Over the years I had the pleasure to work with many different people from all over the work. Whenever it came to one of my hobbies, music, it was a struggle to explain what makes it special for me and why I like what I like to people. This is especially true for the co-workers from the Indian subcontinent.
Imagine you grew up in an isolated bubble like India. You have everything you need in terms of TV, music or film right in front of you. The market is now larger than the so-called western world. Coming back to my co-workers; whenever the topic music came up, most of the time they knew none of the bands I liked. The same thing is true for myself. I have not even scratched the cultural surface of music on this world. Some intricacies will be forever hidden from me. But that does not mean, that I cannot appreciate it. So this page is mostly for interested parties who want to journey out of mainstream music... Well, for most of the time at least. There will be longer sections with classic songs to explain the evolution of a genre.
I pondered the ideas of playlists, but you won't get as many cool live versions e.g. on Spotify. And as of 2023 it also lacks a commentary feature. Here I can express myself and add commentary. On Spotify you can find a black metal playlist that I made as challenge for myself: Use only one track per band. That was necessary because some of the most liked (Black) Metal playlists simply added whole albums which is unimaginative and boring.
With a few exceptions this is a personal best-of series of artists whose work I admire and stuff I love and often listen to.
You might wonder why there are so many live versions for the non-electronic stuff on the list. The reason is plain and simple; a band has much fewer studio tricks at their disposal and has to show their mastery of the instruments and material.
- Warning: Although I'm trying to use a neutral language here, text quotes, song or album titles and the topics explored in the linked songs and videos are likely not safe for work (NSFW).
- Some sections in this page mention bands and artists in chronological order. You can expect that some bands or artists show up multiple times.
- Some genres are not important or interesting for me. In general you can assume that what is listed here has significance for me or musical history.
- The starting page (you are reading right now) is limited to one entry per artist or band. Otherwise it could be even more one-sided as it already is. Don't worry, that's going to change in the branching pages. The composition of the main page focuses on pop and rock music with a few subtle (of not) nods to other genres we're going to visit later.
- With few exception. the bands and solo performers on this list wrote their own material. It becomes difficult (for me) to distinguish writers and bands when it comes to hip-hop.
- We're not starting with the "hard stuff" right away and stay in the domain of relatively friendly mainstream pop and rock music.
This page is dedicated to Tippu because he made me start it without recognizing it. Second is my father because he sparked my own interest in music. One Saturday he put headphones on me and introduced me to Kraftwerk's Radioactivity and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles. The last one to dedicate this to is my wonderful wife who puts up with all my "you absolutely have to listen to this". She is very patient, but still does not love Autechre (which is fine).
- Apache is a song written by Jerry Lordan and first recorded by Bert Weedon. Lordan didn't like Weedon's interpretation and played it on ukulele to the band The Shadows. They liked it and released their own version. Yes, national TV in the 60ies was wild. There's also the original black and white music video. Many years later, my father gifted me his copy when I bought my first record player. If that sparked your interest, there is a BBC4 programme The Shadows At Sixty (59:45).
- Ghost Riders in the Sky, performed by Neil LeVang @ The Lawrence Welk Show.
- The Kinks: Hailed as an influential band from England for both Hard Rock and Heavy Metal because of an early use of a distorted guitar playing power chords on You Really Got Me. Enjoy a live version from 1965.
- The Animals, an English rock band, recorded and released their version of the the folk song The House of the Rising Sun. It became a timeless classic with many different interpretations. A superior version is from The White Buffalo (with The Forest Rangers) which was arranged and performed for the finale of the fourth season of the FX TV series Sons of Anarchy. The lyrics have been adapted to mirror the plot of the TV series. The was no spoken dialogue in the finale and the filmed scenes together with the music were one of the greatest things on TV for us. I still think a more fitting title would have been House of the Rising Son.
- The American Singer Gloria Jones
first recorded Tainted Love and
in 1964 and released it in 1965. It was written and produced for her as a
B-Side of an unsuccessful single. Only after it gained underground popularity
in the UK's club scene. Gloria re-recorded Tainted Love again in 1976, but
this version also failed to chart.There's a nice edited
video and a short video of the story behind
the song in Gloria's own words.
