In the last mix I heavily focused on
underground New Wave bands from England. In 1982 we can widen our scope a
little bit, as it would seem that by this year the 1970’s were finally fading
away, and 1980’s were finding their true voice.
1982 in Culture and News
We’re still doing years that I
wasn’t alive for. These sections will get a bit meatier once we get to years I
personally remember. I might even make it a bit autobiographical. Although if I
do, I’ll throw it into a separate section that people can skip if they’re just
here for the music. It’s okay if you are.
But
one thing I always associate 1982 with is the great box office injustices of
the summer. E.T. the Extraterrestrial came out, and totally destroyed
two far superior films that were out at the same time; The Secret of NIMH
and The Dark Crystal. I mean E.T. is an okay movie, I can sort of see
why it was popular at the time, but really? It’s just not fair. The Secret
of NIMH and The Dark Crystal both have bigger cult followings today
than E.T. does. You don’t see E.T. with a brand-new series on Netflix, do you? Where
are all the E.T. comics, hm? And E.T. never got any sequels…oh, right, we don’t
talk about The Secret of NIMH 2. Forget I brought that up. At least the
other two movies didn’t have an Atari game based on them that crashed the video
game industry. It’s proof that typical American movie audiences have no idea
what’s good. That’s what gave Hollywood the green light to produce the stupid
drivel it produces today, where 90 percent of the movies are just sequels and
remakes.
So what was going on in the world in
1982? The first CD player was sold in Japan, which must have been pretty
amazing at the time, and must have cost a fortune. England invaded the Falkland
Islands to protect the last little morsel of their worldwide empire. Gods, just
let them be independent. These islands are on the other end of the Atlantic
from England. There was a recession during this year too I suppose. Funny we
don’t really hear about it much these days. I’m sure there was a lot of things
happening that year which the media didn’t want to report on for some reason or
another, but that’s what I’ve been able to glean.
1982 in Music
My
favorite album of 1982 is Pornography by The Cure; essentially their
darkest album. I actually prefer it to Disintegration, which may be a
somewhat uncommon opinion among fans of goth music, but I stand by it. My top
three songs of the year are “Cold” by The Cure, “Hard Times” by The Jetzons,
and “Same Old Madness” by Ministry.
I
think 1982 was an overall better year for music than 1981 was, in all honesty.
The 1980’s were finding their voice. In the mainstream we had Michael Jackson’s
Thriller, which is still the best-selling album of all time to this day;
Madonna debuted (but won’t appear on this mix), Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off
a bat. All this along with a myriad of one-hit wonders. And as you’ll see, I
think the next two years got even better. Maybe better music was making it into
the mainstream by this time. I didn’t have to dig up as many obscure New Wave
bands to fill this CD up, although of course there’s still plenty of
underground songs here. One vital step in the process of making these mixes
which I’ve neglected to discuss thus far is Wikipedia and it’s lists of the years in music. Their lists of albums released
year by year don’t always have the really underground stuff, and even a lot of
bands that do have their own Wikipedia pages might still be missing, but
nevertheless it is a good place to start when I’m planning these mixes. At
least until we get into the 2000’s and I completely stop listening to anything
popular enough to be on the Wikipedia lists.
There was actually only one song that wasn’t
on Spotify this time when I was remaking this playlist on there. Does that mean
I should have dug deeper? Well, I’m amazed that they had some of these songs,
because a few of them are pretty obscure, ones I only heard quite recently thanks
again to the YouTube channel 80zforever. Still, I’ll always recommend buying
the music, either on CD or as MP3’s, and then burning them onto a blank CD, for
the best playback experience. Spotify annoys me by having stupid ads every couple
songs or so. A YouTube playlist would do the same thing. You have to give them
money to make the ads stop. I don’t want to hear, for instance, the stupid
O’Reilly jingle when I’m focusing on the music of 1982, dammit. It totally
ruins the flow of the playlist. I’m never shopping at O’Reilly, your ads are
having the opposite intended effect on me! You can tell I actually tried to sit
and listen to this Spotify playlist, something that I normally don’t do because
I already have the mix on CD or cassette as the case may be. Anyway, yes, cut
out the corporate middleman and just make a physical copy if you can. Take
control of what you listen to and watch.
New
Order – Temptation
“Oh you got green eyes, oh you got
blue eyes, oh you got graaay eyes.” Whoever the singer is singing about must
have the uncanny ability to change their eye color. Or maybe they’re singing
about more than one person. Or maybe they wear contacts. The singer has never
met anyone like the person they’re singing to before, so perhaps the eye color
thing doesn’t have such a mundane explanation. This song makes for a charming
intro to the mix. Spoiler alert, we might just hear another version of this
song when we get to 1987, stay tuned. For the record I think I like this
original version best though.
The
Jetzons – Hard Times
I’ve talked about this song on the blog before. The Jetzons were another in a sea of forgotten early 80’s New Wave
bands, until this song gained notoriety in the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom early
in the 2010’s, when someone realized the music to this song served as the basis
for the theme of the Ice Cap Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, a fan
favorite. This was only further confirmed when it was realized that the
singer of The Jetzons did work on the soundtrack to the game. I spent some of
the “happiest days of my life” playing Sonic 3 on Sega Genesis, so the song immediately
endeared itself to my heart when I heard it.
Michael
Jackson – Wanna Be Starting Something
1982 was the year Michael Jackson’s
breakthrough album Thriller debuted. Even in my early childhood in the
late 80’s and early 90’s, MTV was still playing the “Thriller” and “Beat It”
music videos. These are some of my earliest memories. I could have gone with either
of those two songs, but I wanted to instead include one of his lesser known
songs on the album, and one which I find extremely catchy. Got to love those
tribal chants. “Mamasaymamasamamakusa”. Michael Jackson is going to be on all
these mixes during years he released an album, but I’m somewhat steering clear
of the ones that get the most airplay.
