A few Saturdays ago my family of five attended the last SMSU home football game. We sat on a blanket atop the grass hill across from the home crowd.
As the game clock ticked down on the second quarter, our football team continued to display a level of tenacity that was inspiring. A timeout was called and the Mustang Pep Band played Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. My grade-schooler immediately jumped up and demonstrated the ‘thriller’ dance she had learned in music class on Halloween day. It was then that I realized the pep band had been playing several selections from the 80s. Later at halftime the SMSU Dance Team performed a spirited routine to a mix of 80s hard rock anthems.
Wow. How did my generation’s milieu music turn into a 2013 sporting event’s background music for you? After 25 plus years are those songs considered classics now? Am I classic then? Ugg.
The 80s did deliver some new sounds and music genres to the world. When I was in college in the 80s, my music tastes leaned towards the Alternative music type. And at that time in my life, those songs were the playbooks of our lives.
Heck, since I like lists; here are some example lyrics and the reasons why my girlfriends and I took hold of them:
This song expressed the way we felt about trying to balance college and our new independent world responsibilities while determining where we were going to fit in. R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”:
Oh, no I’ve said too much. I haven’t said enough…
That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight.
Most of the time, this was our thoughts on spending time with our boyfriends outside the weekends. The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love”:
I don’t care if Monday’s blue, Tuesday’s gray and Wednesday’s too. Thursday I don’t care about you. It’s Friday I’m in love.
When we did find a guy, those first two to three weeks in a new relationship we swore we had found our soul mate. Modern English’s “I Melt with You”:
I’ll stop the world and melt with you. There’s nothing you and I won’t do.
Then week four came around and we realized that ‘melt with you’ relationship had indeed melted into a puddle and this became our lament. Hoodoo Gurus’ “Bittersweet”:
Your love is its own reward…God knows I tried, I tried to hold you with all my might, but time has won.
As jilted coeds we did have our sarcastic songs that allowed us to vent our feelings towards the jilter. Please note we would substitute ‘boyfriend’ with ‘girlfriend’ and ‘him’ for ‘her’ below to really drive home the resentment. The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma”:
There were times when I could have [gotten rid of] her, but you know I would hate anything to happen to her.
FYI: I substituted the words in [ ] as to not offend the innocent.
Ok, ok, it was not all about boys. We did have our causes we stood up for. After all in the 80s we gave you Band Aid’s “Feed the World” & USA for Africa’s “We Are the World”. But this mantra was much better to dance to while showing your activism. Midnight Oil’s “Beds are Burning”:
How can we dance when our earth is turning? How do we sleep while our beds are burning? The time has come to say fairs fair.
What?!? That was how I spent my time in college in the 80s? Listening to all that lyrical jargon?!? But we were so hip. What the…? It must have been the melodies and instrumentals we were attracted to. After all, no matter what decade a song originates from; not many of us really know all the lyrics to our favorite songs, let alone understand them. Right?
Anyhow, next time you have a few minutes to kill, take some time to search YouTube for the audio versions of these songs. And, of course, you may translate, relate or berate the lyrics. (That’s what my generation did with the 60s Beatles songs.) But no matter what, you have to agree we had some legendary songs in the 80s. Conversely, be warned if you decide to watch the video for these 80s classics. Because we may have had memorable music in the 80s, but our choice of attire was notoriously lacking.