Taking sides: the music of the 80s vs. the music of the 90s

the fuck does this even mean

this is impossible

voting "yes"

ridiculously easy. 80s.

not really ridiculously easy if you were at all into rave/UK breakbeat/jungle/drum n bass/trip-hop

and hip hop

I do prefer eighties "college" rock to nineties.

but that's where, as Christgau might say, distinctions become not very cost-effective.

Dan's answers OTM.

nope, still easy

and hip hop

boom

rave kind of peaked in the late '80s. the best trip hop was released by Soul II Soul in the late '80s (ok, not really but I chose a side and I'm sticking to it). ukbreakbeat/jungle/d&b is too small and narrow of a thing to tilt my feelings in favor of the '90s. Plus what about house, miami bass, and electro?

if you just look at hip hop it's a slight win for the '90s

yeah hip-hop was an obvious oversight

otoh I have burning 100% unironic love and adoration for "Let's Go All The Way"

xp: rave didn't peak in the late 80s! not unless you are strictly talking Belgian new beat, and even then that all transitioned into a ton of great early 90s tunes

rock was more interesting in the 80s, but hip hop in the 90s was amazing. so...

voting YES

"summer of love" was '88 right? I don't know that much about "rave" as a genre, but it seems like a lot of the major players at least had records out by the late '80s. shamen, 808 state, etc. Also the early '90s still felt really '80s

I think you guys are underrating '80s hip hop a little

this question is also very interesting from a metal standpoint imo because there was a lot of really groundbreaking intense shit going down in the 80s & no-one outside of the scene gave a shit, but the 90s is when the workers kinda seized the means of production & some titanic masterpieces got made - voting 90s is made harder for me by remembering that Don't Break the Oath came out in '84

The nineties never boasted a record as sublime as the Breakfast Club's "Right on Track."

not really ridiculously easy if you were at all into rave/UK breakbeat/jungle/drum n bass/trip-hop

I don't care about any of this stuff and it's still a hard decision. In my mind the 80s is a good deal broader in scope in terms of what I find interesting and the number of bands that had amazing streaks of records (Prince, the Cure, Camper Van Beethoven, the Smiths, too many others to count). But in the 90s I got to witness a relatively new genre reach full flower, and that feels like something particularly special.

xp

Don't Break the Oath came out in '84

love that record. kinda prefer 80s metal myself, grunge washed out a lot of shit in the 90s and I started to lose interest in the more underground metal stuff

But in the 90s I got to witness a relatively new genre reach full flower, and that feels like something particularly special.

I LOVED Backstreet Boys too.

NKOTB forever

Menudo motherfuckers

NINETEEN NINETIES O YEA

1780s

MUSIC OF THE 90s MUSIC OF THE 90s SOUNDS LIKE LOVE

lol i wonder how old most of the 90s voters are. it wasnt all the candy-coated wonderland dan's making it out to seem.

candy-raver wonderland

what happened in the 90s that made us all so sour?

the internet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ira3LoZiTWc

NEVER FORGET

what happened in the 90s that made us all so sour?

having to endure all that shitty techno music imho

the eighties was prob the worst decade for music since the 40s.

^^^threw down

90s

the eighties was prob the worst decade for music since the 40s.

and then the '90s happened

there was a WAR on ffs

think there was one in the 40s too

the eighties was 00s were prob the worst decade for music since the 40s.

fixed

there's always a war

there were no wars in the 90s. not in any countries that mattered anyway.

war on drugs tho

that's a country that matters to me

as i said

every1 too busy jammin to amazing 90s music to fight

OK I have to ask: what was so awful about the forties?

lol i wonder how old most of the 90s voters are. it wasnt all the candy-coated wonderland dan's making it out to seem.

let me ask you a question man - which decade gave us born against? 80s punk has charm but 90s punk goes in imo

hitler iirc

80s punk has charm but 90s punk goes in imo

lol...?

"summer of love" was '88 right? I don't know that much about "rave" as a genre, but it seems like a lot of the major players at least had records out by the late '80s. shamen, 808 state, etc. Also the early '90s still felt really '80s

― the wheelie king (wk), Wednesday, 17 August 2011 23:06 (36 minutes ago)

where to begin.

Aaliyah's the exception there and also the only one not from 1999.

Yep, me too.

the 2000s started around 1999 for me anyway.

Several xposts yeah 80s film scores knock 90s film scores' dick in the dirt with extreme prejudice.

that Equalizer theme is awesome

I still vote 80s, but thinking about this more while reading this thread, I remembered just how much of my 90s was spent listening to the 80s, which only confuses things for me.

"no way are any of these as good as Prince, Jacko, or Madonna at their peak"

kriss kross 3-note sample of "want you back" eclipses all of these. just that 3-note sample.
if you had the choice of saving the bassline to "want you back" or the entirety of the 80s from
cultural destruction, Tito's gonna live, Reagan's gonna die. totally dessork

wouldn't that be a point in favor of the '60s, not the '90s?

if you believe in the power of sampling then the 90s absorbs all of the source's powers like when the bad guy in Tron says "all my powers are yours" and he turns into a glowing david warner giant.

