When you endeavor to write a weekly column, you eventually end up finding inspiration in a lot of strange places. This week, my inspiration comes from a book about, well, inspiration. It started when I read Sean Ross’ column titled “When I Stopped Feeling Self-Conscious About Music.” In it, he shares an essay he wrote for a book called Life Goes On: The Lessons We Learned from Eighties Music, edited by Eric J. Shoars. The book is a compilation of essays like Sean’s that do exactly that — recount the personal meaning, or inspiration, a group of Generation Xers got from the music of their youth, especially 80s Music. It’s a neat project.
I won’t spoil what Ross wrote, other than to say the song he chose for his inspiration was “Mickey” by Toni Basil. If that doesn’t get you to check it out, nothing will.
But it also got me thinking about what professional lessons can be learned from 80s Music, and I have a few thoughts spurred on by certain songs:
ZZ Top “Legs”: The lesson I learned from this song is that Top 40 airplay really makes a difference in the impact a song has on your programming. ZZ Top wasn’t a new band when the Eliminator album came out, but when “Legs” crossed to Top 40, the little band from Texas was exposed to a whole new audience who probably had never heard “LaGrange” and certainly didn’t know “Jesus Just Left Chicago.”
Today, it’s songs like “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and other eighties rock songs that crossed to Top 40 that expand your station’s cume appeal. At times, I’ve heard Classic Rock programmers decry those songs as “cheesy hits” and not want to play them. But the fact is, there is more value in a spin for those titles than there is for “Cheap Sunglasses” or “Wheel in the Sky.”
Metallica “Master of Puppets”: When Metallica released the Master of Puppets album in 1986, it was too scary for most rock radio. But as former Coleman Insights research guru Chris Ackerman used to tell me, “Time dampens all tempo.”
Today, the title song is not only a staple at Rock and played on some Classic Rock stations, but it was also used in a climactic scene in the TV show Stranger Things, exposing it to a whole new, younger audience. Eventually, it turns out that if they are good, a lot of the scary songs aren’t so bad after all.
Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”: Back in the eighties, Annie Lennox, with her short cut and bright red hair, was Alternative. People paid attention to Eurythmics because of MTV, not because the band fit into the mainstream.
But in 2025, “Sweet Dreams” was the most played song at Adult Hits, number three at Classic Hits, and it’s just outside the Top 500 at Classic Rock. It’s a good reminder that, especially in a world where streaming is ubiquitous and consumers have access to every song ever recorded, the genre lines we once used to define ourselves and our friend groups are blurring. And with that, the expectation of what can be played on your radio station is changing, too.
If you are intrigued by the book, Life Goes On: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Music, you can learn more about it here. If you have a lesson, personal or professional, that ties back to an eighties song or artist, share it with me at mike@jacobsmedia.com. Maybe you can be the inspiration for my next column.
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Mike Stern is a Classic Rock columnist and Features writer for Barrett Media. He has been with Jacobs Media consulting stations in the Classic Rock, Rock, Alternative and AAA world for more than a decade. Prior to that he programmed stations in Chicago, Detroit, Denver Las Vegas and other markets. He also worked as News/Talk Editor for Radio and Records, wrote about Top 40 Radio for Billboard Magazine and had his own radio talent coaching business called Talent Mechanic.
