Music From My Childhood

I was born in 1970, so when the 80's rolled around I was the perfect age to really listen to, appreciate and enjoy the hell out of that amazing 80's music. It's my childhood. I went from age 9 to age 19 during the 80's. Those are some important developmental years in a kid's life. Music was a HUGE part of it. I remember getting my first radio with a tape recorder around the age of 10 and spending hours with the tape paused on record, waiting for certain songs to play on Rock 99 out of Springfield, MO and then unpausing the tape to record the songs from the radio. I got to be really good at timing it just right and not getting any of the dj's talking. A few years later, around age 14, my mom came home from work one day and asked me to name my top ten favorite artists because she worked with a young girl whose birthday was coming up and mom wanted to buy her a popular tape for her birthday. So I sat down and compiled an amazing list of names like Cyndi Lauper, Kool & The Gang, Michael Jackson, Tears for Fears, Chicago, etc. Two weeks later, for my birthday, mom had bought me every tape I listed. IT WAS AND STILL IS THE BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT I'VE EVER GOTTEN. Simply because I had no real possessions at that age, I lived to hear those songs on the radio and it was a really sneaky, thoughtful way to get me a present.

I also had a really cool neighbor (Terry Kidwell) who was a year older than me and who introduced me to two things: rap music and Wham. Funny combination, no? The Wham album, Make It Big, was one of his favorites and I soon grew to love it as much as he did. "Careless Whisper" and "Everything She Wants" were great songs. But he also listened to a lot of rap music and passed that along to me as well. Where he got his hands on it, I don't know. Because in small town Missouri in the early 80's you didn't hear rap on the radio. I don't know who introduced it to Terry, but I'm grateful. He soon had me jamming to Kurtis Blow, RunDMC, Doug E. Fresh, Grand Master Flash, etc. Good stuff. I still love the Kurtis Blow album "America". And everytime I hear "You Be Illin" by RunDMC, I think of Terry. Some of my all time favorite songs are from the 80's. "Come On Eileen" by Dexie's Midnight Runners and "Burning Down The House" by Talking Heads. And of course, "Take On Me" by Aha! The 80's gave us Deff Leppard, Guns N Roses, Bon Jovi and even Paula Abdul. Lol.

Point of all this rambling, a coworker of mine came in this morning humming a melody I recognized from the 80's and I spent some time online trying to figure out what it was. It finally hit me - "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You" by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. During all of my searching and thinking, I stumbled across this website which lists the Billboard Top 100 for each year from 1980 - 89. I thought you might enjoy looking through them as much as I did. Find them here

And now I will leave you with video I found on YouTube this morning... 10 minutes of little 80's video snippets.