch innocence die Do you watch innocence die? Looking down into your acid eyes I see a thousand wild nights Rubbing your hand in the softest way Across your necklace of bites The streets are deserted, and so is your mind Wondering why we never can relive Our very first time Wondering why we never can relive Our very first time Wondering why we never can relive Our very first time Our very first time

• I don't think it's the people who were adults then who are so enamored of the 80s. It's the people who were little children and watched their parents live through them. Those children who are now adults are trying to make sense of that time.

• [quote]I don't think it's the people who were adults then who are so enamored of the 80s. It's the people who were little children and watched their parents live through them. Those children who are now adults are trying to make sense of that time. The majority of DL is old farts, and they're the ones who won't shut up about the 80s. The youth is into the 1990s now. It's the relics that can't let go of the 80s. They played that shit out through the 2000s. When I think of the 80s, I think AIDS, Reagan, conservatism, greed, poverty, bad fashion, and cheesy music. It was an era with no soul. It tried too hard.

• In the 2000s, the 80s celebrated were the Reagan 80s -- wallowing in ill-gotten gains, etc.

• It was just a magical decade. The songs, movies, fashion, etc. were truly original. In general, people seemed happier.

  Anonymous

• "Reagan, conservatism, greed, bad fashion, and cheesy music. It was an era with no soul." That was the conservate part and the mainstream - the alternative stuff was really good

• & here we have yet another moronic 'decade' thread. Don't feed the troll.

• The 80s were amazing! You had the introduction of MTV, which influenced everything. Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince sold hundreds of millions of records, which is impossible today with downloads. Music and videos played a much bigger part of society than they do today. Cable TV was introduced. It was the coolest thing ever. My friends and I would sit and watch the same movies over and over again on HBO and The Movie Channel. I would say that people in general were much happier and content with their lives before the advent of the internet and smartphones. Life was certainly simpler and more innocent back then.

• The Lucky, Tragic 80s. Started off so good; ended in a trainwreck holocaust. In the 80s, we had Reagan, preppies and punks. Preppies wore pastel lacoste shirts with sweaters rolled over them, flat-front khakis rolled up at the bottom, and topsiders without socks. They drove Rabbit convertibles or Alfa Romeo "Graduates." Punks wore Vivienne Westwood bondage pants which cost a fortune of course. The spiked hair had to be sharp enough to constitute a defensive weapon. They drove a skateboard, or a 1963 Slant Six Dodge Dart. In 1981 I met my blonde, California beach-boy boyfriend in a bathhouse and we locked ourselves away in his apartment for 3 years. For this reason alone, I'll always remember the early 80s as the best years of my life. Of course, it ended in tears. But there was another one willing to take me on, and we ended up having a great time till the dark clouds of AIDS rolled in and we all hunkered down in our bunkers. Favorite 80s song: "It's Too Late" by Jim Carroll.

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• It's not just the older crowd on DL. Nothing new has happened in art, or music, or anything, in a long time, and there are cycles where nostalgia becomes the new feeder for art. And let's not pretend this is new. In the 1970s the 50s were it, with "Happy Days" and "Grease" among other things. There was a revival of the greaser look, which eventually merged with or inspired punk. The 80s and 90s had a lot of 1960s inspiration. And we just lived through about ten years of so of looking back to the 1970s. Now it's the 1980s. [quote] It was just a magical decade. The songs, movies, fashion, etc. were truly original. In general, people seemed happier. Not even remotely original - and mostly over the top opulence. But everyone always seems happier in the past. That's a common feeling.

• At least she was thin, unlike the cows of today.

  Anonymous

• It's hard to decide which feature of 80s popular culture was the worst, but synth pop is a contender. Anyone else?

• Yes R28, those fucking plastic pink flamingos.

• I have no idea why there's so much nostalgia for the eighties here. I'm tired of saying it, but I'll say it once more: it was a superficial, meaningless, trivial decade, with all the emphasis on greed and materialism and not giving a damn about anybody else but yourself. And people were dying like flies from AIDS and nobody cared for a long, long time. Some fun, huh? I saw a special issue of Life magazine in a CVS recently. It commemorated that decade so beloved by Dataloungers: the eighties! On the cover were photographs of what you'd expect. Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat, grinning his idiot grin. Michael Jackson, in his relatively subdued "Billie Jean" days. Madonna, plump, plastered with makeup, ratty-haired and trying hard to look "sexy." The doomed Diana in her godawful poufy wedding dress, kissing Charles on the balcony after their fairytale wedding. The Challenger disaster. Yes, the eighties were so wonderful...NOT!

