Looking through the list of topics on this 30 Day Music Challenge, I realise that some of the harder topics to answer are among these first few days. This one, for me, is perhaps one of the hardest, because I tend to like almost all genres of music. What genres I do dislike, I either dislike the whole genre and don’t like any artists, or the artists I do like fall under multiple genres (for example, I’m not a huge fan of rap, but I love RHCP’s older stuff (first 5 or 6 albums) which are really a rap, funk and rock fusion).
So I’ve decided to elect not so much a genre, but a style of music within a specific era. Now, the 1980s had some great things about them, and music was no different – The Police were fantastic, U2 were actually good back then, and Australia had some huge moments with Men At Work at the start of 80s writing the song that would make an awesome national anthem (it mentions vegemite sandwiches in the lyrics, enough said), and INXS at the end of the 80s taking the world by storm.
The 80s also had some terrible music. It had a lot of terrible music. It had music that doesn’t have a specific genre, music that I label with the term “cheesy cringe-worthy bad 80s music”. But there is one artist who pushes this description so far, I kind of like him because of it: Phil Collins. He was the absolute master of cringe-worthy 80s songs, and they were absolutely awful but oh so good!
This is too hard to demonstrate with just one song, so enjoy a few:
Okay so that first one is a pretty good song, so let’s increase the cheese factor:
Still not cheesy enough? I present you the cheesiest 80s song of all time:
Do you agree? Is Phil Collins so bad he’s good? Or is he just bad?
Wanton Creation 