The Sweet Spot

I've done a couple of blog entries in the last year or so about the music of the mid-1980s, the songs of my early childhood that I somehow think were perfect pop classics, even though they do not generally fit with my tastes in older or newer music. However, the longer I think about this stuff, the more I analyze it (I can't help it, I'm a mass media doctoral student... it's what I do), and I believe now more than ever that the period roughly between 1982 and 1985 was a "sweet spot" for pop music. Not only that, it was the last time pop music was ever this good. Hasn't been since, probably never will be again.

How do I know this? Well, let me throw some anecdotal observations to start. These are songs that have staying power among people who are fans of classic rock, alt-rock, and even country. When you want to get the attention of people in their 30s at a bar/wedding reception/karaoke night, what do people go to? The women will go for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," someone will request "Africa" by Toto, and you might even get "Total Eclipse of the Heart." And EVERYONE will stop and notice, and maybe sing along. Why is this? Because it was mass-appeal, and 1982-1985 was the waning days of mass appeal, especially on the radio. Shortly thereafter, niche formats splintered the music audience, and for a time it was inconceivable that someone would like rap/R&B AND country, or would like alt-rock AND a good power ballad. In recent years (although radio has not caught on to this trend), music genre-hopping has become the norm, and it doesn't sound so far-fetched anymore. People can certainly appreciate rap and metal (although I cannot appreciate those who like rap-metal), and Lionel Richie just had a #1 country album. How is this possible? Simple, because a lot of the people who like country now listened to Lionel Richie on pop radio in the 1980s and LIKED HIM.

The music has staying power in our popular culture, even if we don't immediately recognize this. What era of music did P. Diddy borrow from liberally in his hit productions of the late 90s? Generally, music from 1982-85... and it keeps happening. When you listen to the emo bands of the 2000s, you hear a LOT of influence of the music from that era, which is probably one of many reasons why I took to it so well. Lady Gaga... HEAVILY influenced by music from the 1980s, not just Madonna but also Bruce, Michael, and Freddie. If that isn't a good enough explanation for you, here's a list of other reasons why the music of 1982-85 was so important, so great, and may never be equaled:

Dance music was dance music, pop was pop. They did not have to be one and the same, as is generally the case today, thanks to radio smashing them together into the CHR/Rhythmic format. You had the Gap Band, the Pointer Sisters, hell even Eddie Murphy had a hit song. And they weren't afraid to do dance songs that went over SIX MINUTES LONG, with finely-tuned instrumental breakdowns amongst all the synth-grooves of the era. And you had the first commercial and artistic breakthroughs for rap. Sure, "Rapper's Delight" had already charted before 1982, but Grandmaster Flash wasn't rapping about mushed peas and soggy macaroni in "The Message." You also had "White Lines" by Melle Mel, LL Cool J's first album, and Run-DMC. The Kings of Rock.

Prince's musical genius. All happened during the "sweet spot." "1999," "Purple Rain," and the very underrated "Around the World In a Day" all came out between 1982 and 1985. Soon after that, he broke up Prince & the Revolution, decided he needed to work with Sheena Easton, and it all went downhill from there... which is not to say he didn't still put out good music for several years afterward. I just wouldn't put "Seven" or "Batdance" or "Money Don't Matter Tonight" in the same class as "Purple Rain" or "Raspberry Beret" or "Little Red Corvette."

Madonna's first two albums. She couldn't have made the societal impact she did without debuting in the perfect time period for pop music. Even though her music went downhill for a while after "Like a Virgin," one could argue that she was constantly in the process of changing her sound as well as her looks because she knew the times were changing. There's definitely some truth to that; consider that by the time her imitators (both in looks and sound) arrived, the "sweet spot" was over. Madonna wound up having staying power... Stacey Q did not.