Possibly, but the 90's did hae to deal with the aftermath of the whole Biz Markie vs Gilbert O Sullivan case.

once again the outcome of an ilx poll is decided by the supreme court! i bet scalia rules for 80s.

the 2000s started around 1999 for me anyway.

I consider the 2000s to have started around 2002, which was when R&B was being slowly replaced by powerpop influenced teen-punkpop (Avril Lavigne, Pink) and the beginning of the electro thing that was to dominate most of the following years.

How did Avril Lavigne replace R'n'B exactly? I don't even understand the correlation between these two things?? Also, electro revival properly kicked off early 2001 with electroclash etc. Earlier for some people.

oh wait, never mind.

it's really simple dl - first we had r&b, and then Avril Lavigne destroyed it with her music

in many respects i understand the impulse to vote for Wham!s "Club Tropicana" over the entire career of the Wu Tang Clan, but on a second consideration i have to go with the "what the fuck do you senile clowns think you're doing?" argument

At the risk of reducing myself to (even more of) a cartoon character....

http://youtu.be/x1U1Ue_5kq8

haaahahahaha

i always assumed that was a comedy goth diss of the 80s music scene?

I think it's about getting an apartment north of 79th iirc

^^ good point, was blinded by mostly hearing them grunting out of the speakers in provincial night clubs in northern pit villages

...whilst waiting for the DJ to drop "Club Tropicana"

The correct answer is 85-95

87 > 95 > 88 > 84 > 91 > 94 > 82 > 96> 99 > 80 > 89 > 93 > 86 > 81 > 85 > 97 > 98 > 83 > 90 > 92

Only a dead inside robot could calculate that.

beep boop bop boop

I like 82 and 94.

How did Avril Lavigne replace R'n'B exactly?

She replaced part of it. The first years of the 00s were more or less all about R&B. But I guess she also represented a shift in the boy/girl band style where the Max Martin style (which was more or less the only non-R&B/hip-hop style in early 00s hitlists) was being replaced by a slightly more rock oriented style.

yeah everyone's being "DURR DURR SHUT UP GEIR" but he has a point, rap and R&B ruled the top 10 much more before the white girl takeover of Avril and Pink and Kelly (and later Gaga and Katy etc)

the time-line feels a little distorted is all. also Pink is definitely a halfway point of rock/r'n'b crossover whereas Avril and Kelly etc take the r'n'b out altogether and it seems to me that Gaga belongs to a different lineage - Madonna-esque pop auteurs have been a thing since at least, um, Madonna - and maybe Katy Perry considers herself in this vein too but no, sorry.

well yeah it's all a bit fuzzy and generalized but there IS a nugget of truth to it is all i'm saying

If teen punk pop eclipsed anything in the 00s surely it was straight-up Baby One More Time dance-pop rather than R&B?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjWddDI5_FA

this is so obviously the 80's, fools.

the time-line feels a little distorted is all. also Pink is definitely a halfway point of rock/r'n'b crossover whereas Avril and Kelly etc take the r'n'b out altogether and it seems to me that Gaga belongs to a different lineage - Madonna-esque pop auteurs have been a thing since at least, um, Madonna - and maybe Katy Perry considers herself in this vein too but no, sorry.

I am having a hard time associating Katy Perry with any particular musical style at all. She seems to just do whatever she (or the marketing people behind her) expects to sell at the time, regardless of genre or style.

agree w/geir on this. yet I'll add for all the calculation that ms. perry clearly enjoys herself which is her saving grace for some people tho I find her voice skin-crawlingly awful

I am sure she does. I think "California Gurls" was kind of nice, but that was due to brilliant production, not because of her (or Snoop for that matter).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

a just and proper result.

the eighties was prob the worst decade for music since the 40s.

indie traitor!

yeah! I hope you end up as John Maus's roadie!

indie trators?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUknsOvL-78

Dum Dum was top 10 on my 1980s albums ballot

when I heard that Vaselines tune last year I forgave its nonsense cuz it was so damn irresistable.

That dynamic is so weird to me! like when the pro-life song won the ILX "best sex pistols track" poll, because it rocks I guess.

it is ok to say the 80s suck when u were one of the bands that made the 80s rule geddit?

yah but johnny rotten didn't go around starting planned parenthood clinics... or did he? Planned Parenthood Ltd?

Been listening to a spotifly list of 1000 1980s songs in alphabetical order and let me tell you, Madonna made a lot of songs brought to you by the letter 'L'.

What about the music of the '90s as imagined by MAD Magazine in the '80s?

http://d1g4sq00ps2bp3.cloudfront.net/images/12130mad.jpg