80s MUSIC A CHC 2D Canadian History Presentation

MUSIC FORMATS another market that saw big shifts in the way consumers used its product was the music industry though introduced in the late seventies by Sony, the portable cassette player – or “Walkman” — became an essential part of everyday life cassettes replaced vinyl records as the dominant format for music… but it didn’t last in 1985, a more compact version of the laserdisc got adopted by the music world as the compact disc remastering and box sets soon followed

LENNON the biggest music story at the beginning of the decade was the assassination of John Lennon Lennon was returning from a radio station to promote his first record in five years when he was shot dead on the way to his doorstep millions mourned the loss

NEW WAVE the early 80s also saw a new genre of music: New Wave New Wave was a combination of disco’s energy mixed, punk’s return to guitar rock, and the synth sound key acts included Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Prince and INXS New Wave – and all the pop of the early 80s – is notable for its flair and dedication to image… a dedication that was driven by another new development in the music industry: MTV

MTV Music Television (or MTV for short) launched in 1981 with one of the most effective advertising campaigns ever each television commercial ran for 15 seconds and had some music celebrity looking into the camera and saying they wanted their MTV two commercials ran in every slot because the CRTC had limited US broadcasts in Canada, Canadian broadcasters copied MTV with a similar station of their own

MTV MTV was the first and only television network to show music videos all day long since the library of music videos wasn’t large at the start, MTV began airing whatever they could get — meaning that it ignored the limitations of the format station and allowed audiences to hear hits of all genres videos grew better very quickly in order to stand out Duran Duran shot “Rio” in exotic Brazil, Peter Gabriel used stop animation, Robert Palmer used fashion models — and then there was Michael Jackson

JACKSON-MANIA Michael Jackson, youngest of the Jackson 5, had gone solo in 1979 in 1982, his album Thriller broke all chart records “Billie Jean” was the first video (featuring a tiger), but it wasn’t that song or “Beat It” that got people’s attention for the title track, Jackson turned to good friend Steven Spielberg but Spielberg had to pass it on to Francis Ford Coppola “Thriller” was so popular it sold a ‘making of the video’ video to fans!

CANADIAN ROCK new stars were rising out of Canada too Canadian teens were dividing themselves between Bryan Adams and Corey Hart, both of whom had big hits in the 80s at the end of the decade, Colin James and Jeff Healey were competing for top Canadian blues-rocker from Quebec, we got Mitsou from New Brunswick, we got Gino Vinelli and from Toronto, we got this guy

WEIRD AL Al Yanokvic was a Toronto-born, accordion-playing architecture student who enjoyed the radio program Doctor Dimento Dimento played “novelty records” and Al began to send in his own songs to get on the record Al’s specialty was parodies using other people’s songs with his lyrics on top in 1983, Yankovic got permission from Michael Jackson to use “Beat It” and it became an international hit