3 Forgotten Classic Rock Hits From the 80s That Will Make You Want to Time Travel

While many think of the 80s as those years with leg warmers, home video exercise tapes, and songs that sound like they were made in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, the truth of the matter is there was a lot of great classic rock music during the decade. There are a bunch of famous songs from the era like “Purple Rain” and “Welcome To The Jungle”, but there are also some lesser-known tracks from big names worth rediscovering.

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Here below, we wanted to do just that. Let’s dive into three songs from big-name bands that don’t always get the love they deserve. But when you put them on, you’re sure to look around for Doc Brown’s Delorean in the hopes of transporting yourself back to the past. Indeed, these are three forgotten classic rock hits from the 80s that will make you want to time travel.

“Making Flippy Floppy” by Talking Heads from ‘Speaking in Tongues’ (1983)

What band besides Talking Heads would ever release a song named “Making Flippy Floppy”? Nevertheless, the song seems to fit the moniker. The production on the tune is out of this world, part-hip-hop, part-rock, part-David Byrne genius invention.

Watch Byrne perform the song. You’ll get a sense of what it might be like to have been inside his brain in the 1980s. It’s colorful, herky-jerky, and sublime. This song is worth a revisit many times over.

“Janie’s Got a Gun” by Aerosmith from ‘Pump’ (1989)

When most people think of the Boston-born classic rock group Aerosmith, songs like “Crazy”, “Cryin’”, and “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” likely jump first to mind. But on the band’s 1989 LP Pump, the group released the sticky, moody track “Janie’s Got A Gun”, which is well worth revisiting. It’s not necessarily a deep cut from the band. But it’s also not in the first handful of songs you think of when it comes to the group. Still, lead vocalist Steven Tyler belts out the lyrics with passion and mystery. It’s like a pulp novel put to a beat.

“Stand” by R.E.M. from ‘Green’ (1989)

For a band that considered itself a thoughtful, cerebral group levitating above the pop culture fray, R.E.M. sure did have a lot of hit songs. In a way, it was too many to keep track of. And so their track “Stand” often gets overlooked. Fans tend to dive into tunes like “Losing My Religion” and “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” instead. But this tune is seemingly made to stick in your inner ear the more you hear it. One listen and it’s in there. Two or three, and you’ll be singing it all day as if it were the summer of 1989.

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