Love Is a Stranger: Why 1983 Is the Year We Talk About When We Say, “80’s”

1983 was a truly righteous year for music of all genres and sub-genres, but it’s here that Euro-New Wave stuff became insanely good, and insanely popular. Since that’s going to be our focus for this issue of Rewind, I will now list all the non-Euro-dance / non-new wave albums that came out in 1983 that are also fan-freakin’-tastic:

Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones, The Chameleons’ Script of the Bridge, Dio’s Holy Diver, Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All, Violent Femmes’ self-titled, Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind, The Fall’s Perverted by Language, Cocteau Twins’ Head Over Heels, Slayer’s Show No Mercy, Bad Brains’ Rock for Light, Swans’ Filth, Einstürzende Neubauten’s Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T., Suicidal Tendencies’ self-titled, Misfits’ Earth A.D., William Onyeabor’s Good Name, Motörhead’s Another Perfect Day, Bauhaus’ Burning from the Inside, ZZ Top’s Eliminator, Black Flag’s Everything Went Black, Def Leppard’s Pyromania, Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell, Cabaret Voltaire’s The Crackdown, Joan Jett and The Blackhearts’ Album, U2’s War, and R.E.M.’s Murmur

Phew… but remember, that’s NOT the subject of this article. The subject of this article is the massive album drop that happened in 1983 that made that quintessential “80’s” sound so crazily, awesomely popular that people still reproduce that aesthetic in music today, from pop stars to film scores.

Kraftwerk showed the world how far electronic synthesizers had come. Then, in 1981, Human League’s Dare proved those synthesizers could be used to make successful pop anthems, like the oft-imitated “Don’t You Want Me.” And in 1982, Duran Duran would do the same with Rio. Then in 1983, the flood gates opened and everyone was using synthesizers and blowing up New Wave:

Talking Heads went full-synth and released Speaking in Tongues. New Order fully embraced the synth and fled post-punk when they made Power Corruption and Lies and absolutely destroyed the club scene with “Blue Monday.” A little band called Tears for Fears released their (criminally underrated) first album, The Hurting, complete with the original version of “Mad World” that everyone forgot about. And the list goes on forever. Another Duran Duran album, Seven & the Ragged Tiger, which is no Rio but it’s also no slouch. Arguably, Echo & the Bunnymen’s best album, Porcupine. Synchronicity, definitely the best album by The Police. Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual. The ridiculous yet eternally grin-inducing first Ministry album, With Sympathy. 1983 had the first appearance, and subsequent shot to superstardom of none other than freaking Madonna. And no, I am not forgetting David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, and how dare you insinuate otherwise. It’s in his top 5 best albums, fight me nerds.

But none of that compares to who and what truly gave the 80’s that 80’s sound. The sound of neon-lit clubs and punk aesthetics mixing with shoulder pads. For that, there’s two mammoth acts. The first is Italo-disco god-emperor Giorgio Moroder, especially his soundtrack work and his collaborations with Donna Summer during the dying days of disco, most of which were actually released in the 70’s. The other, of course, is…

Sweet Dreams

Touch

Eurythmics

Synthpop / New Wave | 1983

After a financially disastrous and musically forgettable debut album, 1981’s neo-psychedelic In the Garden, the duo of Annie Lennox and David Stewart, fighting poverty and burnout, reinvented their sound through sheer force of will to become the masters of a danceable and distinctly European style of synthpop that only they could create.

Today, Eurythmics has become something like the musical version of a meme. “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” the title track off the first of their 1983 releases, is so hugely, massively, overly well-known that it’s almost a cliché. But let me tell you that that synth/bass line is maybe THE most iconic of the era, copied, covered, or imitated thousands of times.

But the popularity of “Sweet Dreams,” the song, as fantastic as it is, greatly overshadows the brilliance that is the rest of Sweet Dreams, the album. It’s full of dark, moody atmospheres that would feel more at home on Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner than they do on a pop album, like the mysteriously eerie “I’ve Got an Angel,” or the foggy worldbuilding of album closer, “This City Never Sleeps.”

Annie Lennox began changing her lyrical delivery to fit the new sound as well: rarely is there a difference between verses, focusing more on the emotional impact of one, perfect stanza, and, of course, the amazing by-product of repetition that increases a track’s likelihood of club floor success. Even with personal empowerment anthems like runway-ready “The Walk,” or paranoid explorations of damaged relationships like the eternally creepy “Somebody Told Me,” benefit from the model of infinite repeatability.

Then, of course, there’s my personal favorite, album opener and mood-setter, “Love Is a Stranger,” with its bounciness mixed with hard hitting drum machines and Lennox’s own backing vocals showcasing her high range and also her playfulness (there’s no way you can convince me that warbling isn’t overly dramatic on purpose). The song is also one of the only two songs on the album that have unique verses, the other being the duo’s cover of Sam & Dave’s “Wrap It Up,” here deliciously turned from its original male gaze into a nearly-explicit song of sexual revolution.

Sweet Dreams would catapult Eurythmics out of their poverty and suffering-artist-ness into one of the hottest acts in the world. They tapped into a zeitgeist that was just simmering under the surface and fired it until it boiled over into every club, bar, and car radio in the western world. Sweet Dreams proved that disco proper may have appeared dead, but its dancey, four-on-the-floor soul could—and still does—live on through its reinterpretation, reimagination, and reexamination by fresh, new artists.

The duo would shock ravers the world over by releasing a follow-up album just ten months later. With the budget and studio time afforded them by their newfound stardom, Touch sounds significantly more polished, and its vast expanses of (at the time) cutting edge (and crazy expensive) synthesizers allow Lennox and Stewart’s songwriting to breathe new, interesting—if sometimes disturbing—life into the tracks.

“Here Comes the Rain Again,” the album opener, uses the new and improved synth library to give the rather dreary exploration of broken hearts a sort of false hope, surrounded by some truly gorgeous string arrangements. But even darker is the starkly moribund “Who’s That Girl,” the shocking first single to the album, with its harsh synth stabs that give the track a goth-rock aesthetic.

Touch also showcases some of the most experimental tracks of Eurythmics’ post-fame career. Songs like “Regrets” and “No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts)” see the duo playing around with odd keys and bizarre mixing and sound effects, while “Aqua” sees them exploring a complete immersion into soundscapes and radical song structure, while still remaining playful, with Lennox’s almost-silly “bloop, bloop”s after each chorus.

The closing track, “Paint a Rumor,” is an 80s 8-bit techno masterpiece. Spanning almost eight minutes, it is a monument to both their influences and who they would influence. It builds off Sweet Dreams’ disco and post-disco references and adds in the restlessness of Bowie-esqe krautrock and the driving, trance-inducing sounds of the burgeoning Chicago house scene to build a origin story for electroclash, drum-and-bass, and chiptune.

So, it’s been 40 years since these albums came out, and apart from being totally overshadowed by their first VERY successful single, Eurythmics, and particularly their work on the deeper cuts off these albums, proved their approach to songwriting and innovations in new wave pop production would last…well, basically forever.

Their immense stardom has clouded our hindsight, making us forget that MTV once banned the “Sweet Dreams” music video because they thought Annie Lennox was secretly a man. How times have [sadly not] changed [enough]. They were instrumental in ushering in—post-Disco Demolition Night—an era of club-ready, danceable synthpop while working at the cutting edge of both technology and culture. In 1983, this shit was WILD, and I can only hope that our future still holds people like a new Annie Lennox and a new David Stewart in the wings, biding their time and crafting their sound, before turning the musical world on its head.