From The Guardian Unlimited:

Wham! Big hair and Eighties pop make internet comeback

Richard Evans woke up one day and found he was turning into his dad. ‘All the music that was thrown at me didn’t sound as good anymore,’ he recalls. ‘I returned to the music I remembered as the best.’

Evans, at 38 a member of the so-called Generation X, set up a website dedicated to the music he danced to as a youth in the Eighties. It was only a hobby. But he told his friends about it, and the word spread. It soon became apparent that Evans had tapped into a huge public appetite for nostalgia on the web.

(more here)

There’s definitely some sort of 80’s phenomenon going on these days.  At least there is in San Francisco.   Although there have always been 80’s clubs in San Francisco since, well, the 80’s, it’s really picked up steam in the past 1-2 years, and even more so in the past 6 months.  

It’s starting to remind me of the whole swing era of the late 90’s, like then, more and more clubs are doing 80’s nights.  It used to be once a month, or once a week with clubs like 1984 or New Wave City, lately though it seems like 2-3 nights a week there’s 80’s music being played somewhere.   I’m also seeing it more in advertising, on the radio, TV, etc.

Why is this happening?  

Some say (like in the article above) it’s the X-Generation finally pushing out the baby boomers and showing their muscle with nostalgia for their high school days, while that may be true, I often see people at 80’s clubs that weren’t even born when this music came out.

Personally I think it’s a combination of the X Gen thing, and the simple fact that music over the past 10 years has basically SUCKED ASS.  Somewhere around the turn of the 21st century innovative music just died.  Look at the pop charts, for years it’s been topped with either corporate created boy bands, the one hit rap star of the week, or Britney spears crap.   Modern music sucks, so it’s no wonder there’s a longing for something better by Y-Generation kids raised on Back Door Boys and N-Synch shiat.

Personally I love it; I’m discovering or re-discovering music that I had barely noticed back then.  When the 80’s actually happened, where I lived (rural southern Maryland) it was all about hard rock bands like Foreigner, Boston, Lover boy and the Poppy stuff of the time (Madonna, Rick Springfield, Cyndi Lauper), So hearing New Order, The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Cult and the Smiths at places like New Wave City is in a way, for me, discovering a new genre of music all over again.