I've always loved the 80s. I was born in 1987, so unfortunately, I wasn't around for much of it. My very earliest memories are probably from late 1989. However, as far back as I can remember, I wanted to get into all the cool stuff I missed.
Sunglasses at Night was playing in the room when I was born. As a toddler, I played with secondhand toys like 80s GI Joes, Transformers, Thundercats, Cabbage Patch Kids, and the old My Little Ponies. I'd get excited when ads for Hits of the 80s CD collections came on TV, which was the only time I got to see Cyndi Lauper, whose music my mom considered to be "awful disco".
My dad used to say I should have been born twenty years earlier. I got into his record collection from an early age, and was listening to stuff like Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and Peter Gabriel's So while my classmates listened to Limp Bizkit and Korn. In high school, I started wearing nothing but acid washed jeans, fluorescent windbreakers, and pastel blazers. I'm still heavy on the windbreakers, though not so much the blazers.
Anyhow, as a lover of said decade's pop culture, I thought it would be fun to make a list of figures who embody different aspects of the era. I decided to try and find eight 80s icons who, taken together, could form some sort of Voltron or pantheon or useless road map to nowhere. It is of course an extremely subjective and biased list (what, no Molly Ringwald, no Whitney Houston!?), but one I've put some thought into. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know who would be on your list in the comments, if you like.
Here goes:
David Byrne
David Byrne was a student of cybernetics, so it's no wonder his work seemed to plug into and unearth the texts of unconscious rituals being played out in the age of microwaves, personal computers and cable TV. Though his band Talking Heads were also important icons of the 70s, the height of their career came with albums like 1980's Remain in Light and 1983's Speaking in Tongues, and Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense is easily the most iconic concert film of the 1980s.
Set against Talking Heads' scorching prog-funk grooves, Byrne's lyricism at once celebrated and satirized the spirit of a bold and bawdy era of technological transformation and economic optimism. Byrne often cast himself in the role of naive observer, looking at the modern world with both childlike wonder and confusion. Songs like Girlfriend is Better, Slippery People, Swamp, and Burning Down the House pulse with the wildness and bombast of the go-go 80s while casting a critical eye over its unrestrained hubris and the simplistic, shiny folly of the age. Tracks such as Born Under Punches and The Listening Wind teem with the alienation and violence of corporatist globalization, while Once In A Lifetime finds the sublime spiritual undercurrents lurking below the surface in a world of hollowed-out symbols and crass desire.
Outside of Talking Heads, Byrne also spent the 80s collaborating with artists like Brian Eno and Twyla Tharp. Who could forget My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a record created using revolutionary sampling techniques which went on to influence everyone from hip-hop DJs to experimental rockers? Therein, Eno and Byrne take the listener on a disorienting and electrifying descent into a world of hidden, otherworldly power, modern day fanaticism, and disjointed AM radio zealotry.
Perhaps the most on-the-nose look at the decade Byrne ever took was in his 1986 film True Stories, which starred actors such as John Goodman singing songs written by Talking Heads. At once a warmhearted and genuine celebration of American life in the 80s and a send-up of it, the film is set in a smallish Texas town which is home to a computer manufacturing plant. Songs such as Love For Sale, Papa Legba, and Wild, Wild Life buzz with affluence and examine the spiritual nature of success, while Puzzlin' Evidence wonders "who's been running the country since World War 2?"
If anyone was able to encapsulate or uncover the highest yearnings of Western pop culture in the 1980s, it was probably David Byrne. The man has an uncanny ability to pluck the transcendent out of cold modernity and find the simple desires lurking beneath the strange sacraments of what's referred to as "everyday life". "Home is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there."
Ronald Reagan
President for most of the 1980s, this Hollywood star turned statesman embodied the American dream, 80s style. Like Coolidge, he could be said to represent "the genius of the average", winning support not with grand promises but by empathizing with the practical struggles of the everyman. He spoke against cronyism and bureaucracy, and in favor of free markets and limited government, giving voice to the desires of the middle class and the entrepreneur. He talked of the evils of government intrusion and punitive taxation often and eloquently.
Sadly, his administration ended up growing the federal government in many areas and helped usher in the corporatist/ globalist 'free trade' era which would come fully into bloom under Clinton . Military spending soared amid an era of Glasnost, and the failed 'War on Drugs' was expanded even as the CIA flew plane loads of cocaine into the U.S..
