notable 80's tracks by old farts (boomers)

hearing Somebody's Baby by Jackson Browne for the first time thanks to the classic rock poll made me think about boomer contributions to the 80's. apples and oranges all around obviously, some were just getting famous while others were already legends, but why not. what did I miss? born in the 40's and had a notable (hit or otherwise) song in the 80's is basically all of the criteria

Aerosmith - Janie's Got a Gun
Alabama - Mountain Music
Anne Murray - Could I Have This Dance
Aretha Franklin - Who's Zoomin' Who?
Ashford and Simpson - Solid
Beach Boys - Kokomo
Bee Gees - You Win Again
Billy Joel - Uptown Girl
Blondie - Call Me
Bob Dylan - Blind Willie Mctell
Bob Marley - Could You Be Loved
Bob Seger - Against the Wind
Bobby Womack - If You Think You're Lonely Now
Boz Scaggs - Jojo
Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark
Captain Beefheart - Ice Cream for Crow
Cher - If I Could Turn Back Time
David Bowie - Modern Love
Dennis Edwards featuring Siedah Garrett - Don't Look Any Further
Dio - Rainbow in the Dark
Dire Straits - Money for Nothing
Dolly Parton featuring Kenny Rogers - Islands in the Stream
Don Henley - Boys of Summer
Donald Fagen - I.G.Y.
Donna Summer - She Works Hard for the Money
Earth, Wind & Fire - Let's Groove
Elton John - I'm Still Standing
Eric Clapton - Bad Love
George Benson - Give Me the Night
George Clinton - Atomic Dog
George Harrison - Got My Mind Set on You
Glenn Frey - The Heat Is On
Grace Jones - Slave to the Rhythm
Grateful Dead - Touch of Grey
Grover Washington, Jr. - Just the Two of Us
Jackson Browne - Somebody's Baby
Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes - Up Where We Belong
John Fogerty - The Old Man Down The Road
John Lennon - (Just Like) Starting Over
Journey - Don't Stop Believin'
Kenny Loggins - Footloose
Leonard Cohen - Dance Me to the End of Love
Linda Ronstadt - Hurt So Bad
Lionel Richie - All Night Long
Lou Reed - I Love You, Suzanne
Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing
Michael McDonald - I Keep Forgettin'
Motorhead - Ace of Spades
Neil Young - Rockin' in the Free World
Neville Brothers - Sister Rosa
Olivia Newton-John - Physical
Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train
Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al
Pink Floyd - Learning to Fly
Randy Newman - Dixie Flyer
Richard and Linda Thompson - Don't Renege On Our Love
Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding
Rod Stewart - Young Turks
Rolling Stones - Start Me Up
Ronnie Milsap - Smokey Mountain Rain
Roxy Music - More Than This
Smokey Robinson - Being with You
Steve Winwood - Higher Love
Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen
The Cars - Drive
The Kinks - Come Dancing
The Who - Who Are You?
Tina Turner - What's Love Got to Do with It?
Todd Rundgren - Bang the Drum All Day
Tom Petty - Free Fallin'
Van Halen - Why Can't This Be Love (Hagar)
Warren Zevon - Boom Boom Mancini
Womack and Womack - Teardrops
ZZ Top - Gimme All Your Lovin'

Bee Gees - You Win Again
The Hank Williams tune?

sadly no, it's not the same song.

replace Who Are You? with Eminence Front. wrong decade

Dylan's Blind Willie McTell may have been recorded during the 80s but it only surfaced on the Bootleg Volume 1 compilation - it wasn't a single or chart type "hit" or anything, unlike most of the other tracks in your list, imhho

yeah, some of the others weren't hits or singles but at least they were released in the 80's. still, it's probably his strongest song from this period. what should replace it? Brownsville Girl? Every Grain of Sand? Jokerman? Dark Eyes?

everyone who made music in the 70s and didn't die - whatever they did next

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXAnGn6agig

xp basically + the "notable" part. commercial or critical acclaim

and yes, peer acclaim. bob james is a good catch

Browne's "Lawyers In Love" -- one of my favorite feints towards new wave by a boomer fart -- is his fourth-highest charting single!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GtyMeEcPPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9niluBPIro

86 might have been a better cut off point

kraftwerk computer world

Which 1960s act was best in the 1980s?

The Moody Blues - The Voice or Your Wildest Dreams

^^^ LOVE "The Voice"

the who - eminence front

to me this exemplifies old-fart The Who more than who are you

bob seger - old time rock n roll

suuuuuper old-farty

Billy Joel - it's still rock n roll to me

fartorama

i love "you win again"

eric clapton - wonderful tonight

I dunno, at least on "Eminence Front" they're striking out (or trying to) for new territory, and with some success, imo.

Now THIS is old fart Who: http://youtu.be/XZXxjmJK6iA

(Pretty sure Pete doesn't even play on that one -- he was still in rehab when they started recording It's Hard, so they brought in Andy Fairweather-Low)

i like eminence front but it still sounds like dad rock to me. with elastic-waisted leather jackets.

Pete Townshend - Let My Love Open The Door

alan parsons - don't answer me

Tom Petty was born in 1950 but close enough I guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5BL4RNFr58

Robert Plant's Big Log

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZQL22xOmUM

Didn't most of Alabama's success come in the 1980s?

Oh nm, I see you're basing it solely on age.

I'd say the better Billy Joel choice is We Didn't Start the Fire.

I mean that song was tailor made for Boomers.

