Best of the 80s

By Rob Sheffield. Lighters up for the late, great Biz Markie, one of the most beloved music heroes of the Eighties or any other decade. The Diabolical One. The Human Beatbox.

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Best of the 80s

The s may have been the decade of questionable fashion choices, but we'll probably say the same about the s in a few years It was also the decade of great movies, the rise of video games and downright fantastic music. We've attempted the ridiculously hard but not in any way a chore task of picking the very best s songs ever. Here are our picks - are your favourites in there? You might not have realised it, but Neil Diamond first recorded this song back in But it's UB40's cover that became the most well-known in The song truly brought the band to the mainstream, and reached number one in the UK. It ended up topping the US charts too in , after being performed at Nelson Mandela's birthday tribute concert. This ballad saw Phil Collins sing the tune from a third-person perspective, looking at a man crossing the street to ignore a homeless woman, imploring listeners not to turn a blind eye to those in need. It became Phil's seventh and final number one single in America, while David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash appears on backing vocals. This was the song that made Boy George an even bigger star around the world. It was the UK's biggest selling single of and topped the US chart.

It was the first single released on The Police 's final album Synchronicity, best of the 80s, ensuring that the trio went out on a supreme high with the song winning Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards and staying at the top of the US Billboard Charts for a total of eight weeks.

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The 80s were an interesting time in music, with the heyday of 70s rock, soul, and jazz giving way to exciting new iterations and subgenres. Disco was on the way out, but it helped lead to house music, electronic, and hip-hop. Tentpole genres like rock and pop produced a number of offshoots such as art-rock, post-punk, synth-pop, and more, while music from Africa boasted a wonderful blend of jazz ideas, local sounds, and funk rhythms. In Japan, city pop music was the influential style of the era, which has seen a resurgence in the 21st century. Listen to our Best 80s Hits playlist here.

Best of the 80s

By Rob Sheffield. Lighters up for the late, great Biz Markie, one of the most beloved music heroes of the Eighties or any other decade. The Diabolical One. The Human Beatbox. The class clown of old-school hip-hop. You got what I neeeed! Then I knew it was gonna be a good record. A German girl sings about nuclear apocalypse in a perky New Wave bop about the end of the world.

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Smooth Podcast Picks. He first blew up on the Dr. Sting wrote the song not long after Crisp moved from London to an apartment in the Bowery in Manhattan. The song put Agnetha in the strange situation of being asked to sing a breakup song, written by her ex-husband, just a short period afterwards. The lyrics take the form of a dark monologue directed towards an unnamed person. A mix tape of pop classics, rockers, rappers, soul divas, New Wavers, disco jams, country twangers, punk ragers, dance-floor anthems, smooth operators, and karaoke room-clearers. What could have been a midlife-crisis misfire instead became a phenomenon. This ballad saw Phil Collins sing the tune from a third-person perspective, looking at a man crossing the street to ignore a homeless woman, imploring listeners not to turn a blind eye to those in need. The story of Major Tom, revisited. Irene Cara's anthem won an Oscar and Golden Globe for best song in Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon! It soon became something of a standard, and one of the best love songs of all time. Considering the titanic forces at work in this tune, it's relatively understated, but it does ultimately climb to the sparkling heights that both Bowie and Freddie Mercury inhabited with such ease.

The s may have been the decade of questionable fashion choices, but we'll probably say the same about the s in a few years It was also the decade of great movies, the rise of video games and downright fantastic music.

Joan Armatrading taught herself guitar growing up in a West Indian immigrant family in England. The song was written about class and the pressures of inner-city life. For assistance, contact your corporate administrator. Were they crying already when Toto got there? It was later used in the film of the same name, based on Tina's life. But its cut-through-the-chaos message still connects with anyone aiming to clear out a polluted stream of consciousness. Beep louder! But just one song per artist, or half the list would be Prince. Lawrence and ultimately embarking on a midlife crisis that resulted in a worrying beard and Tin Machine. Fast forward to , and its use in shows like Glee and The Sopranos helped bring it back into the mainstream, and it was a surprise hit around the world once again. Bill Murray famously sings a karaoke version of the song in the movie Lost in Translation. This funky song was written, arranged and produced by George Michael himself. Barry Gibb wrote the melody while Maurice came up with the drum sounds in his garage. This Eurythmics track remains one of the most iconic synthpop tracks of its era. One of the most ridiculous Number One hits, in an era when ridiculousness was the most crucial pop virtue.