However, for all the disappointments of the Reagan years, they were also a time of tax cuts, which saw much shedding of federal bureaucracy and over-regulation. Greater economic freedom and smaller tax burdens gave a booming economy more room to thrive. Many now look back on those years wistfully. The popularity of Reagan's small government message was a sign of the times, and he will go down in history as one of the great figures of the American Right and one of the most iconic American presidents.
Kate Bush
Where Byrne's work explored the murky subconscious of 80s optimism, Kate Bush's work dove into its brazen, fiery soul. Though the synthesizers and arrangements on many of her hits captured the musical zeitgeist of their day, Bush's strange, rousing anthems often seemed to come from another time, drawing on the archetypal struggles and quests being played out in modernity; excavating the spirit of the age. She was only 19 when she burst onto the scene in 1978 with Wuthering Heights (the first UK #1 hit to be written and performed by a woman), and by the time the 80s dawned she was a full blown star. 1980's Never For Ever and 1985's Hounds of Love will be remembered as two of the greatest and most substantive pop albums of the decade.
ALF
Gordon "ALF" Shumway escaped nuclear destruction on the planet Melmac to become one of Earth's biggest television icons. People all around the world welcomed ALF into their living rooms. His surreal antics and off-the-wall oneliners blended high art and sharp writing with the broad and brash sensibilities of 80s comedy.
ALF combined the personality of the very best kind of game show host with the wit of a more family-friendly Buddy Hackett and the appetite of John Candy. His pants-free take on 80s fashion was legendary.
"If you're looking for the pimentos, Willie, they're on the roof".
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5efzy3
Cyndi Lauper
Cyndi Lauper's big voice and big personality were a perfect fit for a big decade, and her fashion statements are among some of the most iconic of a generation. Though she was 30 years old when her breakout album She's So Unusual catapulted her to fame, she had the attitude and style of a saucy teenage ragamuffin. Hits like Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and She Bop were fun girl power anthems for the 80s, while her cover of Money Changes Everything provided an exhilarating take on the "greed is good" philosophy of the day. Songs like All Through The Night hinted at a more soulful side which would come to fruition on 1986's True Colors.
Cyndi is one of the most recognizable voices of the 80s and also one of its most memorable entertainers, making forays into everything from WWF wrestling to television acting. What list of 80s icons would be complete without the Big Bopper?
Snarf
I debated a lot about who to put on this list, mulling over everyone from Michael J. Fox, to Mike Tyson, to Margaret Thatcher. In the end, space was tight and not everyone could make it. The Iron Lady and Iron Mike will both have to go down as honorable mentions. Alex P. Keaton would just be glad that his idol Reagan was on the list, but there's one TV star I can't leave out.
As Snarf would say, "Snarf, Snarf".
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson was arguably the single biggest pop icon of the 80s, and inarguably the most commercially successful. Thriller sold more copies worldwide than any other album of the 80s, and is now the #1 selling album of all time, with over 47 million sold.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan and I found him a bit creepy, but the man is an incredible talent. Who else can sing and dance like Michael? One has to respect the man's hard-won chops and prolific career. He truly was the King of Pop and as a fan of funky, infectious grooves and bombastic basslines, I really enjoy songs like Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' and Billie Jean.
Jackson's larger-than-life performances, over-the-top costumes, and strange physical transformations were a perfect fit for a decade where bigger and wilder were almost always better. The way he lived out his childhood fantasies as an adult was also perfectly in tune with the spirit of many aging baby boomers, folks feeling nostalgic for lost youth, with money to burn on newly popularized "mid-life crises". Of course, Michael lived out his childhood dreams on a much grander scale than the average man who grew up wanting a Mustang or a forbidden comic book. In 1988, he purchased Neverland Ranch, which became his private playground complete with rollercoaster, train, movie theatre, and exotic animals including tigers, orangutans and giraffes.
Hulk Hogan
What can one even say about the Hulkster? The man was a quintessential 80s figure, entertaining millions and leading a legion of Hulkamaniacs and Little Hulksters. After a storied career in wrestling, he added to his legend by destroying the notorious progtard clickbait rag Gawker when they published footage of him engaged in a different kind of wrestling.
Say your prayers and take your vitamins, kids! That's it for this list.
