Still preoccupied with 1985 Well, of course we are. After all, as Bowling for Soup points out, there was Springsteen, and Blondie, and music still on MTV. And now Devin McKinney explains how Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and a-ha are putting us back in an '80s state of mind.
Groggy and depleted from anger and change, mainstream America in the '80s grew a ravenous hunger for the obvious, even if that meant going slack in the brain. People were too tired, it seems, to embrace anything new, or desire anything too innovative. There were exceptions -- Roseanne, Annie Lennox, Chuck D, Boy George, other provocateurs in the arenas of race and sex -- but, again, in terms of tendencies, the soft option ruled: Michael Jackson over Prince, E.T. over Blade Runner, Walter Mondale over John Glenn. The 40th president -- true architect of the decade, with Jackson and Steven Spielberg as bricklayers -- remade democratic address as a Hollywood catchphrase, and the once-deadly sin of greed got the best PR in its history.