'80s

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.Following punks back-to-basics mission in the late-70s, psychedelia crept back into rock in a big way in the ’80s. In the process, it unleashed a million different shades of fuzz, reverb, and echo. Storming out of the deranged underbelly of America’s heartland, the Butthole Surfers and The Flaming Lips created acid-drenched alt-rock that conflated consciousness expansion with (Reagan era-inducing) madness. Though not nearly as eccentric (damaged, in other words), The Jesus and Mary Chain, Loop, and shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine all were no less committed to inducing altered states of mind through deafening levels of distortion. In contrast, neo-psychedelic acts like Echo and the Bunnymen and Paisley Underground denizens Rain Parade created atmospheric and catchy pop by blending dark, jangly new wave with lysergic-spiked tropes unique to ’60s psych-pop. Madchester pioneers Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses blended a pop-focused aesthetic with hypnotically funky rave grooves. And let’s not forget the long list of swirling, squalling outfits—Dinosaur Jr., Soundgarden, Cosmic Psychos, Mudhoney, and Jane’s Addiction—who rekindled the greaser ethos of vintage psych through thanks to a love for hard rock riffing and brain-vibrating wah-wah.

Punk may have started as a reaction against convention, but what started out as iconoclasm eventually turned into orthodoxy as the genre’s conventions were gradually codified. If it wasn’t short, fast, and loud, with three chords and a barking vocalist, it wasn’t punk. America’s hardcore underground wasn’t without its share of party-line camp followers, but it also boasted some true rebels, who realized that when your revolution becomes generic, it’s time to start over. Black Flag grew their hair long and turned to long jams and Beat poetry, while Bad Religion adopted soaring synthesizers and turned to Hawkwind-esque space/psych/prog rock. Flipper tapped into the Stooges free-jazz impulses, and the Minutemen married punk with funk, fusion, and even the occasional Steely Dan or CCR cover. In the end, these were the true punks -- unafraid of being bold, and refusing to kowtow to expectations. -- Jim Allen

On Questlove’s list of his favorite 50 hip-hop songs, he offers an important caveat. “I decided to concentrate on 1979-1995,” he writes, because the latter year marks the major label debut of his group the Roots and their second album, Do You Want More?!!!??! “I wanted to concentrate on the period that I was not professionally involved in the art form.” His canonical picks skew heavily toward the “golden age” of East Coast hip-hop, with a few cursory nods at the West Coast (one track apiece from NWA, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, but no Ice-T or 2Pac) and the South (Geto Boys, but no OutKast or bass music). Questlove may not be much of a hip-hop historian — inexplicably, he ranks Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two” over Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones Pt. II,” and doesn’t find any space for Nas (or Jay-Z, whose debut single “In My Lifetime” dropped in 1994). But he’s an engaging writer, and his capsule explanations for his picks are frequently entertaining, whether it’s humble-bragging how Chuck D gave him an extra copy of Son of Bazerk’s Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk, effusing about Trouble Funk’s “Pump Me Up,” or using Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s “The Message” to talk about being unfairly pulled over by the cops in 2008. “It is like a jungle, still,” he writes about the latter.Want updates with awesome artist-curated, hip-hop, and handcrafted playlists? Subscribe to our e-mail here and follow Questlove’s playlist on Spotify here.

As detailed in Tim Lawrence’s Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor: 1980-1983, the early ‘80s marked the ascendance of the “rock disco” as funk and disco influences found their way into the new wave/post-punk world, and rock bands on both sides of the Atlantic discovered that it was permissible—and maybe even desirable—to make people groove. Not that every London or Lower East Side punk refugee suddenly became The Fatback Band—the adaptations of R&B that emerged from this cultural cross-pollination were often willfully jagged. But whether it was James White of the Contortions coming off like James Brown on crystal meth, established acts like The Clash and The Jam figuring out how to get their good foot on, or New Romantics like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet fusing funk bass lines, cutting-edge electronics, and Bowie/Roxy influences to create a new kind of glam, it was all embraced by the underground NYC club scene at legendary venues like The Mudd Club, Hurrah, and Danceteria. Here’s a hint of the sounds that made rockers and dancers one within those hallowed halls.

