The 1980s were (and still are) one of my favorite decades of music in my life. The conservative Reagan Era ushered in a sense of rebellion in pop culture, complete with wacky haircuts, bean bags, and kids walking around with Walkmans in their pockets wearing leg warmers. Everything from Post-Punk to New Wave dominated the charts, and synthesizers were the main instrument of choice for many hit songs and artists (new and old). With the advent of MTV and the new phenomenon of music videos, big hair metal bands such as Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Poison, Twisted Sister, Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, Def Leppard, and Motley Crue faced off against new pop superstars such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Paula Abdul, New Kids on the Block, George Michael, and Prince for best music video of the week. Meanwhile new American rappers Run-DMC inspired three Jewish boys from New York City to create their own hardcore band which soon led to them becoming the first white rappers in the world: The Beastie Boys. Along with Grandmaster Flash, N.W.A, Africa Bambaata, LL Cool J, and Public Enemy, the USA was leading the way with innovative and fresh new music never before heard on Planet Earth. In terms of Alternative Rock, some absolutely fantastic American bands emerged in the 1980s including R.E.M., The Replacements, The Feelies, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies, Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, Violent Femmes, and Galaxie 500. Across the pond in the UK, Alternative Rock found its home in U2, The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Stone Roses, My Bloody Valentine, and Talk Talk. Meanwhile, down in Australia and New Zealand, popular acts included INXS, Split Enz, Men at Work, Crowded House, Midnight Oil, The Go-Betweens, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and The Church. One of my favorite genres of music, Synthpop (and/or Alternative Dance), also emerged in the early 1980s from British bands such as Depeche Mode, OMD, The Human League, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys and New Order. A few of these aforementioned artists participated in huge charity events such as Band Aid, Farm Aid, and Hands Across America, bringing awareness to many diverse causes, from AIDS, to poverty, to famine in Ethiopia.

I hadn’t fully appreciated the music of the ’80s until I was well into my mid to late 30s. When I was a child living in the 1980s, my half-uncle used to create mix tapes for me, dubbing one cassette to another. I also remember going to his house and playing video games on his Commodore 64, eating PB&J sandwiches, and trying out his various Rubik’s Cubes. I was thrilled whenever he gave me a bunch of these mix tapes. I distinctly remember hearing a lot of Prog Rock and Classic Rock from the 1970s on those tapes (such as “Hotel California” by The Eagles, “Roundabout” by Yes, “American Pie” by Don McLean, Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, “The Spirit of Radio” by Rush, “Yesterday” by The Beatles, “Ruby Tuesday” by the Stones, Alphaville’s “Forever Young”, etc.). It’s amazing to this day how much I can remember just by his quickly scrawled titles of songs on the empty back covers of the cassette jewel boxes. In many ways, those old cassette tapes I obtained in the late 1980s (maybe 1988 or 1989?) were my very first introduction to the rebellious world of Rock n’ Roll. The only other music I was listening to at the time were soundtracks and Jewish pop music (I grew up in a religious household and my parents were strict about what I could be exposed to as a child). Another vivid memory during that decade was listening to 80s synth music when I was 8 years old attending a Summer day camp at Chatham University (in 1986 or 1987). I distinctly recall a workshop where the campers voted on their favorite songs. To this day all I can remember is “Maniac” by Michael Sembello, Irene Cara’s “Flashdance…What a Feeling”, and “Glory of Love” by Peter Cetera.

It wasn’t until the mid-2010s when I was collecting a lot of vinyl records, that I made my proper discovery of many 80s Synthpop and Post-Punk bands. Throughout the 1980s there were many amazing songs from bands that would later be (unfortunately) coined “One Hit Wonders”. With the massive expansion of the music industry, corporatization of music artists, and surging technologies (such as compact discs), record companies and labels were able to make huge profits off of one song from a single artist. With MTV as a television hit machine churning out new artists constantly, music had undergone a completely different mutation in this decade. Aside from browsing through vinyl at record stores, I discovered more and more obscure 80s artists from BitTorrent collections of MP3s via various blogs on the internet. Lost Synthpop and New Wave artists such as Roman Grey, Sideway Look, Strange Advance, Paradox, Animotion, Zerra One, Nine Ways to Win, Ignatius Jones, The Hollow Men, Bazooka Joe, The Game, Romeo Void, One to One, Moral Support, and Fiction Factory, were too obscure to become one hit wonders, but I enjoyed their music anyway. Not long afterwards, I fully explored Synthpop and discovered more known acts such as: Spandau Ballet, Berlin, Erasure, Soft Cell, Japan, a-ha, Blondie, Alphaville, Thomas Dolby, John Foxx, A Flock of Seagulls, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Eurythmics, and Heaven 17. I also discovered a few Depeche Mode “clone” bands, namely Cause & Effect, Red Flag, Cetu Javu, In Trance 95, Camouflage, and Anything Box. I was hooked.

