80s Comeback

The 1950s were fun, the 1960s were wild, and the 1970s were decadent. But the 1980s? The ’80s were big: Big hair; big shoulder pads; big, booming music; and big changes. MTV, compact discs, and digital sampling were brand new, and FM radio blasted the hits of the day to nerds, preppies, and punks alike.

The other Herb Alpert bargain bin classic, Keep Your Eye on Me is the trumpet legend’s ’80s comeback and essentially a Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis record. Feeling the need to revitalize his outdated trumpet jazz, Alpert made his way to Minneapolis to work with Jam & Lewis, the songwriting & production duo and ex-The Time members who produced Janet Jackson’s chart-topping 1986 album Control. A3 “Diamonds” and B3 “Making Love In The Rain” are the big hits of the bunch and both feature Janet Jackson on lead vocals. The music video for “Diamonds” hilariously features a DJ taking a bite out of Alpert’s last record and saying “doesn’t taste like a hit to me…” B1 “Pillow” is another highlight and is a slower tempo’d late-night jam featuring Alpert and his wife Lani Hall on vocals.

John Fogerty pulled himself out of the game sometime after his 1976 album Hoodoo failed to materialize and he sat on the bench for a full decade, returning in the thick of the Reagan era with Centerfield in 1985. For as knowingly nostalgic as Centerfield is, deliberately mining from Fogerty’s childhood memories and consciously referencing his older tunes, the album is steeped in the mid-‘80s, propelled too often by electronic drums – the title track has a particularly egregious use of synthesized handclaps – occasionally colored by synths and always relying on the wide-open production that characterized the ‘80s…plus, there’s no denying that this is the work of a middle-aged baby boomer, romanticizing TV, rockabilly, baseball, and rock & roll girls…

Mystery Girl is the last album recorded by Roy Orbison, posthumously released on the Virgin label in 1989. The album became a hit worldwide, reaching #5 on the US Billboard 200, and #2 on the UK Albums Chart. Roy Orbison's comeback started in 1986, when David Lynch used "In Dreams" for a pivotal sequence in his masterwork Blue Velvet. So mesmerizing was Dean Stockwell's pantomime of the 1963 hit that Orbison soon became in demand. He re-recorded his hits for a collection naturally called In Dreams, he gave a star-studded concert called Black & White Night, and then he began work with ELO leader Jeff Lynne on a comeback album. The duo tabled the album to join the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, a collaboration with Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Bob Dylan that turned into a surprise smash in 1988. Once that record began its run up the charts, Lynne and Orbison completed the album that became Mystery Girl, but the record didn't come out until February 1989, a few months after Roy's tragic death.