In 1982 Tina Turner laid the groundwork for her Private Dancer comeback when she collaborated with the British Electric Foundation, a side project of Human League and Heaven 17s Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. Their collaboration—a synth-heavy rework of The Temptations 1970 broadside "Ball of Confusion"—was enough of a smash for the then-unsigned Turner to ink a deal with Capitol, and the B.E.F. offered to produce. But they had a difficult time agreeing on a track. "Nearly everything [Ware] brought me was some kind of R&B," Turner told Musician in 1984. "I said, I dont want R&B, I want rock n roll." Turner bristled when people pigeonholed her as a soul singer; "I am a rock and roll singer," she told Rolling Stone while promoting Private Dancer in 1984, neither the first nor the last time she would correct anothers assumptions. "River Deep, Mountain High," which she recorded with Phil Spector in 1966, was one of her early efforts at defying convention, her bravura vocal paired with Spectors famed (and pricey) Wall of Sound; the song, now a standard, stiffed at radio in the States. Spector, as guitarist and longtime friend Marshall Lieb recounted in Mark Ribowskys biography of the producer Hes A Rebel, believed it was because hed refused to engage in payola. But Tinas ex-husband, who was credited on the track yet didnt appear on it, had other ideas: "Ike Turner, who places River Deep up next to Good Vibrations as his two favorite records, says the Spector production didn’t get airplay because the soul stations said too pop and the white stations said too R&B," Ben Fong-Torres wrote in a 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. "’See, what’s wrong with America,’ [Turner] told Pete Senoff, is that rather than accept something for its value…America mixes race in it." While Ike Turners overall effect on his ex-partners life was pretty terrible (and he and Tina did have a fair amount of R&B in their repertoire), this broken-clock sentiment touches on a couple of things that have been true for decades. First, listening with ones eyes can result in genres being placed on music despite its sonics; and second, the stringent formatting of radio leaves a lot of worthy records by even big names stuck between the cracks. Black artists who, like Turner, rooted their music in rock ideals had to forge their own path. Betty Davis mixed rock and funk with Davis intense yowling in ways that still blow minds. "She introduced me to the music of Jimi Hendrix—and to Jimi Hendrix himself—and other black rock music and musicians," Miles Davis (her ex-husband) wrote in his 1989 autobiography. "She knew Sly Stone and all those guys, and she was great herself. If Betty were singing today shed be something like Madonna: something like Prince, only as a woman. She was the beginning of all that when she was singing as Betty Davis. She was just ahead of her time." The R&B trio Labelle, meanwhile, followed up the breakout success of "Lady Marmalade" with Phoenix, a showcase for singer/producer Nona Hendryx’s rock knowledge that stiffed on the charts. And Princes 1981 slot opening for the Rolling Stones—who had brought Ike and Tina on tour with them a decade-plus earlier—for two shows in Los Angeles was received so poorly by audiences conditioned to a particularly white-man-dominated "rock" ideal that promoter Bill Graham had to calm the crowd down. “I got hit in the shoulder with a bag of fried chicken," then-bassist Brown Mark recalled in 2016, "then my guitar got knocked out of tune by a large grapefruit that hit the tuning keys.” Private Dancer, the first album to result from Turner’s Capitol deal, operated squarely in the rock realm even as it contained covers of Ann Peebles "I Cant Stand the Rain" and Al Greens "Lets Stay Together" (the latter wound up being the song she collaborated on with Ware and Marsh). Her cover of David Bowies pre-apocalyptic "1984" pairs her roar with glittering synths; the simmering "Private Dancer" has a weeping guitar solo by Jeff Beck; "Better Be Good To Me" pairs Turner with a gang-vocal choir that wouldnt sound out of place on an AC/DC album. Yet with the exception of "Better," none of Private Dancers singles charted on rock radio—not even the monumental "Whats Love Got To Do With It," which topped the Hot 100 for three weeks in 1984.As the tabulations of the Hot 100 have shifted, that cross-genre chart has become more susceptible to trends among radio programmers and consumers. In recent years, this has particularly affected those artists whose music checks multiple boxes, or even the wrong one. While Beyoncé is rightly considered one of pops premier artists, she didnt have a chart-topping single between November 2008, when "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" was in the pole position, and December 2017—and that was through a featured credit on an Ed Sheeran song (the goopy "Perfect"). The Hot 100s ever-mutating formula shut out the pop-art explosion video for "Countdown" and the "If It Isnt Love"-saluting clip for "Love On Top"; both came out in 2011, two years before YouTube stats were incorporated into the big charts formulas. And her keeping Lemonade off Spotify was a big part of why no song from that watershed album cracked the top 10. Beyond Beyoncé, though, R&B seemingly fell out of favor among pop programmers in the late 2000s, a trend that was accelerated by radio consolidation, programmers doubling down on tight-ship formatting, the rise of the less-grooving style of music shorthanded as "EDM," and the increased presence of sports talk, a longtime staple of the AM band, on the FM dial. While that didnt alter Beyoncés musical trajectory very much, it did leave R&B artists—even ones with proven track records, like the silvery-voiced Amerie and the human-condition observer Ne-Yo—in what seemed like eternal turnaround. Ameries joyously resilient "Gotta Work" found its biggest audience when it boomed out of NBA All-Star Game promos; Ne-Yo, meanwhile, had his greatest chart successes when he played Pitbulls foil, giving a winsomeness to hope-tinged EDM bangers like "Time of My Life." More than five decades after "River Deep, Mountain High" was rejected by American programmers and listeners, artists who want to identify as pop while also bridging genres are still finding if not outright resistance, at least confusion from the more conservative-minded people out there (and in boardrooms). But theyre soldiering on, and as Miguels Kacey Musgrave-assisted country rework of his psych-funk track "Waves" shows, theyre continuing Tina Turners legacy of resisting classification, and—like her—theyre doing so loudly and proudly.

