The musical decade of the 1980s came in with skinny ties and went out with ripped acid-washed jeans. The ’80s brought us MTV, leg warmers, big hair, compact discs, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The musical trends included new wave, alternative, country, R&B, pop, pop metal (or “hair metal), rock, and rap. We’ve selected one song to represent each of those categories so we can properly celebrate the spirit of the ’80s.
Videos by American Songwriter
1. “Whip It” by Devo (1980)
In the music video, the quirky song was accompanied by images of a woman getting her clothes removed by a bullwhip. Devo co-founder Jerry Casale told Rolling Stone in 2018, “The reason why we made the video that way was because every DJ we encountered was like, ‘Hey guys, whip it.’ And they’d make the jerkoff move. And at first, I was trying to tell them, ‘No, no. It was inspired by Thomas Pynchon.’ And their faces would drop and lose interest immediately, bummed out. So we thought, ‘Let’s do exactly what they profanely think this was all about.”
2. “I Melt With You” by Modern English (1982)
Singer/songwriter Robbie Grey recounts how this one came about in Mad World by Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein, “I don’t think many people realized it was about a couple making love as the bomb dropped. As they make love, they become one and melt together. I remember writing the lyrics in my room in Shepherd’s Bush in London in about two minutes. I was stoned. I remember kneeling down on the floor and writing on a scrap of paper these first lines: Moving forward using all my breath—so easy to say but so much content, and then: Making love to you was never second best
They coupled together really nicely. And then, the bridge: The future’s open wide, you’ve got a lot of negative stuff with the idea of the nuclear bomb.”
3. “Mountain Music” by Alabama (1982)
Randy Owens remembers the song in his 2009 memoir, Born Country, “It took me three years to write it, and I wanted to get my own experience of growing up in the mountains in the lyrics. This came together in such very specific lines. Take, for instance, the stanza that begins swim across the river, just to prove that I’m a man
When I was a kid, if you could make it across the Little River and back in one fell swoop, well, that was a big deal. It doesn’t look that wide today, but back then, it seemed like an Olympian challenge.”
4. “1999” by Prince (1982)
Another song, fearing the end of the world. Prince explained to Larry King in 1999, “We were sitting around watching a special about 1999, and a lot of people were talking about the year and speculating on what was going to happen. And I just found it real ironic how everyone that was around me, whom I thought to be very optimistic people, were dreading those days, and I always knew I’d be cool. I never felt like this was going to be a rough time for me. I knew that there were going to be rough times for the Earth because of this system is based in entropy, and it’s pretty much headed in a certain direction. So I just wanted to write something that gave hope.”
5. “Beat It” by Michael Jackson (1983)
Producer Quincy Jones encouraged the “King of Pop” to write a song like the 1979 hit “My Sharona” by The Knack. The recording included Steve Lukather and Jeff and Steve Porcaro of Toto as well as the famous guitar solo by Edward Van Halen.
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Jackson’s brother Jermaine wrote about the inspiration for the lyrics and music video in 2011’s You Are Not Alone: Michael. “From our front window, we witnessed about three bad rumbles between rival gangs.”
6. “Round and Round” by Ratt (1984)
Guitarist Warren DiMartini talked of making the music video in the book MTV Ruled the World – The Early Years of Music Video, “Milton Berle was the first icon I think any of us had ever met… He was really the first guy to ever have a variety show on TV, and he was a cool person to listen to because he made his career the same way that he knew that we were going to, which is to get on the road. Because prior to TV, it was just Vaudeville. He was telling us stories and talking about those days when him and other comedians of the period would get on a train, travel all night, you know, middle America. Raining, cold, get into a hotel, get up in the morning, set it all up, do the show, and then move on.”
7. “Jump” by Van Halen (1984)
Guitarist Eddie Van Halen played the synthesizer on this one. He does play the guitar solo as well, but the keyboard part was a departure from the usual Van Halen sound. It led to one of the most successful songs of their career. A news story about a potential suicide jumper inspired singer David Lee Roth. Instead of writing a song about suicide, Roth took it in the direction of jumping into life or love.
8. “My Adidas” by Run-D.M.C. (1986)
Before their mainstream breakthrough on “Walk This Way” with Aerosmith, Run-D.M.C. made waves with Raising Hell, produced by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin. Darryl McDaniels told MTV, “It was bigger than just talking about how many pairs of sneakers we had. It came from the place of people would look at the b-boys, the b-girls, and go, ‘Oh, those are the people that cause all the problems in here.’ And, ‘Those young people are nothing but troublemakers. and those young people don’t know nothing.’ So they was judging the book by its cover, without seeing what was inside of it.”
Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for Bud Light
