'81 Love Affair

Scott Miller explores music from 1981 in this week's "Music - What Happened?" entry, and calls it "a terrible music year" and "the first salvos of eighties annoyance". 1981 wasn't a great musical year by any means, but I'm not sure I agree with that dire assessment.

1981 was a tale of two different half years for me. My family moved across the globe in the middle of the year (from the suburban SF Bay Area to Singapore), so I experienced half a year of American culture and half a year of international culture. My musical tastes were also fairly mainstream (suburban rock and oldies), so I wasn't aware of Mission of Burma or Black Flag and many of the other artists on Scott's list, but could easily come up with a playlist of twenty decent songs from 1981 (with youtube links).

1981 - New York To East California

1. Almost Saturday Night - Dave Edmunds
2. The Breakup Song - Greg Kihn Band
3. Burnin' For You - Blue Oyster Cult
4. Centerfold - J. Geils Band
5. Don't You Want Me - The Human League
6. Every Little Thing She Does - The Police
7. For Those About To Rock - AC/DC
8. Ghost Town - The Specials
9. Hang Fire - The Rolling Stones
10. In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins
11. Jessie's Girl - Rick Springfield
12. Kids in America - Kim Wilde
13. Limelight - Rush
14. Man On The Corner - Genesis
15. Our Lips Are Sealed - The Go Go's
16. Precious To Me - Phil Seymour
17. Rock This Town - Stray Cats
18. '65 Love Affair - Paul Davis
19. Talk Of The Town - The Pretenders
20. The Waiting - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
21. You Better You Bet - The Who

These were all "hits" of some kind, as well as songs that I was actually listening to in 1981, and most of them hold up well 27 years later. I think 1981 was a pretty good musical year.