This list is great. One could argue that there’s too much Chi Ali and not enough Queen Latifah, or that “Jazz (We’ve Got)” doesn’t belong in the top 10, or that the list would be better if they opened it up to Native Tongue “affiliates” such as The Beatnuts or Pharcyde. But, really, it’s fine. The tighter focus on the core Native Tongue members makes it more cohesive and gives the playlist a flow as it progresses from the rougher sketches that dominate the early tracks (the playlist is in reverse order) to the tighter, tauter “classic” songs in the top 20. Why this all only kind of works, and one of the great tragedies of the digital era, is that only 57 of the 100 greatest Native Tongues tracks are currently available on Spotify. This is largely, though not entirely, due to sample clearance issues around De La Soul’s catalog. De La does show up on “Fallin’,” their collaboration with Teenage Fanclub from the “Judgement Night” soundtrack. The song reminds us of everything we love about that group — their competing pull of whimsy and melancholy; the back-of-the-classroom absurdity that gives way to twilight-youth pathos and then comes full circle as that sadness loses focus and dissipates into fits of giggling.

Theres been a lot of consternation and conversation around Pitchforks list of the "definitive" songs of the 80s, and I wont add to the criticism (though, yeah, they picked the wrong Prince song). But there are some real finds in the list as well. The Bronski Beat, Loose Joints and Ja Funmi were all new to me, and all pretty damn great, and props to them for including Rammnalzee, Alice Coltrane, and Tom Zé. Pitchfork is best known for its indie rock focus, but they actually do well when they incorporate more obscure genres, and this list serves well as an alternative canon. Still, "Purple Rain" as #1?* Only 191 of the 200 are actually on Spotify, and among the omissions is a certainly princely power ballad.

As we begin our journey with the Dowsers, a few things are essential: a domain hosting platform, a CMS, and a Michael Jackson essentials playlist. We could quibble with Rolling Stone that many of these are Jackson 5 tracks and not Michael solo tracks, but the greatness of each and every one of these is pretty much inarguable (with the possible exception of "Butterflies"). Jacko doesnt share the cred of Prince, or the romantic boomer idealism of James Brown, but his music and his persona still loom over the pop landscape.(Note: since Rolling Stone initially published this feature as a Top 50 list, "We Are the World" has slipped off the accompanying Spotify playlist. But then you dont really need to hear that song again, do you?)

