I MISS MY MTV

80′s Flashback

London Calling – The Clash

This song has been lauded with adulation more times than I would care to count, so I will save you the story about how much this song means to me as a musician and what the Clash should mean to the world. What I will say is that if you watch this video and nothing happens in your head, we can’t be friends. This song and video must elicit some kind of visceral reaction within you. If it doesn’t, and I hate to be the one to tell you this, you are actually dead. Or worse yet, a zombie. And if you are a zombie, Mike Gravagno will kill you so good, you’re gonna wish he didn’t kill you so good. – JRN

Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car – Billy Ocean

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When you think of the 80′s, you think one thing: MC Skat Kat.  I don’t blame you – he was the face of that generation.  But just like everything else ever, the person with the credit doesn’t deserve it.  Billy Ocean was kicking it with an animated sidekick a whole year earlier.  And his song was way better too.  Actually, all of Billy Ocean’s songs were way better.  He’s twice the man Abdul ever was.  So why was he robbed of fame?  If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because even in the 80′s, white America just wasn’t ready for a video that begins with a black man angrily demanding a girl “Get into his car!” – DT

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Once, a long time ago, before they performed bloated on reunion tours, appeared on Vh1 reality shows, and made sex tapes with Pamela Anderson, Motley Crue made some kick-ass metal.  And the whole Glam-Road-Warrior look does it for me. This song is a good example of how they could write a great rock song with a pop-like hook. I also miss songs where the band is involved in a narrative, although I am not sure what is going on here. The gang saves the white girl from being sold into slavery in China? But it turns out she’s in cahoots with them? I don’t know. But dayum, Nikki Sixx looks slammin’. – RJH

Rapture – Blondie

 
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I love Blondie and since they were such a presence in the CBGB scene and the early MTV days they definitely belong in a retrospective. In my opinion Rapture is not their best but it’s just so damn eighties-fantastic. There’s the creeper in the white tux and top hat, the Adidas-clad graffiti artists and for some reason Uncle Sam on stilts and what looks like the Indian from The Village People shirtless in acid washed jeans.  Plus it’s the first “rap video” ever to air on MTV. Which is super weird since dead-eyed Debbie Harry’s monotonous talking-to- music barely counts as rap. Fab 5 Freddy is literally right behind her yet does not step in once to show cokehead Barbie how it’s done.  Despite the awkward dancing and constant face rubbing in this video, it’s a nice little slice of 1981 where the streets were always filled with costumed dancers and the world could only accept such dangerous, urban rhythms as spoon fed by whitey.  -AS

I Ran (So Far Away) – A Flock Of Seagulls

 
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 Just barely inching into the 80s with my time on this planet, I have no actual recollection of the decade.  I have been left with only media to fill me in on that 10 year block of time. Television, music, movies, and video games are what have formed that crazy version of the 80s which resides in my head. I Ran couldn’t possibly better represent how I feel about what the 80s must have been like. Plus, it’s a pretty crazy video.

Never Gonna Give You Up – Rick Astley

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In honor of his 46th birthday this week, I gotta give it up for Rick Astley and his righteously surprising baritone voice.  Plus, that dude is the grand king of the 80′s white-boy shuffle. He almost makes it hot…even though he looks a bit like Anthony Michael Hall, but less studly.  Regardless, this song is awesome and will now be stuck in my head for the next week. Seriously, Rick…I could never give you up. -LF

PAULA ABDUL AND MC SKAT KAT- OPPOSITES ATTRACT

This video closed out the 80′s, and shed a light on the direction the entire next decade would go. Paula Abdul was in her prime, and MC Skat Kat was making his debut into the music world, which he would soon follow up on his smash solo album. Their love was something passionate, dangerous, and all kinds of wrong that made it so right. Through the song they talk about their differences, he likes movies and she likes TV, he smokes and she hates that, she’s rolling in the dough and he’s broke as an alley cat. So what keeps them together? Hot, animalistic sex. We’re talking straight fucking like there’s no tomorrow. The sexual undertones of this video are insane, one would say almost overtly in your face. Just imagine the things he does with that prehensile tail- the benefit of being a cartoon cat versus a real feline. This video is the reason so many in the following generation would get into Hen-tai alien rape porn. We all just wanted to see Skat Kat and Paula get down as their video promised. Fuck Jason Noble and Daniel Tompkins.-MG

 Pop Muzik – M

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This is such an annoyingly catchy song that I have equal parts undying love and bitter hatred for it.  On the one hand, it’s silly, says nothing of importance and gets kind of repetitive about halfway through the song.  On the other, this could very well be the most “80′s-est” song ever, as it has the trademark synth sounds and bass line that almost make you think you’re listening to the Ghostbusters theme song.  Watching this, I’m reminded of what a weird, fun, and fairly innocent time the 80′s were for music.  There were fewer spoiled brats whining about life in the suburbs (although Morrissey did enough whining for everyone) and the video features just enough strange outfits and funky camera angles to keep you watching until the end.  All in all, it’s a great, fun, catchy, and silly song that could never have been made or produced in any other decade.  – BH