“Who Can It Be Now?”

“Why do I feel like/Somebody’s Watching Me?”

“Here in my car/I feel safest of all.”

“Help, I’m steppin’ into the/Twilight Zone.’”

“I Know There’s Something Going On.”

“Please, please, tell me now/Is there something I should know?”

“I can feel it coming/In the Air Tonight.’”

“Every Breath You Take/I’ll be watching you.”

Ever feel like that the hit music of the early ‘80s seems to be a little, well, paranoid?

This article began with a narrower focus. For a while, I’ve been meaning to write about a certain type of hit song that seemed to be prevalent in the early ‘80s. It was usually up-tempo pop — but minor-key. It was usually danceable — sometimes a poppy distillation of R&B, sometimes new-wave-influenced, sometimes both. The lyrics were sometimes nebulous, but usually involved walking alone (or with your lover, but vs. the world) on the mean streets, against the cold, grey jagged edge of the night. Often there was a sax solo involved. It was film noir on wax, or at least film gris.

Some songs fit that description better than others, some are a little sunnier in their focus, and a few stretch later into the decade, but the ones I first had in mind were:

• Pointer Sisters, “Neutron Dance”
• Frank Stallone, “Far From Over”
• Michael Sembello, “Maniac”
• Laura Branigan, “Self Control”
• Pat Benatar, “Shadows of the Night”
• Olivia Newton-John, “Livin’ in Desperate Times”
• Lionel Richie, “Runnin’ With the Night”
• Glenn Frey, “The Heat Is On”
• Pat Benatar, “Invincible”
• Patti Labelle, “Stir It Up”
• Gino Vannelli, “Nightwalker” (a ballad that peaked quickly, but ticked many of the other boxes)

Many of the songs in question were from movies–the genre dated back at least to the Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive.” Almost anything connected with Miami Vice qualified, from “In the Air Tonight” to “You Belong to the City.”  Sylvester Stallone movies were a particularly good source, not just “Eye of the Tiger” but nuggets like Robert Tepper’s “No Easy Way Out” or Jean Beauvior’s “Feel the Heat.”

Eventually though, I realized that if you expanded beyond the existential moodiness to a more general sense of paranoia, there was a ton to choose from:

• The early ‘80s new wave that played it for laughs, or at least Bowie-esque irony — “Cars,” “Who Can It Be Now.”
• The real Bowie with Iggy Pop’s “China Girl”
• Alan Parsons Project, “Eye in the Sky” (and deeper into prog-pop, Asia’s promise to be the “Sole Survivor” falls into that first “me on the hellscape” category)
• Styx’s “Mr. Roboto”
• The Rolling Stones’ “Undercover of the Night” (even though ripped from real headlines)
• Even Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” now the song used to encourage front-line workers, had a typical-of-the-times lovers-against-the-odds lyric that we heard again in “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

There was Duran Duran. After the straightforward “Girls on Film,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” and “Is There Something I Should Know” came the descent into murkiness — “Union of the Snake,” “The Reflex,” “A View to a Kill” (less nebulous only because we knew it was a James Bond theme), “The Wild Boys” (lyrically straightforward, but with the “loners against the man” theme).

There were other movie themes where the “out on the edge” lyric was less nebulous and more thematic — Kenny Loggins, “Danger Zone”; Tina Turner, “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)”; and especially “One of the Living.”

There was the paranoid streak that surfaced as soon as the Jacksons began writing their own hits. What did “I don’t know what’s gonna happen to you, baby” have to do with anything else in “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)”? Their lyrics were more straightforward than others cited here, but there’s a thru-line in “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Billie Jean,” “Wanna Be Startin’ Something,” “Torture,” and “Bad.” By the time of “Scream” a decade later, it’s the defining Michael sound. Even Michael’s guest hook on somebody else’s song, Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” may as well be his own.

There were a handful of early ‘80s songs that didn’t travel far beyond rock radio but were hits — especially on KWK St. Louis and WLLZ Detroit — with a similar theme (and more in line with the first “grim determination” group of songs cited here): “Last Chance” by Shooting Star, “No Time to Lose” by Tarney-Spencer Band, “Tonight We Ride” by the Sherbs. I always thought of those songs as having special import in two particularly hard-hit cities in the early ‘80s recession.

The recession and the plight of the cities in the early ‘80s were unmistakable influences on the angsty pop of the era. Sometimes it could be expressed directly: “Too Much Time on My Hands,” “Electric Avenue.” Often, it was “Neutron Dance” on the pop stations that never played a song like “The Message.” (The UK allowed not just “Electric Avenue” but the Specials’ “Ghost Town.” And Duran’s peers/predecessors were darker, as well; e.g., Visage’s “Fade to Grey.”)

Springsteen was an influence, too.  Many of the lyrics that followed were mash-ups of “Born to Run” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”

Then there was cocaine, rampant in the music industry in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. From uppers  in rock’s first generation to the opioid epidemic in the sludgy mid-‘10s, there’s a long history of drugs seeming to influence the sound of pop music. I’ve mentioned a lot of songs here, and there’s no intent to make blanket assumptions about any creators, but the Bee Gees have been open about their drug use in the late ‘70s. It’s hard not to hear the song that started it all, “Stayin’ Alive” — all jittery paranoia and fatiguing energy — as amped-up.

So how did pop music get out of the darkness, start “Walking on Sunshine” and decide, “Don’t Worry Be Happy?” It didn’t, entirely. “Livin’ on a Prayer” is the direct spawn of Springsteen and “Don’t Stop Believin’,” but it’s more direct, and so is much of the Def Leppard/Desmond Child/Guns N’ Roses-dominated hair pop that dominated the last few years of the decade, and pushed the soundtrack pop of the ‘80s aside. New jack swing did the same; by the late ‘80s, R&B was more “Poison,” less Pointers.

Paranoia is one thru-line in early ‘80s pop. In songs like “Far From Over” or “Neutron Dance,” it’s tempered with the other, grim determination. In spring 2020, grim determination is what we’ve got to work with. It’s already made its way into our music. And everybody is wondering how “Walking on Sunshine” happens again.