Love & Hate The 80s? Whose 80s?

The NY Times has an interesting article at the weekend where they looked into the nostalgic boom of the 80s and how, perversely, it wasn’t translating into new sales for (some of) the music stars of that era:

The 80′s are not selling. People may be donning the once-again fashionable styles of the era (even leg warmers and Flashdance tops) and dancing to the bands of their youth, but they are not going to the store to buy the albums….

Bands like Tears For Fears and Duran Duran are not selling records and what will happen to the forthcoming Billy Idol and New Order releases?

"The 80′s nostalgia boom is real, but it’s not broad," said Michael Hirschorn, executive vice president of programming for VH1. "It doesn’t apply to everything and not in all ways. It applies to a specific kind of Gen X, self-mocking, slightly ironic thing. For this group of people, you can’t give them straight nostalgia of the sort of baby- boomer, "everything was wonderful and great when we were kids" feel. People Gen X and younger know that things weren’t that great.

Maybe, PSFK wonders, it’s the 80s that dinosaur media folk such as MTV (and even the NY Times) like to remind us of. Why don’t we remember the decade for more important cultural events like the birth of Hip-Hop, the evolution of dance music into House (and even Acid)… Nah, it will never work, TV and print just seem fascinated with white folk with big blonde hair.

New York Times: We Hate The 80s