A couple of nights ago I needed to make an emergency trip into town to buy groceries - and happened to pick up the earphones for my iPhone as I left the house. The intention had been to listen to a podcast or two along my journey - except I hadn’t synced it for some time, rendering the various episodes of Net@Night and Buzz Out Loud on it more or less useless.
I therefore switched to the album listings, and A-Ha were there near the top of the list. That’ll do, I thought.
It’s easy to forget the brilliance of particular bands, singers, or tracks. I cranked the iPod up to 11, and lost myself during my walk into town and back - and now I’m inviting you to do the same;
I began thinking along the usual lines that people do when faced with a standout track - “the music from the 80s was SO much better than the last two decades”… and then sat on my own fence, balancing my own view. The last ten years have brought us Coldplay, Travis, the Stereophonics, the resurgence of Take That (whether you like them or not), and countless other great acts. It doesn’t change my opinion though that the 80s had some wonderful, wonderful music - and was perhaps the last sustained period of original creativity in pop music. New ideas were tried - risks were taken. Today the popular music charts are ruled by a huge amount of derivative garbage - much like the movie industry.
Let’s just embrace the memory of great bands, and huge vocal talents such as Morten Harket.