25 Somewhat Obscure Pop Songs from the 1980s That I Like

For my 1980s suggestions, I changed the title of this article in the series to “somewhat” obscure songs, because in the ’80s, there started to be videos, greatest hits collections, and a greater variety of radio stations playing different genres of music. So to my way of thinking, just because “Pure” was played for a couple of weeks on a Modern Rock radio station, doesn’t mean that it does not qualify as an obscure song.

The 1980s was the era of MTV, hair metal, and the early years of modern rock. The ’80s were the decade that I discovered that a rock song could be very different than a guitar, electric bass, and drums. Inventiveness, melody, and strong production are more important. If you have not heard these songs before, enjoy!

25. “Pure” by The Lightning Seeds

I can divide Modern Rock era of rock music into two distinct time periods: pre-Nevermind and post-Nevermind. There is general agreement that the success of Nirvana’s album in 1991 and the subsequent emergence of grunge killed off heavy metal, but it is probably less well-considered that grunge also killed off modern rock. College radio in the mid- to late-’80s featured a pop-oriented sound. “Pure” is a perfect example of this kind of music: melodic, electronic, and quite different from Top 40 music.

24. “Let’s Go” by The Feelies

A seminal alternative band, The Feelies are probably a little bit overrated by the critics because they are from New York. But, having said that, I really like several of their songs. Despite the paucity of lyrics in “Let’s Go,” I find that to be a very good song.

23. “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult

I first heard this song when it was featured in a flashback scene in the movie, Singles. It was not included on the soundtrack, so it took me a little bit of searching to discover that it was a song from The Cult from the mid ’80s. To me, it sounds ahead of its time, and the descending, droning guitar lick is very alluring.

22. “Life of Illusion” by Joe Walsh

Joe Walsh fashioned himself as a regular guy, in fact, he recorded a song called “Ordinary Average Guy.” Lyrically, I really like “Life of Illusion,” about being surprised to find yourself middle-aged. The guitar and melody are great too.

21. “The One You Love” by Glenn Frey

Walsh’s fellow Eagle, Glenn Frey, had quite a bit of solo success in the ’80s as well. The best song from Frey’s first solo record is “The One You Love.” It’s a nice mellow song that is typical of the early ’80s: quiet vocals, beautiful melody, and tenor sax playing the soothing riff.

20. “Waiting Room” by Fugazi

Driving around the Twin Cities near the end of the ’80s, one would see a lot of Fugazi stickers on the bumpers of college kids’ cars. Since Fugazi was never played on local radio stations, I had no idea of the kind of music they played. It turns out they play a kind of punk style, which I typically am not crazy about. But “Waiting Room” has a great kind of machine-gun guitar sound, and I like the song quite a bit.

19. “I’m Over You” by The Silos

The late ’80s also introduced the very beginnings of the genre that is now called alt-country. The Jayhawks and Uncle Tupelo were putting out their first records as well. “I’m Over You” by The Silos fits very well into this genre.

18. “Heartlight” by Kenny Loggins

Also known as “Welcome to Heartlight,” this song is tuneful and fun to play and sing along with on the guitar. Kenny Loggins, although dismissed by some critics as a lightweight, carved out a very nice career over a couple of decades as a songwriter and performer.

17. “Diamond in the Rough” by Shawn Colvin

This song was played very briefly on a Twin Cities adult alternative station as a follow up to Colvin’s biggest hit, “Steady On.” It is the style of singer-songwriter music that began to take off in the ’90s with Sarah McLaughlin and Joan Osbourne.

16. “Let It Go” by Def Leppard

The first new album I ever purchased with my own money was Pyromania by Def Leppard. In the summer between eighth and ninth grade, I listened to that record over and over. But this song is actually from the previous Def Leppard album, High ’n’ Dry. “Let It Go” is the first song on the first side, and it gets the album off to a great start.

15. “Who’s Behind the Door” by Zebra

It is often thought that it is a bad idea musically to sound too much like another band. But most of the time when bands try to sound like Led Zeppelin, it turns out just fine: Heart’s “Love Alive,” Kingdom Come’s “Get It On,” or this song.

14. “Cut Me Off” by Gear Daddies

The Gear Daddies are well-known in their home state of Minnesota, I’m not sure how many music fans out of the state know about these guys. But their first album is very listenable, and I’ve always liked the first track, “Cut Me Off.”