Through the above mentioned popularity of the song, the English vocal-and-synth duo Soft Cell knew about the song. They recorded their own version in 1981 which became a hugely popular one-hit wonder. Soft Cell's version is arguable the one most people recognize.
Two selected interpretations:- Scorpions (a German hard rock band) from the 2011 Comeblack.
- Broken Peach (Halloween Special) a cover band from Spain.
- The American rock band Jefferson Airplane played the Psychedelic and Acid Rock song White Rabbit in 1967. Quite a difference between them and the Kinks and the Beatles.
- The Beatles released the magnificent album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band I mentioned in the dedication. It's impossible to be fair to a long-living masterpiece so I'll just pick my favorite song which is A Day in the Life. If you never listened to the album, it's worth doing it now. If you're really adventurous, take the ultimate edition with outtakes to hear, how it all came together.
- Aretha Franklin wrote and recorded the soul and funk song "Think" which is still relevant today. Arguably because of an unforgettable version in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers.
- Link Wray released the self-titled album. "He was an American guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist who became popular in the late 1950s." One song in particular sparked my interest; Fire and Brimstone in a version with clips from the TV series Better Call Saul. The Wikipedia article for the album Link Wray even mentions Swamp Rock as a genre and that "the change in style from his earlier work, the album was poorly received by Link Wray's fan base. Wray had anticipated this, and shortly before the album's release remarked, 'In a way I couldn't care less if the album didn't sell a single copy. We're happy with it and we've done it our way.'" maybe that's part of the appeal but the sound and rhythm stands for itself. I found a live cover by Cub Koda & The Points with a top comment by a user with the name valdane8371 who said: "I always suspected that the best Rock ‘n’ Roll performance ever had taken place in someone’s f**king basement in front of seventeen people…now I’m sure. Bonus points for the glorious absence of subtlety."
- The English rock band Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody from the album A Night at the Opera. "Despite being twice as long as the average length of singles during the 1970s, the song became immensely popular worldwide." It has 1.6 billion views on Youtube as of September 2023. More history about this legendary piece of art on the Wikipedia.
- Kraftwerk, a German electronic band, released their fifth and "first purely electronic album" Radio-Activity. "All releases of the album were bilingual, with lyrics in both English and German." The official video is a good example how music video started. Now compare that to a version from 2017 The Catalogue. The sparse lyrics were expanded over the years and also contained a reference to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
- The Eagles, an American rock band, wrote rock history with their album Hotel California. The Eagles performed the title track (here in a live version from 1977) from the album well over 1000 times.
- The american hard rock band KISS (the hottest band in world) released their fourth studio album Destroyer. One of the songs of that album became a live staple for the band: Detroit Rock City (live version from 2006).
- Bauhaus (an English rock band formed only the year before) recorded Bela Lugosi's Dead as their first ever recording. "It is often considered the first gothic rock record." It "was recorded 'live in the studio' in a single take during a six-hour session".
What a decade.
Sound of drums in the 80s: Gated Reverb. Which was discovered accidentally while Peter Gabriel recorded the song Intruder for his third solo album. On drums, on request, Phil Collins.
- The English rock band Joy Division's non-album single Love Will Tear Us Apart made a lasting impression on the era. Here's the official video. "Its lyrics were inspired by lead singer Ian Curtis's marital problems and struggles with epilepsy. The single was released the month after his suicide."
- Phil Collins, drummer and singer in the English band Genesis recorded his debut album Face Value. The almost 8 min long live version of In The Air Tonight from 2004 is one of the best there is. There's also the official video which prominently featured the "discovered" sound of gated reverb.
- Gang of Four: Beginning of the 80s was already Post-Punk. Enjoy I Love A Man In A Uniform a live version from the same year played for The Old Grey Whistle Test. The German musician [Herbert Grönemeyer] recorded a good cover version in 2021.
- Madness: Our House is maybe one of the songs one could use to explain what ska is (even though there are other influences) to people who never heard the genres name.
