Full disclosure: in the mid-90s I did a tropical Latin music show on WPFW-FM so I wasn’t paying attention in those years to Anglo-American music, and in the late nineties I had a kid and was too exhausted to keep up, but in the mid-00s, I did go back to fill the gaping lacunae. I’m sure I missed some major tunes, so feel free to let me know what they are.
Ah, the 1980s…foremost was the effect that the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher had on British bands, epitomised most obviously by the Specials’ “Ghost Town” and less obviously by a slew of other songs
Putting together this list was MUCH harder than I expected. This was the decade when I went to both high school and college and began a career in the music biz, and music was a constant. So I focused on the songs that really meant something to me over the years versus what seemed historically “important.”