13. “Vienna” by Ultravox

A mellow song that builds over a heartbeat percussion to a nice crescendo.

12. “Mama” by Genesis

“Mama” is similar in some ways to “Vienna,” the previous song on my list. “Mama” builds slowly with atmospheric music, and Collins ends up laughing and shrieking like a madman.

11. “Bad (Live)” by U2

Watching U2 perform at Live Aid in 1985, was eye-opening to me as a high school sophomore. To see a band I dismissed as lightweight give an absolutely wonderful performance was instructive in what constitutes real rock music. Go to YouTube and watch U2’s performance of this song at Live Aid and enjoy.

10. “Don’t You Know What Love Is” by Touch

An old AOR favorite of mine, this song seems to be vastly underappreciated.

9. “Perfect Strangers” by Deep Purple

By the 1980s, Deep Purple was considered a geezer band, and they didn’t have the success they enjoyed in the ’70s. But the title track off of Perfect Strangers is very well-made hard rock. I especially like the interlude played in 9/8 time.

8. “(Untitled)/11” by R.E.M.

R.E.M. is a band that I like, but don’t love. I find Michael Stipe to be pretentious and he has an annoying singing voice. Strangely, three of my favorite R.E.M. songs are the last song on the album that they appear on. “Superman” off of Lifes Rich Pageant, “Me in Honey” off of Out of Time, and the untitled song that ends Green (sometimes referred to as “11” because that is its CD track number. I call it “The Strength Song,” because of the lyric, “This song is here to keep you strong.”

7. “Going Home (Theme from Local Hero)” by Mark Knofler

One of my four favorite films, Local Hero is boosted by a wonderful soundtrack by Mark Knofler. Even though I am not a huge Dire Straits fan, I do like his work on the soundtrack of this movie. Here is a quote from a review of the movie that mentions “Going Home”: “Forsyth’s simple directing is augmented by . . . Mark Knopfler’s slow-burning fuse of a guitar score, which uses the entire film as a lead-in to a chorus that only erupts as the credits roll.”

6. “If I Needed You” by Don Williams and Emmylou Harris

Country music fans may know if this song, but it was new to me a few years ago when I was browsing through Emmylou Harris’ catalog. It’s very pretty and there is a nice contrast between Emmylou’s sweet voice and Don Williams’ rough voice.

5. “Anchorage” by Michelle Shocked

An excellent song, this one tells the true story of Shocked reaching out to an old friend who moved from Texas and now lives in Anchorage, Alaska. As usual in a well-written lyric, there is are multiple levels to the story.

4. “Love at the Five and Dime” by Nanci Griffith

This is one of the prettiest songs of the decade. Griffith has a little-girl style of singing, and it fits with the lyrics to this song. I like the guitar part, and it is a nice flourish to add the 12^th fret harmonic to mimic elevator bells.

3. “When the Tigers Broke Free” by Pink Floyd

A great song from the film version of The Wall, “When the Tigers Broke Free” doesn’t show up on that album, but was released as a single a few years later. This song tells the true story of how Roger Waters’ father was killed in a battle during World War II.

2. “The Dead Next Door” by Billy Idol

A great, ’80s album track from Billy Idol. There is much to like here, from the slightly mysterious lyrics through the very ’80s instrumentation, to the inviting tune. This is one song that deserves a larger profile in ’80s music.

1. “Within Your Reach” by The Replacements

An early song by The Replacements, it is heard in the background of the final scene of the film, Say Anything when the two lead characters are getting ready to take off in the airplane. It’s great late night driving music—very haunting and intimate.

Loving the Far Neighbor and Hating the Near Neighbor

The current cause that dominating the news cycle is the U.S. government separating children from their parents when families try to enter the United States illegally. As with so many other political topics, the commentary breaks down along partisan lines. Liberals are upset at the Trump administration’s uncaring actions, and Conservatives are defending this practice as a rule of law.

Recently, I read an article thatclaimed that the United States Catholic Bishops Conference is gearing up to help defeat Trump in 2020, partly because of Trump’s anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric. Is the person who wants strong border security really a bad person? A bad Catholic? Do they not care about their fellow men and women?

