1981 was king of pop

This Guardian commenter sums up all that I loved about pop music – popular music – as I grew up. Most popular music today – what we hear on the radio and see on TV, the music which most of the population know about today – has nothing on these old classics, which were so radical and innovative. All of these records (oops, with one exception) were Top 5 hits in Britain in 1981/2. God, I’m old. Kids today, don’t know they’re born, etc.

“Mainstream music 1981. Soft Cell, an obviously homosexual singer able to appear on kids' telly backed by a synth, all the sound coming from one voice and one instrument. The Human League, probably the first Christmas number one without a drum. Adam & The Ants, making up for the lack of drums by having two drummers and angry staccato guitar attack, Burundi meets Bermondsey. OMD with two top five hits about a mediaeval French saint. The cartoon goth Lolita Clare Grogan paving the way for Katie-Jane Garside et al. Japan reached the top five with the closest to a 4'33" cover version you could get. Laurie Anderson reaching number two with performance art. Rockabilly revivalists, ska superstars. Angry, quirky, hopeful, hopeless. The good, the bad and Queen. Anything and everything could be successful.

What do we get nowadays?

Karaoke Factor.

God help us all.”

Apologies for dodgy sound/video quality, this is YouChoob after all. And anyway, plenty of people fetishise the scratches and hiss of old vinyl records; let’s look at the oversaturated colours, muffled sound and frame skips as modern equivalents thereof.

Here are the same tunes as a Grooveshark playlist, for those of you who would prefer just to stream the soundz.