This is somewhat of an experiment for me. The idea will be to discuss and provide links to some of my favorite music.

I think we all tend to like the music that we were exposed to when we were young. Although I have reasonably broad tastes in music, I have a particular fondness for '80s pop, particularly all girl bands.

First up: The Bangles

They had many good songs, but the video to "In Your Room" is psychedelic, which I especially liked.

https://tinyurl.com/y6acdx88

So sometimes there are several versions of videos of the same song which have advantages and disadvantages associated with each version. For my next entry, let's try three versions of the Go Go's "We Got the Beat":

The first version is the one I remember from MTV (back when MTV showed music videos). In this version, we see the band members, but it's a live performance and the audio quality isn't so good:

https://tinyurl.com/yxu6doks

This next version has much better audio, but it isn't really much of a video, as it just shows a background picture:

https://tinyurl.com/y6sqa2xh

And, finally, the version that introduced me to the song, as it was the intro theme music of the iconic movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High":

https://tinyurl.com/y2zg5g5r

I think all three have their pros and cons

So I see YouTube has been messing with my links again. It seems to me it shouldn't matter to them whether a video was reached via an outside search engine or not as to actually play it, it still should be within the YouTube system. As to restrictions for content, these are music videos. It's really silly. I think YouTube restricts access to some videos simply because of things that appear in their own comments section, which doesn't tell you there was anything objectionable about the video, just that YouTube does a lousy job monitoring its own comments section. Anyway, the Bangles video link above still appears to be accessible with a second step through Vimeo, but the third and last link for We Got the Beat appears dead. I can't fix every link YouTube randomly seems to disable, but I'll try if I can.

First, let's try this:

https://tinyurl.com/y6x42bjf

Now to my next project: "Venus". I really do like other music besides just 80s all girl bands, but I did plan to start with that. Sometimes the cover is better than the original. At least that's my opinion in the case of "Venus". The original 60s version was done by Shocking Blue:

https://tinyurl.com/y3myyevh

Now compare that with the 80s version of "Venus" by Bananarama:

https://tinyurl.com/y6ct5fyl

Obviously, you know which version I found superior. OK, OK! Let's take a break from all girl bands next time. Not too much of a break, though. I'm still doing 80s pop.

So no discussion of 80s pop can possibly leave out Pat Benatar. In the iconic movie I already referenced above, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", she is referenced with the line: "We have three girls here at Ridgemont who have adopted the Pat Benatar look." Even in the opening credits of the movie which I linked above, we see two of those "Pat Benatar wannabees" fighting over some pants in a store and ripping them. So yeah, I had to put in some Pat Benatar at some point. I thought about going with "Love is a Battlefield". Certainly that would follow the tone of the videos I've posted so far. But no, maybe save that one for some other day. No, I'm going with "We Belong", just to show you I have a fondness for the sweet as well. The harmony of the children's choir singing with Pat near the end of the video is something to behold.

https://tinyurl.com/y47tvoyp

So, returning back to "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (I just can't get away from it), we find yet another female popstar featured in the movie, this time as a cardboard cutout:

https://tinyurl.com/y52cvuct

So Debbie Harry of Blondie is definitely worth talking about here. Let's go with "Heart of Glass":

https://tinyurl.com/y5ryw2h5

And no, I'm not a complete idiot. Even though it's definitely not 80s pop, I'm well aware that Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" (featured in my first link of my last post) is *not* on Led Zeppelin IV, it's on Physical Graffiti. This was a major gaffe in the movie, in my opinion, and it certainly didn't go unnoticed.

Time for a very well-known, though cheesy, 80s classic: "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" by the multi-hair colored Cyndi Lauper:

https://tinyurl.com/y272k4ca

Now, you really can't do a series on 80s pop without including the Queen of Pop herself, Madonna, who is still active even now after many years and many persona reinventions. But I have become somewhat fossilized, despite only being 56, and really haven't kept up with anything she has done recently. Perhaps the last Madonna song that caught my attention (what was it, 2000?) was "Music". I prefer the early 80s stuff. She got weirder as the 80s progressed. "Open Your Heart" was good for a truly great SNL skit featuring her then-husband Sean Penn punching out Dana Carvey's "Church Lady", though. Now I could go with the usual standbys of "Material Girl" or "Like a Virgin", but let's try something a little more obscure: "Burning Up":

https://tinyurl.com/yyfqr28a

So, let's try something slightly different: a little Miami Sound Machine, featuring Gloria Estefan, in "Bad Boy", which has a bit of "Cats" vibe to it:

https://tinyurl.com/y4l6pxzr

So, it *might* be asked: are there *any* male musicians from the 80s I like? Yes, included are Michael Jackson, Prince, Phil Collins, and many others. But while I do intend to include them in my "retrospective", I'm not in a big hurry to do so right away.

So next up in my listing of what is so far exclusively female singers is the late Whitney Houston in "How Will I Know" (upbeat and pop, just like I like it.):

https://tinyurl.com/y5t4y3ut

It occurs to me regarding my post of August 14 that purists (and I definitely belong in that category) will argue that Blondie's "Heart of Glass" isn't an 80s song since both the song and the video were released in 1979. Yes, but MTV didn't debut until 1981, so most first-time watchers of that video (including me) would've done so in the 80s, so as far as considering that song an 80s song, I say: "Close enough!"

Now the 80s group Berlin was fronted by the female singer Terri Nunn, so I will continue with "Masquerade", which was featured prominently in the movie "Perfect", which starred John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis. First the video:

https://tinyurl.com/y4rzaq5b

Next, the clip featuring the song in the "Perfect" movie:

https://tinyurl.com/y4djbxou

I will also note, for anyone interested, on the last Bing link, the second video listed on that page entitled "Best End Credits EVER!" is also worth checking out, despite uneven video quality. It shows, besides the leads Travolta and Curtis, supporting characters, including Marilu Henner (best known for "Taxi") and Laraine Newman (best known as an original player on "Saturday Night Live").