• Well, when you put it that way R30, but maybe it's the demographic. Or it's not your era. I guess my era was the 60s, which were even worse than the 80s.

• A lot of the people reminiscing about the 80s were probably 8-15 years old in the decade. And so that's why people look back fondly on the TV, movies and music. We were young enough that we didnt have to worry about politics and social issues.

• Because all the most beautiful dataloungers love the 80s!

• Minuses: Massive crime and AIDS. The start of money-grubbing and spin. GOP starting to stretch out its tentacles to devalue labor and strangle society. Pluses: Cities wide open. Do-it-yourself creativity and fun. More mom-and-pop shops, less corporate domination. Splashy, silly styles. People less self-conscious. A sense for better or worse of who was in charge -- today is a free-for-all.

• [quote] A lot of the people reminiscing about the 80s were probably 8-15 years old in the decade. I'd guess for many DL'ers it's more like in their twenties. They still remember their first caftan - how smooth the material was, how gold and dangly the earrings were. How it felt to wear pants without elastic. Oh, the memories!

• I can only speak for myself as someone who was a teenager in the mid to late 80s, but it was a far less conservative time in popular culture. One could argue that because Reagan and Thatcher were in power, the Cold War still going on, the start of the AIDS epidemic, etc, it was an interesting time to be creative. Yes, there was a lot of mainstream garbage but also a lot of left field things crossing over as well.

• [quote]It's hard to decide which feature of 80s popular culture was the worst, but synth pop is a contender. Oh fuck off, snob. Synth pop was fun party music, nothing more. It continued the traditions of Disco and New Wave and influenced all of the pop music that followed, right up until today. 80s music is still the best, much better than the hokey 60s, cheesy 70s or dreary 90s.

• [quote] 80s music is still the best, much better than the hokey 60s, cheesy 70s or dreary 90s. Let's not generalize. Each decade has great music, and music of its time that hasn't aged very well.

• Much of 80's pop music was cheesy (Michael Bolton, Peter Cetera) but the 80s had some amazing alternative music (Siouxsie, The Smiths). The only decade I'd have preferred to have come of age in rather than the 80s was the 60's....

  Molly%20Ringworm

• R39, my mom listened to Michael Bolton and Peter Cetera. They were more "easy listening" than pop. Pop music in the 80s was Michael Jackson, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Culture Club...later in the decade we had Janet Jackson, Jody Whatley, Stacy Q, etc. You can call this music "cheesy", but it had an enormous influence on everything that came later. It was fun, feel good party music.

• I was a teenager and hit 21 in the 80s plus I worked in a record store. Top 40 stations played Michael Bolton and Peter Cetera. They were not considered "easy listening" back then nor were they classified as "easy listening" in record stores. Today, however, they're considered easy listening...

• Ok, but "Top 40" is not synonymous with "pop". Anything can be top 40; country, r&b and hip hop acts often crossover into top 40. Michael Bolton and Peter Cetera were "soft rock" at best. I graduated high school in 1988 and I can assure you no one under 25 that I knew liked those acts. My peers liked youth-skewing pop acts like Madonna and Michael Jackson, unless they were into heavy metal, rap or alternative. Remember VH1 when it first started? It was supposed to be MTV for the older set, 25 and up. MTV never played Michael Bolton or Peter Cetera, but I remembef they were in heavy rotation on VH1.

• Whatever, R42. You're mistaken. I worked in a record store in the mid to late 80s and those acts were categorized under pop as in Popular Music. Even Wikipedia labels Mainstream Top 40 as Pop Songs (see link). That Peter Cetera/Amy Grant song went to number 1. MTV played the shit out of it, unfortunately... Michael Bolton was more edgy rock in the early 80s before he shifted gears. I remember they used to play that song "Fool's Game" on my local hard rock station. Then a few years passed, Bolton changed his sound and he broke through to the main stream. Other cheesy 80s pop that you will here on "easy listening" stations these days: Lionel Richie, REO Speedwagon, Mike Reno/Ann Wilson, True Colors (Cindi Lauper)...

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Top_40_%28Pop_Songs%29

  you%20say%20tomato...%20

• "80s music is still the best, much better than the hokey 60s, cheesy 70s or dreary 90s." You are a clueless idiot. I'll wager you don't know a single fucking thing about music from the sixties, seventies and eighties. I can't see any other explanation for your insane statement besides profound ignorance.