During the first season of Tina Feys zany Muppet Show update 30 Rock, Alec Baldwin, playing ever-demanding executive Jack Donaghy, stares at a portrait of his boss—the man who represents, to him, the pinnacle of corporate achievement. As he raises his teacup to the portrait, which he himself painted, he sings, softly, the chorus of a song that ruled radio during the 80s waning months: "Simply the best.. uh, uh, uh."Tina Turner plucked "The Best" from the back catalog of Welsh belter Bonnie Tyler for her 1989 album Foreign Affair, and its since become one of Turners signature songs. Its soundtracked number-retirement ceremonies for top-tier athletes like Philadelphia 76ers sparkplug Allen Iverson and the appropriately named Pittsburgh Penguins legend Mario Lemieux. It accompanied the New York Rangers victory lap after their curse-breaking Stanley Cup victory in 1994. And its been used to honor championship-team anniversaries and no-hitters, as well as the 2008 Presidential campaign of Joe Biden.On TV, though, "The Best" has a slightly different story, one thats connected to the rise of self-lacerating, reference-heavy comedy that particularly took off in the 90s, when mind-numbing McJobs and Alanis-branded irony were just entering the cultural bloodstream. The Voice, The X Factor, and other singing-competition shows have featured hopefuls emulating Tina, although those who pick the rock-tinged "The Best" over, say, "Proud Mary" are also setting themselves up for tart-tongued rebukes from the judges.But quite a few uses of "The Best" play Turners triumphant vocal in a context that sorely needs it: the workplace. One of its earliest placements came in a 1998 episode of The Drew Carey Show. In the fourth-season episode "Drew Between the Rock and A Hard Place," Drew (Drew Carey) — blonde and goateed, thanks to his burgeoning music career—is enticed to do one last job before quitting to pursue his dream of life on the road. He hems and haws some, and then: "Get my lumbar pillow — Im gonna be doing some sittin," Carey declares before the songs chorus kicks in. (It pauses for a bit while Carey sharpens his pencil.) The songs placement probably presaged the ending where Carey decides to stay in Cleveland and with his officemates for at least a few more seasons.Other uses, however, are a bit more laden with irony. Arrested Developments 2013 episode "The B Team" uses "The Best" to introduce Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) and his core production team for the ill-fated biopic about his thieving family — a prison warden slashes screenwriter Warden Stefan Gentles (James Lipton), as well as Carl Weathers and Andy Richter, playing themselves, as they strut through the soaring lobby of Imagine Entertainment. The music is actually coming from Gentles iPad, but the effect remains. Similarly, in the 2016 The Simpsons episode "Much Apu About Something," a motley crew of volunteer firefighters—among them Krusty the Clown ("This is the one good thing I do!") and Principal Skinner—speed away from a burning building as "The Best" plays.Perhaps its most well-known TV placement of the past two decades is probably during the “Motivation” episode from the second seasons of the original UK version of The Office. Hapless aper salesman David Brent (Ricky Gervais) caps a buzzword-and-leaden-joke-filled speech with a jog over to a strategically placed boom box. "Promise me youll remember one thing, yeh?" Brent asks the confused workers sitting before him—then he hits "play" on the radio and engages in an animated lip sync thats clearly designed to make the attendees clap and sing along. They do not. The pantomime goes on for what seems like an excruciating time, but is only about 20 seconds, until Brent pierces the silence—"Ive been David Brent! Youve been the best!" he winks, bopping out of the room in front of the incredulous crowd.Why does this particular song have so much resonance not only with the comedy crowd—its also been used on Zooey Deschanels kicky New Girl and the disgraced-richies chronicle Schitts Creek—but with those who place their characters at work? The production—handled on the original version by Tina Turner and the late soul singer Dan Hartman—is likely part of it; its surfaces resemble the glossy sheens of office-supply catalogs, sparkling efficiency to which the most dingy, windowless offices aspire.But the real reason is Tina, whose reassurances that her subject land with the confidence that made her one of rocks biggest stars—a self-possession that the hapless workers portrayed in these bits rarely deserve. While the full song, minus the oft-used soundbite, is directed toward a lover (comedic uses tend to cut off the chorus right before she declares "Im stuck on your heart, I hang on every word you say/ Tear us apart, baby, I would rather be dead," perhaps fortunately), when Turners chorus is chopped down to its most essential part, it lands like a strivers internal monologue manifested in the air, cutting through the drudgery of paper shuffling and pencil sharpening and turning the everyday into a triumph. But the victory is as short-lived as the two-word phrase that inspired it.

In terms of Western music opening itself up to global influences, the years 1976 to ’82 represent a major paradigm shift. Radical invention was everywhere, both at pop’s fringes and its center. While world renowned visionaries Talking Heads and Joni Mitchell drew African-informed polyrhythms deep into their singular visions, underground mavericks Throbbing Gristle and The Pop Group grafted clanging atonalism to tribal percussion and reverb-encrusted dub, respectively. Jazz, too, boasted its fair share of explorers. Frenetic Afro-Caribbean percussion, mesmerizing Sufi music from Morocco, exotically droning woodwinds—nothing was off limits for the likes of Ornette Coleman or Miles Davis. Not surprisingly, this playlist casts a wide net. Some cuts are as hot and humid as a rainforest; others evoke the cold, dank isolation of abandoned warehouses. Yet they’re united in their bold, ethnological innovation.