80s music was interesting for a lot of reasons . . . so many contradictions!
Most Hit Music of that time was so synthetic; hollow drum and bass tracks sounded good to us then. And on the surface, there was a party-it-up theme. But underneath, kind of a precipitous sense of doom or armageddon ("we got to live it up, live it up, Ronnie's got a new gun" and the club smash "American Soviets").
Even though it was a sexually conservative time with AIDS hysteria and Family Values shoved down our throats, androgyny was totally accepted, even encouraged in pop culture. Apparently, they initially tried to market John Mellencamp in a pouty, effeminate way because it was such a successful look for male artists.
And 80s culture seemed to reject the escapism of the 60s and 70s, but there was bending of reality in the 80s like never before. Remember Max Headroom and the hit Paranomia? An 80s "artist" that existed on no physical plane whatsoever.
