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“I’m Dua, and I’ll be your instructor today.”
With its lycra, leotards and absorbent headbands, the Physical training video by Dua Lipa is a camp and a colorful tribute to the televised exercise classes of the 80s.
The song itself is strongly inspired by the disco and electronics that defined the sound of the decade.
The same goes for the biggest song in the world right now: The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights, with its super synth keyboard hook.
The 1980s once again inspired pop music – and influenced artists who weren’t even born at the time.
Its sound is currently everywhere in mainstream pop – from Break Up Song by Little Mix to the 1975 catalog via Heartbreak Weather, the title song of the new album by Niall Horan.
This is perhaps most evident throughout The Weeknd’s After Hours, especially in the saxophone crescendo of In Your Eyes.
“For me, the definitive sound of the 80s is a splashy snare drum and a bass drum with lots of kick,” said Tim McEwan, half of the American electronic duo The Midnight.
The band has been creating pop music for 80 years with all the features of the decade – including great soundscapes, dreamy voices and saxophone solos.
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Midnight says the 80s had an “innocence to which many people aspire”
“Then you throw away those dream synths that create these super melodic songs.”
While The Midnight agrees that all music is cyclical, the current wave of nostalgia in the 80s could be due to the fact that “we miss the simplicity of a different time”.
“Technology has taken over so much that there is something very tactile in the 80s and 90s that people are rediscovering … which could be cassettes, vinyl, old game cartridges.”
Some of the most notable pop songs of the 80s
A-Ha – Take on me
New order – Blue monday
Soft cell – Tainted Love
Madonna – In the groove
Whitney Houston – (I want to dance with someone
Don Henley – Summer boys
Kate Bush – Run up this hill
DeBarge – Rhythm of the night
Spandau Ballet – Gold
Lionel Richie – All night long
The 80s were always an “important musical period” but the influence of the decade “was” really blocked “this time, according to the musical correspondent of the Independent Roisin O’Connor.
Born in the 1990s, she remembers finding music from the 80s through soundtracks from films like Back To The Future.
“We discover something our parents were in and it seems like you are discovering a hidden treasure.”
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Madonna rose to fame in the 1980s and created a look copied by millions of people. She is pictured here during her 1985 Virgin tour
She says one of the qualities of the 80s was the distinct voice – from “Dave Gahan’s dramatic baritone from Depeche Mode to Jimmy Somerville’s falsetto in Bronski Beat”.
Dua Lipa’s voice on Physical reminds Roisin Debbie Harry (of Blondie) – and says that the Weeknd “is obsessed with Michael Jackson”.
For the Dutch DJ Oliver Heldens, born in 1995, the sound of the 80s is “futuristic, melancholic but uplifting”.
Having grown up in disco and Eurodance, he recently reformulated the Italian dance epic Take A Chance of 1983.
He also sampled the staccato keyboards from Yazoo’s 1982 hit, Don’t Go on Turn Me On, his collaboration with Riton.
“The good music from the past will always be there in the future,” he told Radio 1 Newsbeat.
The hook for Turn Me On was created by Vince Clarke who – as a member of Yazoo, Depeche Mode and Erasure – helped create the sounds of the 1980s.
“He approved the sample … luckily,” says Heldens.
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Vince Clarke still plays half of Erasure, which remains one of the most important sales groups of the 80s
Vince Clarke has also had a major influence in the life and career of producer and singer Jack Antonoff, who has made music with Taylor Swift, Lorde and Carly Rae Jepsen.
The couple worked together on Antonoff’s Bleachers Strange Desire and Gone Now albums.
Speaking to Buzzfeed in 2014, Antonoff said: “Modern pop music should just write Vince a check for a billion dollars.”
Television has also done its part – with the colors and aesthetics of the Starcourt Mall in Netflix’s Stranger Things perhaps acting as the most visually opposite representation of the 80s.
The show “came at the perfect time,” according to Tim from The Midnight. “We are definitely living in the same universe.”
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The theme of Stranger Things is a perfect example of the typical sound that emerged in the 1980s
He thinks the Duffer brothers, who created Stranger Things, “have developed an aesthetic that enhances everything that’s going on around him.”
“Our last album, Kids, was released in 2018 – around the same time as the third season. A lot of people have rediscovered us since its release.”
The group is now preparing for the release of a new album later this year, which according to Tyler Lyle of The Midnight represents their “strongest songs” to date.
“We are trying to create music that seems authentic to us.”
The flashback from the 80s may be at the peak of his influence at the moment and, as with everything related to music, music critic Roisin O’Connor thinks that the sound could “run out during next year”.
“When you have artists as great as The Weeknd and Dua Lipa doing it, you have reached your higher levels. I wouldn’t be surprised if the artists soon tried to explore other avenues.
“However, it is so important that we will never hear the influence of that time on our music.”
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