The 1980s Music Report

In 1981 MTV “Music Television” was introduced on cable television and revolutionized rock marketing. Just as FM radio had superseded the hit-oriented AM format, music videos, produced as mini-movie advertisements for songs, became essential to a performer's popularity. Early in the decade, the British group the Police was one of the first to combine a progressive sound with polished videos. The expense of producing videos and MTV's virtual monopoly made it difficult for experimental music to compete with the dance-pop sung by American artists like Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston, and Madonna, and the British groups Duran Duran and Depeche Mode. Nevertheless, performers such as the Irish group U2 and the American group R.E.M. emerged from their underground roots to enjoy enormous success. Now a few of the new genres of the 80’s.

In the early 1980s, the “new wave” movement, a sub genre of punk rock that began in the '70s, was generating a more sophisticated pop sound. In Britain, artists including bands such as the Clash, Squeeze, and the Police attained both critical and commercial acceptance. The Pretenders, another British band established in the late ‘70s, was led by an American-born singer and songwriter, Chrissie Hynde. In the United States, the Los Angeles-based band X navigated the transition from punk to new wave, and the New York-based group Talking Heads with a big assist from MTV, succeeded in fusing art rock with funk and African rhythms. Which leads me to my next new 80’s genre.

In 1979, the album Rapper's Delight by the American group the Sugar Hill Gang moved rap music (a rhyming, rapidly spoken word form of black dance music)from the clubs of New York City to the national scene. Rap was assimilated into popular culture through such mainstream artists as the performer M.C. Hammer, the group Run-D.M.C, and rapper-actor