Eighties

Eighties
The music after punk is called new wave, as the new wave. However, this name quickly becomes synonymous with the also heavily melancholic, but more melodic 'nephew' of punk, articulated by Joy Division, The Cure, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees. Duran Duran was one of the bands that mixed new wave music with a sophisticated image and appropriate video clips, fashion and teen idol marketing. It is also called post-punk instead of new wave, but new wave also covers synth-pop bands such as OMD, Human League, Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys.

New wave was mainly a European movement; British, German and, to a lesser extent, French new wave did very well commercially in Europe. But Spanish and Finnish music from that time was also characterized by great New Wave scenes. In America, punk as a counterpart to hardcore developed into college rock with bands such as Pixies and R.E.M. and a more experimental variant, the noiserock, originating from the no wave movement, with bands like Sonic Youth.

The sampler and drum computer are invented and have a major impact on the development of pop music. In the early eighties, completely independent of any music genre, a street culture emerged from New York that manifests itself in electric boogie, rap and graffiti art. In the mid-eighties, typical dance music styles emerged that had a major influence in later years: acid and house. The heavy techno beat, an enormous volume and the rise of the drug ecstasy are models for the current. The DJ gets an increasingly dominant position and gets the same star status as an artist.

In the second half of the eighties, the phenomenon of nostalgia emerged, as a reaction to house and music made with the help of computers. This predilection for music from the 1960s and 1970s was expressed in the many 1960s revivals, the classic radio stations, the television programs about pop artists from the past (many of whom went back to perform) and the enormous sales results of collective CDs by these musicians. Lenny Kravitz is an artist who taps into this nostalgia.

You also see a mainstream hard rock movement emerging from America. People speak of AOR, stadium rock or mocking Poser rock, because of the show element and bombast. Bands like Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, Europe, Def Leppard and Guns' n Roses.

A crossover genre arises between rap, funk and heavy metal with bands such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus and the Dutch Urban Dance Squad.
The most important artists of the eighties and early nineties are generally considered to be Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince.

Another music style that has been around for some time and has seen its greatest growth in popularity in the eighties and nineties is the blending of Latin American music into Latin pop.

[bron: Wikipedia]