- The Cure: Siamese Twins (Live In The Tempodrom, Berlin 2002).
- Nena recorded 99 Red Balloons. There are two official videos; one in German and one in English. It became in a No. 1 hit in several countries and "is one of the best-known German rock songs in many parts of the world." The original German version tells an anti war story.
- The Police, an English rock band band, released Every Breath You Take (official video, 2008 Live Version if that is more to your liking). It is often mistaken to be a love song, but the perspective is of a possessive lover (aka stalker).
- Talk Talk: I simply love Mark Hollis' performance in the official video of Such A Shame. It was released on the second studio album It's My Life. The song was "inspired by Luke Rhinehart's The Dice Man, one of composer Mark Hollis' favorite books. When asked what drove him to respond to Rhinehart's book, Hollis replied, 'A good book, not a lifestyle I'd recommend.'"
- Tears for Fears: Shout was released the a single for their second album Songs from the Big Chair. Here we have the official video and 35 years later a live version from the Roskilde Festival. If you look and listen closely, you will see and hear that they kept the original drum machine snare for this live performance.
- Bronski Beat released Smalltown Boy, a story about being gay in the British 80ies.
- The American rock band Talking Heads released the album Little Creatures brought the successful single Road to Nowhere.
- Sting, an English
Musician, released his debut solo album and the song
Russians (official
video) on it. "The song is a commentary and
plea that criticizes the then-dominant Cold War foreign policy and doctrine
of mutual assured destruction (MAD) by the United States and the then
existing Soviet Union.
Sting re-recorded an acoustic version of the song in March 2022, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, with proceeds going to humanitarian and medical aid in Ukraine. In a statement, he said that he 'never thought [the song] would be relevant again. But, in the light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful, unthreatening neighbor, the song is, once again, a plea for our common humanity.'
- The British rock band Dire Straits released their fifth studio album Brothers in Arms and with it the single Money for Nothing. The official music video is one of the first to use early computer animation.
- a-ha is a Norwegian synth-pop band formed in Oslo in 1982. Take On Me is their biggest hit (which also has an extensive WP article). The video for this version is noteworthy for its use of pencil-sketch animation combining it with live-action (rotoscoping).
- Peter Gabriel, an English singer and songwriter, released his fifth solo album So and with it one of his biggest hits Sledgehammer. This video itself is special in a time before widespread computer animation, everything was done by hand. The stop motion and claymation is still something to look at today. The song is played live often. Like this live version from the Growing Up Tour from 2003. Fantastic bassline played by Tony Levin and his daughter Melanie on backing vocals.
- Genesis, Peter Gabriel's former band released their thirteenth album Invisible Touch. At the height of the cold war and near the end of Ronald Reagan's first term, the band released the comical video for Land Of Confusion.
- Roxette, a pop-band from Sweden (I always liked them better when performing as a rock band.) released the soft-rock/pop single It Must Have Been Love. Also see the official video and a live version. It became a number one hit in the USA and a well-known song after its inclusion in the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. You might watch the Goodbye Scene from the movie again, and then rewatch the whole movie (music starting at 2:32).
- The American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega wrote the song Luka which deals with child abuse. It's told from the perspective of a boy, talking to a person living in the apartment below, pleading, not to ask questions and using tell-tale arguments of a victim what he would say if asked. Only in 2023 "she told German radio Station Bayern 2 the song is about her own experience with physical abuse."
- The English electronic music band Depeche Mode was already a successful and had a large and dedicated fan base when they released Never Let Me Down Again on their 1987 album Music for the Masses. It is not a love song but about drug use. It must have been around that time that I heard the band's name for the first time. The brother In the official video, singer Dave Gahan drives a 1957 BMW Isetta. The many different live versions show the development from a sound not very different from the studio version (here from the record breaking and legendary concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena 1988) to one being performed by a band (Paris 2001 or Barcelona 2009 or Barcelona 2023).
From here we are going to explore different genres, potpourris and individual artists.
This interview with Ronan Harris of VNV Nation about 80's Goth and Post-Punk is highly recommended. He was there when it started and he's making music today.