Duets that worked... talk about genre hopping, from 1982-85, you had Phil Collins and Philip Bailey (Genesis and Earth Wind & Fire?) and Michael Jackson duetting with Paul McCartney AND Mick Jagger (and almost duetting with Freddie Mercury). And the pairings made sense... Michael wanted to work with the best, and Genesis had already borrowed EWF's horn section a couple of times... and "Easy Lover" wound up being Bailey's only post-EWF hit. There was also Tina Turner and Bryan Adams on "It's Only Love," the country music mega-pairing of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, not to mention the guest appearance of Stevie Ray Vaughan on David Bowie's "Let's Dance" album. I am purposely leaving the steaming pile of crap known as McCartney and Stevie Wonder's "Ebony and Ivory" off this list; in fact, if I had to pick an arbitrary date when the "sweet spot" begins, I'd put it at the beginning of July 1982, when "Ebony and Ivory" got bumped out of the #1 spot on the pop chart. It's a very fine line; before the "sweet spot", you had duets that did not work. After the "sweet spot," you again had duets that did not work, like Jackson Browne and the late Clarence Clemons, Peter Cetera and Amy Grant... and who the hell was Marilyn Martin, anyway? By the time "Separate Lives" came out, Phil Collins was beyond saving...

Speaking of Michael Jackson: "Thriller." Only the biggest-selling, most Grammy-laden album of all time, and it dominated radio during the "sweet spot." Oh, and the session musicians on that album? The guys from Toto. And Eddie Van Halen played the guitar solo on "Beat It." Again, talk about genre hopping...

Men At Work. Classic example of perfect timing. They broke through in the U.S. in the summer of '82; they were done by the end of 1985. Oh, Colin Hay refers to their Grammy award for Best New Artist as the "kiss of death," but they did manage to have a second album that had as many hits as their debut... and quite frankly, I prefer "Overkill" and "It's a Mistake" to the hits on "Business as Usual" because those songs are still overplayed. After "Cargo," they dumped their rhythm section and recorded a third album. It sucked.

Celebrity cameos in music videos: Once MTV got huge, and people realized that music videos were here to stay, it became de rigueur for Hollywood B-listers (and below) to get themselves into videos. Hence, the many celebrity cameos in the video for "Ghostbusters," Mark Metcalf from "Animal House" in Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," Captain Lou Albano in "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," and perhaps the most unlikely celebrity appearance in a music video: Dan Aykroyd in "We Are the World."

The music you didn't know about at the time: The indie scene of 1982-85 gave us R.E.M., the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys (RIP MCA), and a lot of bands known only to hipsters.

But alas, times change, music changes, and in this case it was for the worse. I figured out when the "sweet spot" began, and I can tell you even more specifically the moment it ended... October 26, 1985, when "Perfect Way" by Scritti Politti entered the Top 40. Before this song, Scritti Politti was actually a well-respected band that had evaded the U.S. mainstream and put out some pretty good stuff. They were a rather high-brow post-punk band that dropped references to Derrida and Gramsci in their lyrics. Unfortunately, around 1985, they decided to start working with Arif Mardin... the guy who unleashed Barry Gibb's falsetto on the world. In one fell swoop, they sold out AND provided a pop template for the rest of the 1980s. After "Perfect Way" became a hit, most pop music sounded like this song for several years. Listen to "Perfect Way" and then listen to "Who's Johnny" by El DeBarge and tell me I'm wrong. Or "Chains of Love" by Erasure. Or anything by The Jets. Hell, after this song, the success of New Kids on the Block was inevitable. The common thread: Goodbye instrumentation, hello taking the easy way out with electronic dance beats. Pop merged with dance music, and the world changed forever.

This is not to say that there weren't some musical screw-ups between 1982 and 1985. Oh, there were some doozies: Queen's "Hot Space" album... Rush deciding that Geddy Lee on keyboard and Neil Peart playing electronic drums sounded better than Lee on bass, Peart on REAL drums, and Alex Lifeson's guitar dominating... Roger Waters running off the other members of Pink Floyd... LaToya Jackson's singing career. I recently heard an old 1985 episode of "American Top 40" in which Casey Kasem quoted Elton John as saying that George Michael was "the greatest songwriter of his generation, right up there with Paul McCartney." To be fair, Elton was doing a lot of blow in those years. But for just some reason, most of the music just worked. Now I've had discussions with friends in which they say that the connections of these songs with my youth may overinflate their value and that people who grew up in the mid-90s or in the last decade might feel the same way about the pop music from those days. However, I feel like there were other factors at play: the state of radio, the influence of MTV, even societal shifts toward postmodernism. Anyway, that's my argument. Feel free to disagree, but first grab a copy of the Talking Heads' "Speaking in Tongues" or Huey Lewis & the News' "Sports" and try not to like it.