Sometimes songs can be predictive. Sometimes the artists who compose them can look at the world and somehow see both the present and the future. And that’s just what we wanted to dive into below. We wanted to highlight three tracks from back in the day that somehow were also like crystal balls. Indeed, these are three rock songs from the 1980s that sound more relevant now than when they were released.
“Mr. Roboto” by Styx from ‘Kilroy Was Here’ (1983)
Back in the day, music fans used to listen to concept albums. Artists and bands would create albums that read almost like operas or epic plays, with songs strung together from top to bottom in some great cohesive story. But while that doesn’t happen often these days (it’s probably not good for some silly streaming algorithm), in the 1980s, the rock band Styx created a concept album that focused on the fusion of man and machine. Sound familiar? Yes, a little too familiar actually.
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“Land Of Confusion” by Genesis from ‘Invisible Touch’ (1986)
This song is about war. Sadly, that’s a subject that seems all too relevant all the time. But in 1986, the rock band Genesis took on the subject with their single, “Land Of Confusion”. Between the horrid headlines and the conflicts abroad, the track sounds like it could have been released this week. There is even a mention of Superman in the lyrics. It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.
“Russians” by Sting from ‘The Dream Of The Blue Turtles’ (1985)
While this song was written during the Cold War, a tense several decades between the US and USSR, the mood and vibe of the track from Sting still echo loudly today. Of course, you can’t go a week these days without hearing something about Russia in the news. And Sting captured that tense feeling in this offering from his 1985 LP, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles. It just goes to show—if you want to write a song, but you’re hard up for content to explore, just open the news headlines and dive in.
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