Slicing Up Eyeballs Top 100 songs of 1980

[www.slicingupeyeballs.com]

I don't have too many bellyaches with it, though I think "A Forest" is way too high. But hey, Slicing Up Eyeballs readers love them some Cure. And since the voting for this round was all write-in, it was stuff people had to think of for themselves and write in, as opposed to just hitting any button with "The Cure" next to it.

I don't even remember what songs I wrote in, except "Johnny and Mary" by Robert Palmer. And that one is absent from the list, I think.

I was 6 or 7. I have no idea.

Brings back memories of way too many hours spent glued to MTV.

I would have voted for "Wedding Cake Island" by Midnight Oil.

A good list, though. Not too much to complain about, other than liking to have seen some songs higher.

At least a third of these familiar weren't familiar to me in 1980. I was a late-comer to The Cure, The Jam, Siouxsie & the Banshees, X, Bauhaus, Mission of Burma, and of course, Joy Division. But nearly all the ones that I did know at the time were great tunes to me -- the most glaring exception being Springsteen's "The River." A pretty dull choice if you ask me -- which they didn't, of course, so let's move on.

Ha! I didn't even notice that Springsteen had snuck in there. That's unusual - even if I'd been inclined to write in anything by him, it would've been "Hungry Heart," which at least was in the ball park of something a new waver would've liked and had the extra bonus of having been written with the Ramones in mind.

The fact that a trudge of a tune like "The River" managed to get enough write-in votes to land in the lower reaches of this list says to me that there was a concerted effort at stuffing the ballot box on someone's part. No way that particular song lands on a best-of 1980 list on a new wave leaning site without somebody orchestrating it.

Why anyone would care enough to go to such a length to influence an unofficial list on one website is beyond me, but hey, some people have more time on their hands than I do.

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The fact that a trudge of a tune like "The River" managed to get enough write-in votes to land in the lower reaches of this list says to me that there was a concerted effort at stuffing the ballot box on someone's part. No way that particular song lands on a best-of 1980 list on a new wave leaning site without somebody orchestrating it.

Exene concurs.

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Edited to add:

If I were obliged put together a 90 minute mix tape from the songs on the list, here's what you'd get:



Side A

Ramones : Rock 'N' Roll High School (2.19)
The Jam : That's Entertainment (3.32)
Mission of Burma : Academy Fight Song (3.11)
Rockpile : Teacher Teacher (2.35)
XTC : Respectable Street (3.37)
The Pretenders : Brass In Pocket (3.09)
The Waitresses : I Know What Boys Like (3.15)
Echo And The Bunnymen : Villiers Terrace (2.46)
The Vapors : Turning Japanese (3.47)
Motohead : Ace of Spades (2.43)
The Clash : The Magnificent Seven (5.33)
Bob Marley & The Wailers : Could You Be Loved (3.52)
Talking Heads : Once In A Lifetime (3.43)

:58 left

Side B

The Romantics : What I Like About You (2.25)
The Soft Boys : I Wanna Destroy You (2.54)
The Cramps : Garbageman (3.40)
X: Johnny Hit and Run Pauline (2.50)
Dead Kennedys : Holiday In Cambodia (3.44)
Killing Joke : Requiem (3.45)
Peter Gabriel : Games Without Frontiers (4.02)
David Bowie : Ashes To Ashes (3.49)
Siouxsie & The Banshees : Christine (2.57)
Psychedelic Furs : Sister Europe (4.01)
The Cure : A Forest (5.55)
Joy Division : Twenty Four Hours (4.26)

:32 left



Post Edited (02-11-15 21:51)

I'd have Israel higher than Happy House
I'd have Fashion higher than Ashes To Ashes
I'd have Freedom Of Choice higher then Whip It
I'd swap Baggy Trousers for Embarrasment
I'd swap Geno for There There My Dear

I don't know if I could distill it as well as Kay did. And some of the songs on this list just never did infiltrate my musical memory enough during their time (sorry, Siouxsie), and some of them are just way too overplayed. But at least two-thirds of the tunes on this list are simply deathless to me, no matter how much radio has overdone them -- even the ones that have been overplayed on really lame-ass public radio shows, say, for example, in northwestern Washington State at 10:30 on Monday nights.