Totally 80s

Like Omigod! The 80s Pop Culture Box (Totally) is a seven-disc, 142-track box set of popular music hits of the 1980s. Released by Rhino Records in 2002, the box set was based on the success of Have a Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box, Rhino's box set covering the 1970s. Like Omigod! includes a 90-page booklet of cultural comment, a timeline for the decade, and liner notes for the tracks included in the set. As does Have a Nice Decade, the tracks tend to be from the lesser-known artists who were one-hit wonders, although music from the best-selling artists of the era are also included. In addition, many of the 1980s musical styles — rock, pop, country pop, new wave, funk, disco and rhythm and blues — are represented.

Remakes can be atrocious wastes of wax: subpar carbon copy re-treads dressed up as calculated idolatry, or deconstructionist reconfigurations basking in the laziness of lyrics already written. However, two of the greatest rewrites in history belong to Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The treatments of Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded By the Light" and "For You" included here create a wholly unique variation on the stark, earthy originals by flipping the tracks and exposing the soft, white underbelly, then piling on excessive musical ornamentation like a master filmmaker visualizing a novel, blowing the inspiration at the nucleus into a bowdlerized paronomasia of sonic perfection.