The 1980s was such a great and diverse decade for music. Starting with New Wave and ending with hair metal, for better or worse, with a bunch of pop all around? That sounds interesting, right?
Because of the abundance of great music, even some solid bands can be forgotten. Even if a song or two of the group's is still played, one might not remember the name of the musical artist. And that artist likely has other music worth checking out.
Four of those types of bands are as follows. You probably know at least one song from each. But you will enjoy the rest of what they have to offer as well.
Four forgotten 1980s bands you should still be listening to
Fine Young Cannibals
The problem with the Fine Young Cannibals is that they have one song that everyone knows and that track overshadows everything else the band has done. "She Drives Me Crazy." You know it, maybe you used to even love it until you heard the song so much that you got extremely tired of it. And yet, every time it comes on the radio, you sing along.
The album that tune comes from is The Raw & The Cooked. This is the group's best-selling record, but not even their best. That is their self-titled debut which features a bit more jazzy feel than the '60s sound of their second record. "Johnny Come Home" is excellent, and one of the best covers of "Suspicious Minds" you will ever hear.
The great thing for you is if you start digging around in the band's discography to decide whether you like them or not, you do not have to dig too much. The band only released two studio albums. Oddly, the second record hit number one in the UK, the United States, Australia, and other countries, but the band decided not to make more albums after The Raw & The Cooked.
Glass Tiger
The Canadian band produced three albums between 1986 and 1991 with digressing sales. The first album, The Thin Red Line, was by far their best-selling, but that could partially be due to Glass Tiger getting some help from Bryan Adams on the song, "Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)." Adams has not maintained the kind of success he had in the late 1980s and 1990s, but he was massive at the time Glass Tiger recorded their song so the bump for the group may have been somewhat artificial.
This is a shame because having Adams' involvement might have meant some music fans were thinking, "Oh! I like Bryan Adams but I am not going to listen to the rest of this random group's songs." If that was one's thought then they would have missed out on some gems.
"Someday" from their debut record has just enough cheese to be rewarding. "I Will Be There" is much more catchy than it deserves to be. "I'm Still Searching" from the band's second album, Diamond Sun, has an acoustic guitar that one will hate themselves for loving.
Glass Tiger went on hiatus for a decade after 1993 and did not make another studio album until 2018 after 1991's Simple Mission. Like with the Fine Young Cannibals, one will not have an abundance of music to delve through, but what you do hear will be worth your time.
The Outfield
Normally a band can overcome whatever name they choose, assuming the band makes a name that just doesn't work well. The Outfield's name isn't all that odd if you live in a country that plays a lot of baseball. Heck, they even titled their debut album, Play Deep. If one did not know anything about the group, one might assume the guys in the band grew up in the American midwest and just really loved baseball.
But the Outfield were an English band that was never overly popular in their native land. Maybe because of their name. Or maybe they were more popular in the United States because their sound was a bit more pop rock as one would hear on American radio. But while I normally side with the decisions made by English rock audiences more than Americans (and I am American), I would have to say in the case of the Outfield, the Brits got it wrong.
If nothing else, the band knows how to create a hook. Most people who know of the band likely know the song, "Your Love." That track is basically the Outfield's answer to the Fine Young Cannibal's "She Drives Me Crazy." Both tracks became so popular they overshadowed much of the output of the rest of the group.
There are winners from each of the band's first two records at least. "Since You've Been Gone" is a bit more wall of sound than "Your Love" but it works. "Everytime You Cry" is far too saccharine but one will like it anyway. And as far as the band's name, they leaned into it with one later album called Extra Innings.
General Public
Another band that did not produce too many albums was General Public as they only released three, but they also may have created one of the top-five pieces of music in human history with their 1984 single, "Tenderness." Oddly, the highest chart position for the song was number 11 in Canada while the track peaked at just 95 in the UK and 27 in the U.S. The band and the song deserved better.
But while that song is an important cog, of course, in the overall excellence that is the band's debut record, All the Rage, every song on the album is brilliant. "Never You Done That" is just a notch below the fantastic "Tenderness" and both tracks feature the group's ska-pop sound. There likely has never been any musical artist who fused those two genres any better.
The group's second record, Hand to Mouth, unfortunately, was not as good as their debut but it has aged fairly well. If you love the band - and you will - then you will find quite a number of tracks to like from the second record. "Love Without the Fun" is ironic because the song is so enjoyable to hear. "Come Again" could have fit on the first album.
In later years, the band would record a cover of "I'll Take You There" for the film, Threesome. The track is decent but certainly does not do justice to the rest of General Public's catalog if one assumes "I'll Take You There" is all the band is. They aren't and their first album, at least, should be in your collection.