While radio waves were still dominating as the prime source for new music in the eighties, single songs in particular, one thing appeared that propelled new songs to either sink or swim - MTV and music videos. And while quite a few songs rightfully rose to the top, so many got there because they had a nice, shiny video supporting them.
Videos gave a chance to artists, producers, and primarily record companies to push to the top or close to it music, that didn’t cut it, had crappy lyrics or production values, along with quite a few other failures, but hey, the artists, or those that were supposed to be surely looked good in their videos.
Of course, some songs had no videos at all. That was probably a good thing if the song was bad, because then MTV might have forced us to listen to the tune anyway.
8 songs from the 1980s that sound awful today
“Wango Tango” - Ted Nugent (1980)
Nugent keeps playing this one to this day, and while initially some critics hailed it as great, it later ended up on a few worst-of lists for the solo being so terrible. If it did have any initial appeal, that simply wore off as time went on. That still doesn’t prevent Nugent from keeping on playing it.
“The One That You Love” – Air Supply (1981)
The title song from the most successful album by this Australian band, which many at the time proclaimed to be the kings of soft rock. Judging by this one, they just might be proclaimed as kings of sappy rock (if there’s any rock in it, by the way). It made it to No. 1 in the U.S. and elsewhere, but it sounds like too much sugar in lukewarm tea these days.
“The Safety Dance” – Men Without Hats (1982)
It took a bit for this one to get to the top of the charts (worldwide at that). And while it might have had some initial appeal and the idea behind it, by Ivan Doroschuk, the leader of this Canadian band, to protest the treatment of dancers by club bouncers at the time was in the right place, its appeal simply wore off.
“Karma Chameleon” - Culture Club (1983)
Maybe nobody really knew what a karma chameleon was about at the time (Boy George did explain later on), but it sounded catchy at the time, a the video was done well in those early MTV times. Yet, as the time went on, years and decades, not months (it was the best-selling U.K. single of 1983), it lost any initial karma it had not to come back so far.
“I Just Called to Say I Love You” - Stevie Wonder (1984)
Yes, we can call Stevie Wonder one of the musical geniuses, but even such geniuses have song slip-ups, and this one is certainly one that Stevie came up with. Ballads are so easy to overdo, and this one is as overdone and over the top as double-burned toast in the morning. Sorry, Stevie, you made so much more great music elsewhere.
“Party All The Time” - Eddie Murphy (1985)
Sure, with quite a few of his SNL skits, Eddie Murphy proved he could sing, but it was the choice of songs he put out on his album(s) that were questionable, and this one by funk great Rick James was not exactly James’ shiny moment. One rock critic called this one "Gumby goes disco,” and for all the right reasons. It went #2 for all the wrong reasons.
"Boom Boom Boom Let's Go Back To My Room" - Paul Lekakis (1987)
This one was aimed both for the dance floor and the video crowd, as Lekakis was more of a photo model than a singer, and the song was not only formulaic, it had one of the lousiest lyrics of the decade. It still did well, particularly in the dance charts.
"Girl You Know It’s True" - Milli Vanilli (1988)
Was there a song by these guys (who actually couldn’t sing) that was any good? It didn’t matter much, because they looked good and were professional dancers, after all, so it was no problem for it to sweep the charts at the time, until it was disclosed that the duo didn’t sing a single note on it.