A great deal of today's music looks to the '80s for inspiration, but there are so many different ideas of what "'80s" as a descriptor can mean. Here we return to the source material. As we did for the s , the s , and the s , as well as our list , we polled our staff and contributing writers for their favorite songs of the era and tabulated the results. Every time we do one of these lists we learn something about how perceptions of decades change over time, and how the musical ideas from a given era filter through to later generations.
For many selections, we provide some of our favorite related tracks for further exploration. Thanks for reading and listening. Listen to a Playlist with our '80s selections on Apple Music.
The original s and heartbreak. With "I Cry Night After Night ", Egyptian Lover not only paved the way for the sad robot music that the likes of Kanye West and Future would go on to push farther and into weirder territory, he also helped establish a trope that rappers still employ to this day: the sad-sack confessional that humanizes their bulletproof tough-guy persona, or in Lover's case, his gift-to-womankind lothario status.
True to form, he manages to retain a sliver of his egomania even in his darkest hour, claiming his "Egyptian voice will hypnotize. Listen on Apple Music.
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Anyone nonplussed need not translate the lyrics, which are pure dada. From that "inverted orgasm," Christ emerges with dismay into an unjust world. On "Shack Up", they landed on a magnetic three-way split between funk, old soul, and the long-raincoat gloom of their hometown labelmates Joy Division.
