6 Reasons to Love the New Wave 1980s

It was the decade of big hair, bad taste, Mr. T, and the Rubik's Cube. But there was way more to the '80s than that: It was the last golden age of pop music. Take it from Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein, who wrote the book on it.

For "Mad World: An Oral History of the New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s" (Abrams Image; out April 15, 2014), they asked some of new wave's most iconic artists — Duran Duran, New Order, the Smiths, Tears for Fears, and many others — about their most seminal songs and found out all about the hits, the highs, the lows, the fights, the money, the makeup, and a whole lot more.

They also discovered exactly why so many fans' love for this wild, weird, wonderful era is as strong as ever. Here are five good reasons they give for why you should love this decadent decade, too:

1. The songs!

Great music is still being made — no question about that. Great songs are still being written. But great songs that surprise you? That change your mind about music? That don't sound like anything else? That are both completely mainstream and completely weird? That only happened in the '80s. It was the decade of "Don't You Want Me," "Girls on Film," "Cars," "Take on Me," "Kids in America," "Whip It," and countless others. It was a time when British glam rock collided with American disco and German electronica. The result was a left-of-center genre of pop music with an incredible longevity. At the time, few expected new wave to last, but now it's hard to imagine life without these songs — they're the new classics.

2. The artists!

Today, being generic seems to be a career goal. In the '80s, artists strove to be unique, to both look and sound different from the competition. Sure, today, we have Lady Gaga, who's really committed to being a role model for the bullied and the beaten-down; however, her method of standing up for them is to turn them into a cult that worships at her feet and calls her "Mother Monster."

We've also got Macklemore, a straight, white rapper who stands up at the Grammys and assures the gay community they have every right to marriage equality. In the '80s, though, there were actual gay pop stars in the charts and on the walls of American suburban bedrooms: Culture Club, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Dead or Alive, and the Pet Shop Boys, to name a few.

Today, concerned parents are all up in arms about Miley Cyrus and Rihanna and every other female star who can't seem to keep her clothes on. In the '80s, women weren't solely concentrating on selling their sexuality (see: Annie Lennox, Alison Moyet, Aimee Mann, Bananarama, Debbie Harry).

Today, you say the words "pop group" and the mental image that springs to mind is One Direction, or maybe Maroon 5. In the '80s, a group of the magnitude and influence of Duran Duran was considered a pop act. So were INXS, Adam and the Ants, the Human League, Simple Minds, and Thompson Twins.

Today, we praise individuality, but Pitbull appears on almost every song. In the '80s, music was made by individuals who stood out rather than blended in.

3. It was like punk, only without all that nasty spitting.

In fact, new wave was a direct descendent of punk, and as tumultuous a time in music. It would be a wild overstatement to say that a direct connection can be made between the safety-pin and garbage-bag-clad British punks and "Thriller"-era Michael Jackson, but we're going to make it...sort of. The original punks who followed the Sex Pistols and the Clash were, by and large, snobbish pretentious art students who couldn't wait to move on from punk once the U.K. masses began adopting its dress codes. These original punks — including the likes of Adam Ant, Billy Idol, and Siouxsie Sioux — went on to form their own bands. So did punk audience members like Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet, Martin Fry of ABC, and Marc Almond of Soft Cell.

These bands all showed up during the formative days of music video. MTV was operating on a Top 40 radio model, which meant only artists of a Caucasian nature need apply. Michael Jackson was influenced by the sound and the visuals of the new British artists receiving MTV airplay — and their clothes: Jackson coveted Adam Ant's jacket! — and those influences were reflected in the music he made for "Thriller" and the videos accompanying it. So, punk-to-"Thriller" — it sort of works!

4. The underground was overground.

The Human League were not initially a mainstream proposition. The opening lines of their debut single, "Being Boiled," were as follows: "Listen to the voice of Buddha saying stop your sericulture." They didn't get any less weird after that. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark — OMD for short; you know them for their "Pretty in Pink" prom tune, "If You Leave" — wrote hit songs about Morse code, typewriters, solar systems, and the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Adam and the Ants layered spaghetti western guitars over pounding African beats and sang about identifying with the plight of the Native American. Dexys Midnight Runners' first single was a long list of acclaimed Irish authors. We're not talking "Hey There Delilah," here.

The '80s was a decade populated by odd, absurd, obsessive, pretentious figures. They may not have been the intellectual giants some of them pretended to be, but they came at music from a different angle than any group of massively popular artists who've emerged since.

5. The Cold War made for a red-hot soundtrack.

The frequency with which Pitbull shows up on songs about the club? That's the way paranoia over impending nuclear war showed up as a theme in the '80s. "99 Luftballons" by Nena is maybe the most famous example of catchy fear, but there were countless others. "I Melt With You" by Modern English is about lovers copulating as the bomb drops and the flesh slides off their entwined bodies. (Gross.) See also: "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Red Skies" by the Fixx, "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes" by Ultravox. We're hardly BFFs with the Russians right now; North Korea's not making it easy to sleep at night — but who's making today's nuclear fallout party classics? Not Pitbull!

6. New wave is the gift that keeps on giving.

That band Future Islands that everyone's losing their minds over? Totally OMD meets New Order. Meanwhile, Glasgow's Chvrches could have been signed to Mute Records in the '80s. As for Capital Cities, Phantogram, Kitten…the '80s influence is undeniable and, in most cases, these bands are proud to brandish their new wave flag. Jack Antonoff of fun. even drafted synth pioneer Vince Clarke of Erasure, Depeche Mode, and Yaz to help produce his heavily '80s-influenced side project, Bleachers.

No one except Nostradamus can foretell if we'll be listening to songs by these current-day bands 30 years from now. But then, few — certainly not the original artists — expected much in the way of longevity from the songs of the new wave '80s, yet now we can see those songs were built to last a lifetime.