[Mag]

Yesterday I listened to the majority of '80's 100 Hits. And I'm sorry to say the '80's Pop Hits for the most part doesn't cut it for me. The recordings were good, came through nice and clear on my rig, the music though not my cup of tea.

The '80's for me for the most part was spent listening to New Age Electronic. A lot of it was cutting edge stuff that evolved with Synth technology and progressed to Trance electronic and Club Dance mixes and Techno. I know from driving taxi, that there are people out there that don't consider music with synths to be music. Real instruments with real musicians only is music.

What Synth music brought to the table is Themes, that IMO is what Synths are all about.

[toocool4]

Not surprised if you are listening to Wham! - Wake me up before you go-go 

80’s like any other times in music history, there are good and bad stuff. You have to dig a bit deeper, as the best stuff are not always the popular stuff played on the radio. Look at what is going on now, most of the popular stuff are autotune BS.

[mix4fix]

What is the full list?

[MikeInAustin]

I read a book awhile back that goes into the synth phenom pretty deeply.  Authored by Susan Rogers, who was Prince's recording engineer for several years.  She went on to get her PhD in cognitive neuroscience and teaches at the Berklee School of Music.  Titled "This is What it Sounds Like".  It basically explains to you why you like the music that you like.

I'm paraphrasing big time, but she draws a parallel to what happened to visual arts when the camera was invented.  Until that happened, all paintings were faithful reproductions of people, animals, landscapes, etc.  They faithfully painted what they saw, not what they felt. The camera allowed people who could not paint, the ability to commercialize their art by expressing not so much what they saw, but what they felt.  And synths allowed a similar transition in music.  Even if you can't play a note on an analog instrument, you can still commercialize your art by expressing what you feel.  And there is a market for that.
 

[Mag]

[Mag]

[Mag]