Depeche
Mode – See You
Early Depeche Mode sounds pretty
different from what they went on to become, but I like pretty much all of their
music that I’ve heard. This song is from the point of view of a stalker, by the
sound of it, who only wants to “see” who they are singing to. There's a music video, where they all look really young.
Autumn
– Night in June
Kind of strange for a band called
Autumn to do a song about the month of June. Even in the southern hemisphere,
June is in winter, not autumn. This is a song that will get stuck in your head
and invade your brain, I must warn you.
The
Cure – Cold
Oh, hey, it’s this song again. It’s been on almost every mix I’ve ever blogged about at this point. Maybe I should
have switched it up and put “One Hundred Years” on here instead. It’s on so many of my mixes because I love it
so. But I’ve already said all I have to say about it.
The
B-52s – Mesopotamia
One of The B-52s more overlooked
tracks. As someone who has been “a student of ancient culture”, I’ve always
found this song amusing. They didn’t bother to do any research on Mesopotamia
for this song, but at least they outright admit it. It’s hilarious that they
say Mesopotamia existed 100,000 years ago, not to mention they didn’t have
pyramids. It’s written from the point of view most typical modern-day people
have on Mesopotamia, if they’ve even ever heard of it. But there are indeed a
lot of ruins in Mesopotamia. Ruins that sadly have largely been destroyed in
all the wars Syria and Iraq have seen in the last twenty years.
Yazoo
– Don’t Go
I’ve known about this catchy song
since I was a child. I remember how thrilled I was when I got to record it off
the radio onto the third mix tape I ever made. Different times indeed. Now we
have YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, and other streaming services and can listen to
any song we want whenever. Yazoo has lot’s of great songs, but if I were to
only pick one song to represent them I suppose this one would be it. I almost
wanted to put “Goodbye Seventies” on the mix, which is another one of those
really good time capsule songs, but I settled for ”Don’t Go” due to the
personal connection I have with it.
Soft
Cell – Tainted Love
Poor Soft Cell, I wonder whatever
happened to them after this one hit wonder came out. It’s also one of those
songs that people don’t realize is a cover. My favorite version is the one that
transitions into the song “Where Did Our Love Go?”, but due to time constraints
on the CD I simply included “Tainted Love” as a stand-alone. On the Spotify
version I didn’t have to worry about time constraints, of course. Just annoying
ads. So that’s the version on the Spotify playlist.
Ministry
– Same Old Madness
Another early Ministry single from
their synthpop days. There’s something like five different versions of this
song that I’ve heard. My favorites are the ones where the singer’s voice is discernible and you can actually tell what he’s saying, but those seem to be
the harder to come by versions for whatever reason. It’s a song about the Cold
War paranoia which ramped up again in the 1980’s, as well as just how in
general the news stirs up paranoia to increase its ratings. The same old
madness is still going on today. My favorite thing about the song of course is
the cute little R2-D2 noises. “Deetdoo-deetdoo!”
A
Flock of Seagulls – I Ran (So Far Away)
Another one hit wonder. A Flock of
Seagulls has other good songs though, which people don’t really know about.
“Space Age Love Song”, “Nightmares”, “Wishing (If I had a Photograph of You)”
are all great songs. I have no idea why this band wasn’t more popular. “I Ran”
is a really good song too, but it’s not the only good one they made. I recall
having this song stuck in my head when I was at the Armenia-Iran border.
“Iran’s so far away”. Ah, fun times. A little-known fact about this song is if
you actually read the lyrics, the song is about being abducted by aliens. True
story.
My Spotify reproduction of this mix
was on quite a roll until I got to this track, which sadly isn’t on Spotify. I
suppose it endured a “sweet rejection” by mainstream audiences in 1982. But
it’s worth listening to. I’ve linked to it up above on YouTube.
Stereo
– No More
I was surprised Spotify had this
one. It’s a nice song, really should have gotten more attention when if came
out. If only Stereo had gone on to greater success.
Romeo
Void – Never Say Never
Before that horrid Justin Bieber
song ruined the phrase “never say never”, it was a song in the film An
American Tail, sung by a French pigeon to encourage poor lost little Fievel
who’d been separated from his family. Before even that, though, it was a
Romeo Void song about wanting to sleep with someone before deciding if you
liked them or not. Funny how that works. I first heard this song thanks to the Evil
Dead tv series, where it was featured in an episode.
The
Human League – Don’t You Want Me
“Don’t you want me baby? Don’t you want me
noooowww?” You don’t hear many songs that tell a story from two different
points of view. I like that about this song. Then again it's more like they're just talking than singing in this song.
Men
Without Hats – Safety Dance
Here’s a song most people have
heard. You have to love a song where the music video features a bunch of
dancing hobbits in The Shire. There are two versions; I prefer the more upbeat
one to the sort of neo-disco sounding one. I wonder if the “safety dance”
really qualifies as a dance though, when all it consists of is making an “S”
with your arms. I’ve always liked to replace the lyric “Everybody look at your
hands” with “Everybody take off your pants”, just for fun.
Conclusion
1982 was a pretty good year for
music, all things considered. But in my opinion, 1983 gets even better. Stay
tuned for 1983 in Music where we’ll get to Ministry’s debut album, as well as
Depeche Mode, Billy Idol, David Bowie, and others.
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