Five insanely creepy rock songs from the 1980s
If the 1970s were the decade that rock music thrashed around like a raw tuna fish on the plate of a hungry customer, the 1980s were the decade of the shark; thirstier, bolder, more intentional, out for blood.
What I mean is this: In the 1970s, rock music was usually as it came – raw, less overdubbed or production techniques at all, authentic and often introspective, carved out of the simple meeting of instruments in a room, and the sweat that clung to them at the end of a damn-near impossibly heavy night.
In the 1980s, rock music warped; thanks to a widespread adoption of synthesisers and electronic elements, complexity entered the house. Additionally, thanks to the introduction of MTV in 1981, the idea of the spectacle was in full force, too. Though far from the image-drenched society we live in now, the stylised aesthetics of alternative sound were beginning to factor into how rock music looked.
This relatively new inclination meant that some of the lyrical topics were wilder, more grotesque, more outlandish. As spectacle became an easier way to get onto MTV, so too did the songs turn more bombastic. Shit got weird… And then, it got creepy.
Five 1980s rock songs that are insanely creepy:
Def Leppard — ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’
Sheffield’s finest blew everything they’d done previously out of the water with their 1987 album, Hysteria – an apt title for a project that included the hysterical song, ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’, that was curiously popular at the time of release, and they don’t get off to a great start with the line “Lookin’ like a tramp, like a video vamp,” but from there, the sexual innuendo gets trite and strange: “I’m hot, sticky sweet from my head to my feet, yeah.”
Now, why did you have to involve feet at a time like this?
There are ways to incorporate the idea of sugar and sex together in a way that doesn’t come across as so moronic – take Hayley Williams’ 2020 solo feat, ‘Sugar On The Rim’, where she repeats the title seductively over a 1980s-pop-inflected melody, before whispering “Bitter if you walk away, sweeter if you stay”: simple but effective comparative juxtaposition. Is that really so hard to come up with, Def Leppard?
The Police — ‘Every Breath You Take’
You must’ve thought the same when hearing these stalker-ish opening lyrics – “Every breath you take and every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you” – really, every single one?
There are plenty of ways to sing about obsession, infatuation, and desire. Love can intoxicate you and drive you into a mania you thought was only reserved for Emerald Fennell adaptations or Big Thief love songs, but equating a consistent surveillance with an act of belonging (“Can’t you see you belong to me?” Sting sings, obsessively) just doesn’t sit right with me, and it’s also a favourite karaoke choice for many, perhaps because the lyrics are so easy to remember; if someone threatened me like this, I’d certainly have a hard time forgetting. Any live rendition of this song is excruciating, karaoke or otherwise. Leave it off.
The Cure — ‘Lullaby’
“On candy stripe legs the Spiderman comes, softly through the shadow of the evening sun…” Robert Smith whispers at the start of ‘Lullaby’. By the end, he’s been all but consumed by the dark, spooky memory realm. “I feel like I’m being eaten by a thousand million shivering furry holes.”
While I dream about plane crashes and falling off ladders, Smith’s unconscious realm seemed addled with furry holes. Creepy.
Plus, the accompanying video is as surreal and sinister as the lyrics. Smith appears trapped in his bed, clad in striped pyjamas. He watches a band play the music to him, drenched in terrifying cobwebs; all of a sudden, he, too, is trapped in the conceit of the nightmarish hellscape he paints. Watch for yourself from thereon out; I can’t quite stomach it myself.
Joan Jett & The Black Hearts — ‘Victim of Circumstance’
You might notice something about this list: Joan Jett & The Black Hearts are the only female representation. This gestures towards the general air of misogyny and sexism booming throughout the industry in the 1980s, and Joan Jett’s inclusion here is only to underline the awful normalisation of a creepy, exclusionary mentality. Women couldn’t be anything but sex objects and ideas to stalk, to pine after, to write bizarre, uncomfortable lyrics about. God forbid Joan Jett’s desire to get in on this action.
In the second verse, the legend sings, “But why do they resent it, I ain’t doin’ anything, they say that I’m demented an’ I never could sing,” linking this unfairness back to an image of incarceration in the hard-hitting chorus. It’s a beautiful lamentation over the impossibility of getting what she wanted because of unfair judgment, limitations, and misrepresentation.
Really, labelling any young woman as “demented” is darn right creepy. Thankfully, Joan Jett went on to show them all whose boss.
Dire Straits — ‘Money for Nothing’
“I want my MTV,” Mark Knopfler sings in the opening to this sketchy track, in perfect evidence of my earlier point that the society of the spectacle was well and truly thriving in 1980s rock music, pushing the general discussion into stranger territories. It opens with a promising synth section, but the song delves into complete garbage as soon as the twangy bass comes in. A repeated f-slur here, a dismissive nod to prostitutes (“money for nothin’ and your chicks for free”), and, here we are, at the creepiest offering of 1980s rock music.
Of course, the band intended this to be satire, written from the perspective of the two delivery men Knopfler overheard in New York complaining about pop stars. Sticking up for the hard work you were forced to do, work often overlooked, is all well and good, but punching down just to get your ironic point across is a bizarre move. It came from their fifth studio album, 1985’s Brothers In Arms, and the unintentional irony isn’t lost on me here: Sure, the brothers are sticking together. What about the sisters? Lazy satire and creepy, offensive imagery. Gross.
