The ‘80s: A decade filled with fashion icons to controversies such as MTV launching and where mullets and shoulder pads were the latest trend. But it is so much more than that. In fact, best music came out of that decade in my opinion.

Eighties music holds a special place in my life because that’s what I grew up around. My parents grew up with it. I grew up with big name artists like Queen, Pat Benatar, John Mellencamp and Bryan Adams. However, what makes it the best era of music?

In the 80s, the music landscape changed. In 1979, Roland released a drum machine called the ‘Roland TR-808’ which became a staple in all 80s music. For example, ‘Planet Rock’ used the drum machine. Not mention that singer of the Tarzan soundtrack and ‘Sussudio’, Phil Collins used the drum machine in many of his songs. Collins was in the band called Genesis and also used the gated reverb. The gated reverb was this magical phenomenon that only happened to the drums. It came with a punch. It came and went so quick, you probably didn’t know it happened. 

The gated reverb was notorious throughout the 80s. Some of the most famous songs used the gated reverb, for example,  ‘In The Air Tonight’  by the legendary Phil Collins, used the gated reverb to use that iconic drum fill. To me, that was a major factor of the most catchiest 80s songs.

Another reason why I like 80s music are the lyrics. So poppy and catchy.  No matter what I’m doing at the moment, I always stop and sing because of the song and the lyrics. ‘Beat It’ by Michael Jackson is almost impossible not to sing because of the how iconic the lyrics are. You can always relate an 80s song at some point in your life, whether it’s ‘Invisible Touch’ or ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.’

80s  music are the synthesizers. No matter what song you hear, you hear the synthesizers. One great example is ‘Take On Me’ by a-ha, which has a great synthesizer solo that starts out right at the beginning. A synthesizer is a type of keyboard that has a funky sound that you can hear throughout an 80s song.

It just has that ‘Invisible Touch’ that is ‘Simply Irresistible’. That’s why I consider 80s music has to be best era of music.