Popular Nostalgia

You are browsing the archives of 1980s.

This Queen album, with the title track “A Kind of Magic” came out in 1986 – the video above is Freddie Mercury and Queen playing “A Kind of Magic” live at Budapest in that very year.
Queen were really rather good, weren’t they.
This track reminds me of my 1980s childhood perhaps more than any other.
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The Thompson Twins released this classic anti-drugs rant in 1985, but aside from its important message to the kids, it is a classic tune, with the most instantly catchy and incredible base-line – ooh ooh ooh ooh ow ooh ooh ooh ow.
He’s not one for sympathy though, old Doctor Dream, so don’t mess with him. [...]

Mona Lisa the film was nominated for an Oscar and Bob Hoskins performance won many other awards. It tells the tale of a man released from prison who is given a job as a driver for an up-market prostitute. It’s very London – though, the seedy side thereof. The film is well shot and shows [...]

I watched “How to Get Ahead in Advertising” for the first time last night. Everything about it is so Eighties – the discontentment with the rat race, the power-suiting secretary, the smoking indoors and the Range Rover in the middle of London.
Richard E. Grant plays the madman very well indeed and that boil is absolutely [...]

The Derby has been run on the Downs near Epsom since 1780 and is named after Edward Smith Stanley, the 12th Earl of Derby. The original race was The Oaks, named after Derby’s estate, and was exclusively for three-year-old fillies. The race became so successful that The Derby was created to find the best colts [...]

Absolutely awesome song. “Money for nothing and chicks for free” – what a slogan. I love calling people “yo-yos”. Sting’s vocals on the track are really memorable and stamp the era all over the thing.
I remember my Dad getting the album Brothers In Arms and listening to it in the car all the time. Sing [...]

Moonwalker was released in 1999 as a strange way of linking together a string of Michael Jackson’s songs. It was a success and feature in a number of Christmas repeats to this day.
All I really remember about this film is the scene where Michael Jackson takes on the now embattled Wesley Snipes in a pop [...]

The cartoon series that most of us will remember ran from 1983 until 1990 and was a US production. The popular 80’s cartoon “Alvin and the Chipmunks” – featured the Chipmunks as a band with Alvin as the popular, good-looking one, Simon as the intellectual and Theodore as the cute baby-faced brother. Dave was their [...]

The pythons were: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin and they broadcast on the BBC from 1969 to 1974. Their madcap approach to comedy broke all the boundaries and they were as controversial as they were successful.
If I could, I would play every Python episode and film in [...]

Danger Mouse and Penfold used to solve mysteries and crimes together zooming around in their ace yellow supercar. Danger Mouse made eye-patches cool waaay before Gabrielle. The walrus boss-man, Colonel K, instructs the British, white mouse to save the day from evil fiends and master crooks. The arch nemesis is Baron Silas Greenback (a frog) [...]

The Getalong Gang is a fine exemplar of everything that a cartoon should be: informative, fun and featuring a moose AND a caboose.
2 words you don’t often hear in the same sentence these days, more’s the pity, are ‘moose’ and ‘caboose’. A caboose is of course the single train cart club house that the getalong [...]

Allo Allo is a farcical comedy about a French cafe owner juggling the secrets of French, British and German wartime interests -as well as his own. The show ran from 1982 to 1992 and followed the progress of Rene who has to hide paintings for different German factions, act for different Resistance factions, hide two [...]

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This is the anthem to 1983. As The Eurythmics, Annie Lennox and her companion, David A. Stewart, marked out the competitive and money-grabbing decade as their target and hit bullseye with the reversed-bass-track riff -now famous throughout the world. Annie Lennox is one of the twentieth century’s best singers and [...]

Your Dad did it at a party, you copied. Mr Blobby did it. Most charity appeals did it on the ir music videos. The genesis walk has been recreated over fifty times on youtube at least. Who knows how many times the scourge has affected weddings, parties and social gatherings. Here for your comparison -the [...]

“I’ll have a ‘P’ please, Bob!”
“I’ll have an ‘E’ please, Bob!”
Oh, how we laughed.
Seriously, though, Blockbusters was great TV. Students would play for weeks, in pairs, or solo, and would always be accompanied by a furry mascot, eventually, they would win a budget prize, like a “Steam Iron” or a trip to Bognor Regis, if [...]