nostalgic 80s songs

Boy Meets Girl - Waiting For A Star To Fall (omg)
Big Country - In A Big Country

If basically any song on this list came on the radio I probably wouldn't change the channel, as crappy as many of them are.

These are not all 80s songs but many of them do have the nostalgia feel I was getting at - songs that can capture the memory of night's end on a boardwalk alone with a lover. songs that represent fuzzy memories that have become more of a feeling of carefree innocence, love, and happiness - rather than the actual memory itself. Like looking into a photograph of yourself as a kid coming down a waterslide - a brief memory of a time that that must have been so different than now. Staring into the photo doesn't help you remember the day at the amusement park but rather the feeling you had (or think you had) that day.

That's what I'm getting at when I label songs as nostalgic. Song that aren't as cheesy as Aladdin's 'It's a whole new world' hopefully.

Christopher Cross - Sailing
Chris Isaak - Wicked Game
Hall and Oates - Out of Touch, Method of Modern Love
Big Supreme - Don't Walk
Joe Jackson - Stepping Out
Nothing Gonna Change My Love For You

"It's not far to never-never land, no reason to pretend, and if the wind is right you can find the joy of innocence again, oh the canvas can do miracles, just you wait and see, believe in me, SAILINGGGG takes me away to where I've always heard it could be"

The songs of the inner soul that we hold dear to our heart but sometimes muzzle out in the hustle of daily concerns.

Maybe I'm losing my head but I don't think I'll ever be able to come out of the rabbit hole again.

I like this thread. To me, it means songs that aren't soaked in irony (then or now), aren't necessarily songs I liked from the 80s at the time, songs belonging more to my pop-loving friends, songs that are a little sad and that bring back -- almost involuntarily -- faded memories of what it felt like when I was younger. Anyway, a few more songs:

Air Supply -- Lost In Love
Belinda Carlistle -- Heaven (Is A Place On Earth)
Berlin -- Take My Breath Away
Cliff Richard -- A Little In Love
Culture Club -- Time
Dan Hartman -- I Can Dream About You
David Bowie -- Let's Dance
DeBarge -- All This Love
Debbie Gibson -- Only In My Dreams
Diana Ross/Lionel Richie -- Endless Love
Honeydrippers -- Sea of Love
James Ingram -- Just Once
Olivia Newton-John -- Magic
Pet Shop Boys -- Always On My Mind
Shalamar -- The Second Time Around

I hope I didn't duplicate anyone else's songs (many good choices above, BTW).

I don't think anyone on this side of the Atlantic thinks about this kind of AOR when we think about the 80s.

China Crisis - 'Wishful Thinking'

Great video as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj20LKdg8-8

Among people in my age cohort (b. 1971, US) "Come On Eileen" is the guaranteed nostalgic dance-floor filler. Also, "Cuts Like a Knife" over "Summer of '69" for nostalgic Bryan Adams goodness.

My more idiosyncratic choice would be "She's A Beauty."

There's a song that starts "Age of innocence, you make no sense, always you change your mind" that is always on CFNY on Sunday night - very synth intensive and spacey and vocally a man starts & a woman replies - Voice of America I think they're called - UGH I wish I knew the name of the song...

I Touch Roses - Book of Love

T'Pau, "Heart and Soul."

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes

when it gets to the "all my instincts" with the clanky/jangly synth or whatever instrument (guitar?) - that instrument and the way it lifts your heart and makes you mind bewildered is the nostalgia sound.

Hee hee! Yer speakin' my lang, Cap'n.

bob seger - old time rock and roll

xtc - grass

I don't remember the 1980s much (not because of drug abuse but because childhood memories are ephemeral) but I love how some bands like the Church and the Chameleons manage to bring back my earliest memories of 1980s rock because their sound (especially the guitars) so epitomizes the era, even though I never heard the songs at the time.

^ the picture on the front of that youtube looks like she has some really deformed breasts.

youtube fix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KlEqsrUvlI

this is my favorite thread that I made

Great thread idea. What about Howard Jones - "No One Is To Blame". Does that fit?

yes, it has much more nostalgia in the sound/singing than a few songs that people posted just because it was personally nostalgic to them
of course lots of songs can still be both 'nostalgic sounding' and have personal nostalgia

Tiffany - "I think we're alone now" is a good example but really the original (from 1967 by Tommy James & the Shondells) has more of the nostalgic feel and is just a better song

John Parr - "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)"

DeBarge - "Rhythm of the Night"

Mike & The Mechanics - "The living Years"

Tears For Fears - "Head Over Heels"

Anything by Tears For Fears, really.

bruce hornsby and the range - "the way it is"

good one

This was mentioned upthread, but just hearing even a second of this song takes me right back to being 10 years old and hearing it on the radio during our family vacation to the Grand Canyon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-xpJRwIA-Q

Prince - "when you were mine"
Stones - "waiting on a friend"

Blame it on the motherfuckin Rain

The Alarm: "Spirit Of '76"

Sinéad O'Connor - "Nothing Compares 2 U"

Wham - "Careless Whisper" (was mentioned upthread but this is a pretty good example)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PINxfouNQFw
(1979-1985 series)

I love the scene in one of the Trailer Park Boys episodes when Ricky is watching this

is there an inherent sadness and sense of loss to 80s musics that is different than in other eras? f'rintsance, foreigner's long, long way from home and that was yesterday both deal with emotional dislocation (and literal in the first instance) but the latter hits me way harder. you'd think the slick big 80s production that makes it so poppy would lessen the emotional impact but the impersonal production exacerbates it somehow. this applies doubly to my currant favorite song, heart turns to stone.

there's a japanese phrase, mono no aware, that roughly translates to the beauty of ephemera, which i think is inherent in that very 80s style of production. it's so devoid of emotion it makes you feel its absence, partly that was the vibe but also because obsessed by new technology. for some reason i'm thinking of that scene in american psycho where i think ron livingston is talking about how reagan is one thing on the surface, but underneath, but underneath and bale is all like, underneath, there's nothing. it's all about the surface.

i read somewhere that when you remember something what you're remembering is the last time you remembered it. so there's no way to directly connect to your initial perceptions of things apart from all the interceding recollections of that thing through time. still, in spite of the nostalgia subsequent and sense of loss i feel in the current moment for songs like don't change, once in a lifetime, love is a stranger, arizona sky, the edge of forever, in between days, cuts like a knife, whatever, was that sense of loss always there or am i injecting it now? no reason to give up on the illusion. that seems so positive, but is it?

the look of love is the one thing that still holds true, but martin can't tell you what it is. good funking luck with that. time makes lovers feel like they've got something real, but time won't give me time. thanks, time.

i don't know how to elocute my point as per my intentions but let me throw out that only in my dreams is some dark, dark, shit which isn't belied by the poppy production but exacerbated by it.

counterpoint: no to all of that.

Interesting thread. I wonder if anyone who was not a kid in the 80s has the same kind of associations with these songs. For those of us who were, seems kind of hard to separate that out…