A little Weekend Writing about 1980s white guy pop music.

As I’m writing this, I’m listening to Steve Winwood’s Back in the High Life, his fourth solo album, and what spawned his first #1 solo hit on the Billboard Hot 100: “Higher Love.” The #1 hit isn’t that amazing – mid-80s pop with a bit of synth cheese for flavor – but the rest of the album also spawned a myriad of hits that charted in the top 40 here in the States, including “Freedom Overspill” and “Back in the High Life Again.” Honestly the album tracks are a bit better than the chart-topper.

It’s one of my recent purchases at a thrift store – and will likely be chronicled in an “I Bought Some Stuff!” entry in due time – and it made me think a bit about my music tastes over the years.

I am definitely one of those “If it sounds good, I like it” folks when it comes to music. There’s only a handful songs I could say I outright hate. Some just exist, to be things that just flow through the aether and are mostly forgotten. Others become my outright favorites, as opposed to those who wouldn’t really give the song much of a second thought. Admittedly I don’t pay much attention to modern music,  but I figure the same rules apply now as they did then.

But one thing that’s become one of my unexpected favorites is the kind of white guy rock/soul that was prevalent throughout the mid-to-late ‘80s: When Phil Collins was dominating the charts, solo or with Genesis. People like Steve Winwood, Paul Simon and Eric Clapton suddenly getting a new lease on life with some new hits with 1980s sensibilities: Synthesizers, random guitar solos, blaring horn sections.

There really isn’t a term to describe this kind of stuff. Tom Breihan of Stereogum, author of “The Number Ones,” an article series documenting every Billboard Hot 100 #1 from 1958 to the present, called Winwood’s "Higher Love" the fairly pejorative term of “white-guy overbite” music. And it kinda makes sense: It’s that kind of music that is very much Of A Certain Period: The Yuppie-driven consumerist nature of the Reagan-era 1980s in the USA. (I assume that was also the case in some other developed countries, but I can’t really vouch for those places.)

In a sense, it fits. The 1980s were just filled with crass commercialism, stuff that was just made for mass market appeal. Winwood, who had previously performed everything solo with only occasional help from songwriters like Will Jennings, used a fair share of session musicians much like his peers, and had a producer that understood that Phil Collins-esque pop that was dominating the charts. Thus he got Back in the High Life. (My god that’s terrible but I’m keeping it.)

A shame that this stuff is mostly forgotten or mocked. I like Eric Clapton’s 1980s stuff, like his biggest-selling album August, more than the long-standing hits he’s known for. Both of Huey Lewis and the News’ most popular albums – Sports and Fore! – are enjoyable beyond the big hits. Even while listening to Back in the High Life, I’m finding more enjoyment in Steve Winwood’s album cuts and minor hits.

Yet, in spite of all me liking this '80s pop yuppie stuff, there’s one more album I’ve been listening to lately that at first glance might be in the same ballpark but really isn’t: Peter Gabriel’s So.

Yeah, “Sledgehammer” was a #1 hit. There’s a fair share of very pop-friendly songs on there. But for every “Big Time,” there’s a “Mercy Street” or “Red Rain,” which is fairly emotional in a way these other artists aren’t. Which I guess is the antithesis of everything else I’ve mentioned.

I’m still slowly figuring myself out. But it might be weird for a non-binary trans woman in her late 30s enjoying that 1980s yuppie pop kind of shit. But I guess that goes back to the mindset of “If it sounds good, I like it.” Music is an interesting field, and I should probably talk about it a bit more.

(I started writing about this at 1AM when I was tired and being a bit introspective, so I wrote about this just to write about something. I didn't want this to sit in my drafts forever, so I figured y'all might like this. If there's any interest, I might keep doing Weekend Writing posts like these.)