Top Ten Thursdays - 80's songs

I'm slightly crazy as I've joined another blogging challenge, but I couldn't resist this one as I love doing lists of favourite things. This challenge is organised by the lovely Tamara Gerber at Confessions of a part-time working mom (click on the blog title to go to her site and see what others have come up with)

So I found this weeks challenge extremely challenging - limiting my favourite 80's songs to only 10! I was a teenager in the 80's so this is the era that is really the soundtrack of my life - in the 80's I became a teenager, moved out of home, and started nursing.

I started by writing down every song that came to mind easily and that resulted in way too many, but interestingly it also showed that a few of the songs that I thought were 80's actually weren't - examples being Snap's Cult of Snap, Paula Abdul's Rush Rush (memories of slow dances at Bay Rock in Burnie), and Cold Chisel's Khe Sahn.

Slightly cheating but I have to mention a few of the songs that I left out with great difficulty - I ended up having to sit and listen to the songs and think which one's I couldn't live without if they were the only songs I could take to a desert island (my husband's suggestion). Shockingly for an Aussie girl no John Farnham songs made the cut, but if they had it would have been Please Don't Ask me from 1980. I can't believe there are no Wham or George Michael songs in my top ten as I loved them and it would have been A Different Corner from 1986. A song that I used to love listening to when, as a teenager, I thought my heart had been broken was Johnny Logan's Hold Me Now from 1987 - he won Eurovision with it but got chopped from my top ten. Others that missed the cut; Centrefold - J Geils Band (1981), Beds are Burning - Midnight Oil (1987), Separate Lives - Phil Collins (1985), I Love Rock and Roll - Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (1981), I was only 19 - Redgum (1983), and the last one to be cut was Missing You - John Waite (1984).

After reading all those fabulous songs you're starting to wonder what I could possibly have put in my list - well wait no longer. The top three were very easy and that is their correct order, but 4 - 10 are in no particular order but are ingrained in my psyche.

Here is my top ten in all it's glory with a selected few videos included:

10. Working Class Man - Jimmy Barnes (1985)

• Was lucky enough to see the man himself perform this in 2008 at the Toast Festival of all things Australian in London,

9. Through the Barricades - Spandau Ballet (1986)

8. Crazy For You - Madonna (1985)

7. Who Wants To Live Forever - Queen (1986)

• From the fabulous film Highlander with the gorgeous Christopher Lambert - this album by Queen (A Kind of Magic) had so many great songs that it was difficult to limit to just one.

6. Love is a Battlefield - Pat Benatar (1983)

5. Reckless - Australian Crawl (1983)

4. Every Rose Has it's Thorn - Poison (1988)

3. Wild Boys - Duran Duran ((1984)

• My favourite group ever and my room used to be covered in posters of the boys, but especially Simon Le Bon as he is gorgeous.

2. Bring Me Some Water - Melissa Etheridge (1988)

• Finally got to see Melissa in concert last year in London and this was the song everyone was waiting for, even though she has so many great ones. It is definitely the best concert I have ever been to as she has such energy and is an incredible singer and musician.

1. Tainted Love - Soft Cell (1981)

• Soft Cell weren't the first to record this song and they weren't the last, but they are the only one's for me, and definitely not Marilyn Manson's version.
• I used to have this turned up in my bedroom whilst trying to drown out my brother's music from the neighbouring bedroom.

That's it, my top ten 80's songs - even now loooking at the lsit I'm wishing I could add others. Do you agree with any of them? What would you include in yours? Why don't you see what my fellow bloggers came up with in their top ten:

1:  Measurements of Merriment
2:  Confessions of a part-time working mom
3:  The Last Rain Girl
4:  The Bergham Chronicles

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and listen to some of your favourite music.

Pamela & Ken

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