When thinking about old music videos, sometimes I am saddened by remembering that the musician who created them died way too young. And so it is with Laura Branigan, best known for "Self Control" and "Gloria".

I especially was reminded of Laura Branigan's work when I played Grand Theft Auto video games on my old PS II in the early 2000s. First, here's the video to "Self Control":

https://tinyurl.com/yxrp3jk7

Next, here's "Self Control" as experienced playing as Tommy Vercetti driving around in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Ah, the good old days.

https://tinyurl.com/y2a53rtp

"Gloria" was featured in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

On my next entry, I will finally break pattern and include a male singer. But for today, I'm going with Kim Wilde in "Kids in America":

https://tinyurl.com/y34tr9dg

And this one:

https://tinyurl.com/y36k2okq

So my first post featuring a male singer will be the King of Points himself, Michael Jackson, moonwalking to the classic "Billie Jean" from the legendary "Thriller" album:

https://tinyurl.com/y5lwrkws

Sometimes the coolest videos come from people who aren't generally considered musicians at all. In the 80s, the British comedienne Tracey Ullman tried her hand at making a music video. Hopefully, you are familiar with Tracey Ullman. Her eponymous show on Fox in the late 80s was one of the original shows of the brand-new Fox lineup, and it also served as the origin for the long-running "Simpsons" in the form of short cartoons that aired between sketches of Tracey's show.

Anyway, here's Tracey Ullman's campy "They Don't Know". Look for the great cameo by "Paul" near the end!

https://tinyurl.com/yxpgts5u

I never had a rule that I was only going to post one song per group or artist, so time to head back for more of The Bangles. In my second offering from this all-girl 80s group (no! not "Walk Like an Egyptian"!), I will go with "Hazy Shade of Winter". That song was featured prominently in the movie "Less Than Zero", which starred Andrew McCarthy and Robert Downey, Jr. I know what Robert Downey, Jr. has been doing lately, but whatever happened to Andrew McCarthy? He was in a lot of 80s stuff.

https://tinyurl.com/y6os9tmf

https://tinyurl.com/y2aqxhgu

For my second male artist offering, let me go with Prince and "When Doves Cry". I had to be careful with this one. A lot of time this song is cut for time, but the best part of the whole song is near the end, the instrumental part. In the video, it comes after the five minute mark when the "mirror effect" is removed. I made sure I specifically got the "extended version" and watched it to make sure it was all there. This is a song, like Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" from the 70s, which should just never be cut. I hate it when they treat songs like cookie cutters and cut them if they are longer than the "Top 40 recipe" demands.

https://tinyurl.com/y2vlgc5e

Now, ABBA was clearly a 70s group, and as such, talented as they were, their songs don't belong in this thread. But Frida Lyngstad, as a solo artist, is a different matter altogether. So here is "I Know There's Something Going On". Nice beat, interesting video:

https://tinyurl.com/y6hvfzpl

I was wondering why ABBA aren't relevant to this thread when they had two number one studio albums and eight top 40 singles (including two chart toppers) in the UK in the 80s ?

A comment. Excellent! Even better, a question. It prompted me to Google ABBA to see what years their various songs and albums came out. Had the ones I cared about come out in 1979, I would've given them the benefit of the doubt as I did with Blondie's "Heart of Glass". But the test for me isn't just "Did the artist or group produce a hit in the 1980s?" It is a bit more idiosyncratic than that, more like "Did the artist or group produce a hit in the 1980s *that I really liked*?" In the case of ABBA, the songs of theirs that I really liked were "Dancing Queen", "SOS", and "Fernando", none of which date close enough to the 1980s to let it pass. I really like the Eagles' "Hotel California", as well, but I can't include that for the same reason and although the Eagles made it into the 80s like ABBA, the songs of theirs I liked were deeply embedded in the 70s. You may see some Don Henley solo stuff here someday though. I'm not disparaging the other songs by ABBA, though. A lot of it (to me, anyway) sounds like mildly pleasant elevator music to me.

A weird anecdote here: I have only had one extended trip outside the US in my entire life (neglecting a three day trip to Canada (destination: Winnipeg) and a few border crossings into Mexican border towns. That was a trip with my mother back in the 1990s to Norway to a friend's wedding. Now I am aware ABBA was a Swedish group, but apparently they were fairly big in Norway. Anyway, at the wedding party (which to me seemed *really* long, five or six hours - and, as we were staying with townspeople who were friends of the groom (we were friends of the bride, an American), we had to stay for the whole thing, and the groom wanted ABBA played on the speakers at high volume the entire time. It was OK. And I enjoyed it when the three songs I mentioned came up in the rotation (7 or 8 times, probably). I even purchased a "Greatest Hits" ABBA CD later to get to those three songs. Maybe intense overexposure ruined me for a lot of ABBA. Sorry.

Here we have Phil Collins and Phillip Bailey in "Easy Lover". First, the official music video, which sacrifices some of the audio quality to show "the making of":

https://tinyurl.com/y3pr2zbf

Now, for a version truer to the audio quality of the album, the video activity must be sacrificed:

https://tinyurl.com/y5nxmfv5

And now back to The Go-Go's, this time for "Head over Heels". Always thought this was a cute video, especially near the end.

https://tinyurl.com/y5zcfp5l

Next up: Roxette's "The Look". Once again, really like the ending here. There's "the big pause" at about 3:11, followed by a whole lot of "na na na na nas".

https://tinyurl.com/y6hcmmd9