A liberal who comments often at the Powerline Blog submitted the following comment to a post byJohn Hinderacker about this issue, which seems to me is fairly typical of online comments about this story

Jane Frieburg

Sure, go ahead and defend the policy. Keep railing against abortion, and then turn around and defend tearing children from the arms of their mothers.  

It's the hypocrisy, stupid.  

And, no, Democrats aren't desperate. Democrats do the right thing, unlike those who call themselves Christians and are behind such an inhumane policy.

I thought one commenter who replied to Jane Frieburg made several great points:

Carl-Michelle Scott

Jane, do you enjoy hating the person you imagine to be me? The person you imagine to be the typical Republican? The crusading instinct is a healthy thing, but with you, and so much of America, it seems to have gone haywire. "I," that is the typical Republican who by and large supports Trump's immigration policy and only is learning of these questionable claims this week through one tendentious social media post after another, works with you, is related to you, teaches you, is taught by you, exchanges money with you, says "hi" to you, cheers the same sports teams as you, is defended by the same military as you, etc., etc., etc. What do you get by imagining, falsely, that I would not care about children torn from their parents and put in cages, or that I would approve of that? What do you get by accusing me of precisely the moral equivalent of this if I do not immediately accept your facts/interpreters as the accurate ones, and join you in moral outrage? Why didn't you, and your media/party leaders, choose instead to come to "me" in the spirit of "this is a problem, that we need to come together across party lines to fix?” Again, what in the world do you get out of this?

People who lash out at their neighbors as hateful because they don’t agree on policy issues seems to me to be hateful in itself. I refer to it as people who love the far neighbor (in this case, illegal immigrants on the southern U.S. border) and hate the near neighbor (people they live next to, work with, go to church with, and so forth). It seems to me that there is nothing Christian or neighborly in Frieburg’s attitude.

I also see a disconnect in an emotional response to policy vs. non-emotional response: “I care, you don’t; if you don’t care as much as me, you’re a bad person.”

Finally, there is a disconnect in what I call the general vs. the specific. I can best describe this by recounting my experiences as a volunteer soccer coach.

For the last seven to eight years, I have coached my children in recreational soccer through our local suburban soccer organization. Including spring and fall seasons, I have coached just short of a dozen teams, spanning U6, U8, and U10 age levels. Each of those teams included at least one Hispanic child, and several of them included multiple Hispanic children.

My experience with the Hispanic children I have coached is that they are often the most interested in playing, they listen to their coaches, they give 100% effort on the field. This isn’t the case with every Hispanic child I have coached, but it is true in general. The parents of these kids have been supportive of my coaching, they don’t complain, and they appreciate the effort of the volunteer coaches. It is easy to contrast these children and parents with some of the kids who don’t listen, whose parents complain most often, and seem to be the least appreciative of the volunteer coaches. Through my experiences coaching these last several years, I can understand on a personal level why people who work with immigrant groups and children of immigrants are sympathetic to their plight—some of my favorite kids I’ve coached have been Hispanic.

When illegal immigration stories come up in the news, it has occurred to me that I may be coaching a kid who is an illegal immigrant or whose parents or family members might be in the United States illegally. How do I as a volunteer soccer coach respond? The answer is in the specific level of the kids I am coaching, I don’t care. I think my job is to coach the kids assigned to my teams as best as I know how. It’s not my job to figure out how the kids got here or what their immigration status is—my job is to coach them.

But, on a general level, I do care. The United States needs to know who is coming into the country, and like every other functioning nation in the world, it needs to have laws regarding people entering the country. If the United States does not enforce its immigration laws, it is failing in its job to maintain lawful social order, which is the government’s primary job. The United States pays people to enforce our immigration laws, and that is a good thing.

To me, this is not inconsistent and it is not un-Christian. One can be genuinely caring of their neighbor on a personal level while still demanding that the government enforce immigration law on a nationwide level. In fact, I think that is the loving response to my near neighbors.

Our responsibility to love our neighbor starts with our family, goes out to our friends, then to our community, then the country, and finally the people of the world. This seems like a no-brainer to me, but is obviously confusing to some people.

I sometimes wonder if the hatred for the near neighbor is rationalized by the love of the far neighbor. In this case, if a person shows that he cares about the illegal immigrant family on the border that he reads about in the news or sees on tv, then he becomes comfortable in his hatred the people he works with or the neighbors who live on his block.