A to Z of the 80s - I is for If The 90s Never Happened...

Thank You Kurt

by Jo Michelmore

There was an exceptionally great thing that happened to the 80s and that was the 90s. Oh what a great year 1990 was. The end of the end of all the things about the 80s that really had to end...we said goodbye to high cut leotards and tights (although Taylor is probably keen to bring them back), we said farewell to the fad diets of the decade (although today those diets get called 'paleo') and we said farewell to big hair bands (the world could never have kept up with demand for hairspray if that kept going). 

The 90s may have been responsible for Colour Me Badd and Shawn Mullins, but that decade was also responsible for something that changed the way we all heard music for a couple of years there, ie: most of the 90s...hello Nirvana. But that begs the question; where would the 80s have taken us if the 90s never happened? 

We'd still be wallowing in a mess of mullet curls, guitars without amps and red leather, Icehouse style...

Or we'd all be manically waving our arms about and defying gravity with platinum blonde spikes, Billy Idol style...

Alternatively, we could still be pleasantly enjoying the strangely attractive swagger and sex-studded  leather of Michael Hutchence and INXS (and this wouldn't be a bad thing)...

But it's probably best the 90s happened, because after the 80s ended, we looked back and learnt that wetsuits should never be seen on album covers...

...and really, no one regrets saying goodbye to Indecent Obsession, do they?