Seven 80s Songs In Seven Days

As I mentioned in a previous post, some friends and I ran a series of 'musical challenges' last year in order to showcase our favourite music to each other. Following on from the 90s we moved onto the 80s, posting our 7 favourite 80s songs over 7 days, and my submissions follow. I hope you enjoy my picks and I encourage you to post your own below.

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Day 1 -My first song for 7 Songs From The 80s is from 1989 from a band that I would come to love in the 90s and beyond. Little did I know (unfortunately) that they were already releasing good, solid rock n roll in the late 80s. Back before Chris Cornell fried his vocal cords, before Rusty Cage and Outshined, they were already doing stuff like this. Enjoy.

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Day 2 of 7 from the 80s and we're going back to late 1984. George Orwell's dystopian prophecies haven't quite come true yet, but the groundwork has been laid. The mighty North Sydney Bears finished 11th of 13 teams in the NRL, and a skinny kid named [friend] loaned me a cassette of Midnight Oil's Red Sails in the Sunset. I'd heard of the Oils before obviously, but this was the album where I could finally say of a band "This is my favourite band". There's not a bad song on the album and it remains one of my favourite ever.

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Day 3 of 7 Influential Songs From The 80's takes us to Liverpool, NSW in 1986 or 87. I was shopping with [friend] at the Westfields which had a fairly decent record shop back then. I had enough money on me to buy an album and as I didn't have a lot of money back then I wanted to make it count because it might have been a while before I could buy anothery. I looked through everything three or four times over and couldn't decide. Megadeth? Metallica? Iron Maiden? There were too many choices and I could only pick one sadly. What I ended up doing was grabbing an album from someone I'd never heard of because it had a wicked looking cover. Who the hell was Yngwie Malmsteen? On the way home on the train I was kicking myself cos I'd passed up some really good albums to buy one cos it had a burning guitar on the cover. What an idiot.

My self loathing was short-lived though when I got home and put the cassette on. This guy was incredible! I didn't know you could play the guitar that fast and actually make it sound good. I fell in love with his playing then and there and have loved him ever since. Take a listen to this track and if you don't want to listen to the whole thing just fast forward to 4'10" and prepare to have your wig flipped.

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Day 4 of 7 Great Musical Moments of the 80s takes us to the bedroom of [friend] where I first heard Iron Maiden's Two Minutes to Midnight and Aces High. Now here was a band with some bite. The Live After Death album became one of my favourite albums, and for more than one reason. The inscription on the headstone on the cover mentioned an author named H.P Lovecraft, a gentleman whose dark cosmic horror sucked me in the moment I went to the old H.J Daley library and read the first few pages of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I have since read nearly everything the bloke ever wrote. The other reason I love this album is because I also looked up a dude called Samuel Taylor Coleridge who wrote the poem that today's song is based on. I ended up loving his poetry too. So this album was not only full of ripper music, but I got to discover a great author and an excellent poet to boot.

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Day 5 of 7 You Beaut Songs From the 80s is an absolute pearler of a song released in 1988 but which I didn't discover until hearing it on JJJ the following year while slaving away at some drudgery or another. The two chords and simple lyrics very quickly grew on me and this song and band became favourites of mine. The song evokes memories of cold beer and marijuana smoke and trying to find out where exactly I fit in the world. Same as now really just minus the marijuana smoke. Enjoy. :)

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Day 6 of Seven Absolute Classic Songs From The 80s To Listen To Before You Die And Become Part Of The Void is from my favourite album from 1987 and was in fact my favourite song of that WHOLE year. I loved this song so much I made a tape of it repeated several times, because who wants to keep rewinding their cassette tape, am I right? It's the perfect rock anthem from the hair metal era.

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Reluctantly I post song 7 of 7 90s Songs That I Done Gone And Loved. This is the opening song on one of the greatest metal albums of the 80s and the best album of 1986 full stop. It's the album that introduced me to Metallica, long before they became a bit douchey. Say what you like about them, they helped bring metal to the masses and for that I thank them.

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I hope you enjoyed my 7 80s Songs in 7 Days, and I hope you will share your own choices below. Frankly I don't think you can match my list.