Herbie Hancock - Rockit

whole bunch of robert palmer, eddy grant, bryan ferry

Eminence Front rules so hard, the Lakers used to come out to it with a dope laser show

Genesis "Invisible Touch"

Just heard it at the supermarket. It's pretty annoying. I can't believe that's what we listened to as young teens.
It seems like in the 80's teens had almost no demographical weight.

waht

if anything youth culture's giving an imprimatur to Steve Winwood, Genesis, et al is its most impressive achievement.

"Owner of a Lonely Heart" to thread, obv.

if anything youth culture's giving an imprimatur to Steve Winwood, Genesis, et al is its most impressive achievement.

Was it youth culture that was doing this?

Boomers couldn't do it alone.

it was the last time boomers + youth shaped the Billboard chart.

there was a weird intersection of old farts and MTV that introduced these guys to a whole new, younger audience.

I've mentioned this on various threads, but when I first encountered some of these on MTV as an 8-year-old, I just assumed that these were new performers that suddenly got famous alongside the Madonnas and Duran Durans of the world. I had no idea that they were already superstars entering a new phase in their careers.

Me too lol. As pre-teens and tweens, we just listened to what was playing on the radio. And a lot of it seemed to be targeting a mature audience.

I loved this though:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=peter+gabriel+sledgehammer

Oops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJWJE0x7T4Q

Something like "On My Own" by Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald would never get airplay on pop radio today.

tough mix to get my head around. i know you cover it in the OP but some of these seem like pretty legit tracks by artists still very much in their prime (e.g. ozzy, stevie, lemmy, ferry)

if anything youth culture's giving an imprimatur to Steve Winwood, Genesis, et al is its most impressive achievement.

I guess I'm just not really sure what you meant by this, even if it was a joke. I would think that for "youth culture" to mean anything, it would have to refer some sort of distinct subculture that is specific to young people, not just a broad-based mainstream culture that youth also happen to be part of. And in the latter case, if young people were just participating in the same culture as an older generation (at a time when that older generation had a much larger demographic presence), I'm not really sure why that would be an impressive achievement.

It's impressive for precisely the reasons you mentioned! But the kids were listening to the old fars + Madonna + Whitney + MJ.

Like, that's who they get to sing in a movie about a summer teenage romance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUoDaCH1MJM

And Eric Carmen's "Hungry Eyes" too.

and three British musicians in their early forties created what al ship called the bald man's Thriller

xxp (rogermexico) well the legitness of the tracks is kind of the point. here we celebrate the vitality of an old fart!

there are songs on tortured artist affect way better than "bang on the drum", "influenza" and "hideaway" namely

aretha franklin - get it right

Toni Basil, born September 22, 1943 (age 70), Philadelphia, PA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9mwELXPGbA

The Whispers - Rock Steady

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPJz3syNbtE

To me it has to be not just that the old fart recorded it in the eighties but that they bent over backwards to sound up to date as well. 'Young Turks', 'Let My Love open the Door', 'Owner...Heart', these are v v OTM.

Cliff Richard - "It's So funny"

Loco in Acapulco

Roy Orbison - "You Got It"
Malcolm McLaren - "Madame Butterfly"

and three British musicians in their early forties created what al ship called the bald man's Thriller

Genesis were actually only in their mid-thirties when they made Invisible Touch, assuming that's what you're referring to. All born in the fifties - maybe they just seemed older cos they started out pretty young (they were only 20 when Trespass came out)

Steve Winwood - "Valerie"

Weird to think Phil Collins is the same age as Sting and almost 10 years younger than Andy Summers

Probably the nadir of this phenomenon, Dionne Warwick & Friends:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK6mUJZYcVU

if anything youth culture's giving an imprimatur to Steve Winwood, Genesis, et al is its most impressive achievement.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, July 6, 2014 7:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

honestly i didn't even really know that a lot of those older artists had been around...like Gabriel and Genesis I just thought of as new artists....or Steve Winwood...obv some you knew like Dylan or Paul McCartney or the Stones....but not like I was all "oh man yeah the Ike & Tina record were so great" when i heard Private Dancer as a little kid

Lots of examples in this old thread:

1981 = year of 70s dino rockers w modren/wavo comeback LPs

Orbison is not a boomer but You Got It is surely an old fart

Cliff Richard - "It's So funny"

Do you mean "We Don't Talk Anymore?" That record definitely caught my ear when I was a kid with that keyboard part. Still love it.

not forgetting the amazing backing vocal ("Sheeeeep!")

we built this city?

Phoebe Snow - "Something Real"
Dion on Lou Reed's "Dirty Blvd."
Everly Brothers on "Graceland"

To me it has to be not just that the old fart recorded it in the eighties but that they bent over backwards to sound up to date as well. 'Young Turks', 'Let My Love open the Door', 'Owner...Heart', these are v v OTM.

Cliff Richard - "It's So funny"

'Wired for Sound' seems a much better example of Cliff trying to do that particular old fart thing, but unfortunately not a US hit.

I fully endorse Sandie Shaw's great version of Frederick from 1986:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_ZjJ7Z3PgE

the old farts who went a long way to retool themselves for the modern age generally did a pretty solid job of it, in a way that's quite hard to imagine not being embarrassing to see if '80s stars were doing it now.

'90s stars doing it now would really be the equivalent of this stuff, though

2000s stars tbh

The modern rock charts were totally dominated by 90s stars (Foo Fighters, Green Day, NIN, Beck, RHCP) in the mid-00s.

the 70s equivalent of this (a 50s old fart doing a great comeback track in the mid 70s) is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbzkeTl23CI

Sedaka was pretty successful in the mid-'70s. Two solo number ones and he co-wrote "Love Will Keep Us Together."

xxxxp oh yeah i guess i forgot what decade it is now...