by Darren Clarke, October 27, 2022

After going through each year of the 80s to find its’ choicest 70-80 tracks it was time for my crack crew of researcher, singular, to consider what he had missed. And boy, did I miss a lot. The final playlist for the decade will be unveiled in coming weeks and it will be 1,000+ songs of 80s awesomeness that I think may lead you to consider if the decade in music was what you thought it was.

This final installment of, “Which Brings Us To…” The 80s, meanwhile, while not providing every song I missed, will give you a strong sense of just how diverse and magical the music of the decade was. I don’t think 80s music is better, or worse for that matter, than any decade but it’s unique and as part of the context of my journey into being a teenager and beyond it’s the soundtrack for a poignant part of my life, a part of my life filled with abject, raw, beauty, failure, fear, brilliance, stupidity and mostly, learning.

The talk on this final episode is brief so as to get in as much music as possible but the general theme is- Life Lessons learned in the 80s. Be it lessons like- People who bring their own pool cues to a bar are dicks or, that unless you’re a bouncer yourself, a bouncer is never really your friend, or things I learned working part time at Bargain Harolds, i.e. free cookies are good, setting things on fire is bad (a lesson I really should have learned in the previous decade). Yes, there was much I learned in the decade. There was also much I didn’t really figure out in the 80s that it would have been nice to get to the bottom of, like- how to talk to women, how to stop wearing poorly fitted clothing, how to get from place to place without getting lost.

Along with the musing on yet another decade of rampant personal fallibility we check out more great music from the likes of Romeo Void, English Beat, ESG, Rush, Funky 4 + 1, Billy Bragg, Nails, The Soft Boys and yes, you guessed it, much, much, more.

Just press play.