80s
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Featured picks
I Wanna Dance with Somebody
I Wanna Dance with SomebodyWhitney HoustonNever Too Much
Never Too MuchLuther VandrossThe Sweetest Taboo - Official - 1985
The Sweetest Taboo - Official - 1985Sade
Videos
Selected and reviewed by Alan More, founder & lead curator · Last reviewed 10 Jul 2026
Where the /90s hub skews soul and adult-contemporary, the 80s hub tilts toward the decade's synth-pop and new-wave crossover crowd: Wham!, Tears for Fears, George Michael, Hall & Oates, Cyndi Lauper. This is the MTV-era cluster that made the music video itself a commercial art form — glossy production, high-concept visuals, budgets that hadn't existed for the format a few years earlier. Whitney Houston, Sade, and Anita Baker also carry real weight here, which means the hub's soul thread runs alongside its synth-pop one rather than instead of it — "You Give Good Love" and "Smooth Operator" sit a few clicks from "One More Try," a fairly accurate snapshot of what 80s radio actually sounded like, not a single-genre reduction of it. If you're here for the neon-synth, big-hair version of the decade specifically, George Michael and Tears for Fears are the cleanest entry points. If the soul side is what you're after, this hub and /90s overlap — check both.
Articles
- New Wave's Visual Language: The Aesthetic That Outlived the GenreAngular, ironic, art-school strange — new wave built a visual identity so distinct it escaped the music entirely. A look at the look that refused to stay in its decade.
- Phil Collins Facts: The 'In the Air Tonight' Myth and the Day He Played Two ContinentsThe drowning legend behind 'In the Air Tonight' (and why it's false), the time Phil Collins outran the clock on Concorde to play Live Aid twice in one day, and how a drummer became an accidental superstar.
- The Unmistakable Look of 80s Synth-Pop — and Why It's BackNeon, fog, and a future that never quite arrived. Why the visual world of 80s synth-pop has proven impossible to kill — and keeps getting resurrected by each new generation.
Frequently asked questions
What defined 80s music videos?
The 1980s were the MTV era — when the music video became a primary art form, defined by neon synth-pop, big-budget spectacle, and the look that shaped pop on camera for a generation. Videojam curates the decade’s standout clips.