In 2016 I bought tickets to see New Order for the very first time live in concert. On an unseasonably warm March evening, I found myself standing with a friend of mine outside Radio City Music Hall in New York City about to enter the legendary venue for the very first time and witness one of the greatest bands of all time. Two hours later, I was watching Bernard Sumner and his bandmates from New Order, while I stood 20 rows back from the stage on the orchestra level. I was enthralled by the music, and though bassist Peter Hook was no longer in the band, I still loved the new album. A few days later I went onto social media and got in touch with one of the DJs who opened up for New Order that night, Justin Strauss, after being inspired by some amazing beats he spun. I asked him if he had the track list for his set, and when he offered to share the names of a few songs with me, I discovered artists Section 25 and Blancmange. Less than a year later, I joined as a keyboardist in a New Order-inspired Synthpop band named: Take Me With You (no relation to Prince). I spent thousands of dollars, bought a vintage/used Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, an Ultimate Support column keyboard stand, and an $800 Spacestation V.3 amplifier. Amongst the dozen or so shows the band played, we had the honor of opening up on stage before 80’s legends Men Without Hats and Gene Loves Jezebel. After two years, my bandmates and I released an album, including four songs I co-wrote. The New Order concert in 2016 not only changed my life, but was the catalyst behind the creation of Take Me With You. Unbeknownst to me, one of my future bandmates, Jessie Farine (on the bass guitar), was also in attendance that very same night in New York City. Inspired by the show, he returned to Pittsburgh and founded the band with two others. One year later I joined after the same friend I went to see the show with in NYC recommended I respond to Jessie’s flyer (searching for a second keyboardist) posted in a local cafe. Call it serendipity, call it coincidence, I call it the power of music.

Assembling an all-inclusive, “definitive” list of the top 50 most influential albums from the 1980s (or any decade) is no easy task, so rather than compiling a list that includes artists and bands of all kinds and genres, I’ve focused only on the albums and artists that I love. I could only hope that some of you discovering these albums for the very first time will not only enjoy listening to them, but find the music to be life-changing as well. I’ve organized the albums chronologically by year (in no particular order). Though some years contain more albums than others, it is only because the albums I picked happened to be released in that specific year. I also set a 3 album maximum limit for one single artist (so I could include albums from artists that weren’t as popular). Below this, I’ve included “5 Honorable Mentions” as well as a separate list of “Notables” that didn’t make the cut. Though I was only a child growing up during this decade, I heard the music of the era on the radio, in people’s cars, in summer camps, on school lunch breaks, and from people’s boomboxes on the streets. Today you can hear this same music via Spotify playlists that I’ve provided below. As an adult today, I often felt that if I had only one decade of music to choose from, it would be the 1980s. Next week I will focus on the 1990s, the decade of music I grew up with as a teenager. If you missed last week’s albums of the 1970s, you can check them out here.


1980

Devo
Freedom of Choice
Joy Division
Closer
Talking Heads
Remain in Light
Ultravox
Vienna
The Soft Boys
Underwater Moonlight

1981

Brian Eno and David Byrne
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Depeche Mode
Speak & Spell
Kraftwerk
Computer World
Rush
Moving Pictures
The Human League
Dare!
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Juju
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Architecture & Morality

1982

A Flock of Seagulls
A Flock of Seagulls
Yazoo
Upstairs at Eric’s
Roxy Music
Avalon

1983

Brian Eno
Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks
David Bowie
Let’s Dance
New Order
Power, Corruption & Lies
The Police
Synchronicity
R.E.M.
Murmur

1984

Bruce Springsteen
Born in the U.S.A.
Leonard Cohen
Various Positions
Alphaville
Forever Young

1985

Kate Bush
Hounds of Love
a-ha
Hunting High and Low
Tom Waits
Rain Dogs
Tears for Fears
Songs from the Big Chair
Simple Minds
Once Upon a Time
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Psychocandy

1986

Depeche Mode
Black Celebration
Talk Talk
The Colour of Spring
The Smiths
The Queen Is Dead
The Feelies
The Good Earth

1987

Depeche Mode
Music for the Masses
Midnight Oil
Diesel and Dust
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Darklands
Spacemen 3
The Perfect Prescription
U2
The Joshua Tree
Pet Shop Boys
Actually

1988

Leonard Cohen
I’m Your Man
Talk Talk
Spirit of Eden
Sonic Youth
Daydream Nation

1989

Lou Reed
New York
New Order
Technique
Tom Petty
Full Moon Fever
Pixies
Doolittle
The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses
The Cure
Disintegration
The The
Mind Bomb
Galaxie 500
On Fire

5 Honorable Mentions

Men Without Hats
Rhythm of Youth
1982
Peter Gabriel
Security
1982
Metallica
Ride the Lightning
1984
INXS
Kick
1987
Enya
Watermark
1988