The 1980s Arts and Entertainment: Topics in the News

CULTURE WARS: POLITICS VERSUS THE ARTS

The 1960s and 1970s were decades marked by radical social changes in America. Many of those changes were brought about by laws and social programs established by the federal government (and often upheld by the court system). Some Americans believed these changes were good for the country, providing assistance to those who had been less fortunate and a voice to those who had been denied a say in American society. Others believed the changes simply weakened the country, creating a society that depended too heavily on a bloated federal government.

In 1980, the election of Republican Ronald Reagan (1911–) as U.S. president ushered in a federal government that held many strict conservative views. (Conservatives, represented by the Republican Party, favor preserving traditional values and customs. They oppose any sudden change to the arrangement of power in the country, and they believe the federal government should have limited control over the lives of American citizens. On the other hand, liberals, represented by the Democratic Party, favor a stronger central government. They believe in political reforms that extend democracy, distribute wealth more evenly, and bring about social change.) During the decade, those in power in Washington began to question the federal government's increased role in society, especially the government's support of the arts.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent federal government agency that awards grants to artists and art organizations across the country. In 1989, the NEA's budget came up for review in the U.S. Congress. Many conservative politicians who held strong religious views questioned the NEA's support of artists whose work, they believed, was indecent and irreligious. One such politician was Senator Jesse Helms from North Carolina. He began a drive to ban the NEA or any other federal agency from funding what he termed "obscene" art. Although the U.S. Senate failed to pass Helm's bill, it did cut the funding of the NEA and imposed a five-year ban of federal funding to a few art centers around the country.

Fearful of upsetting conservative politicians and jeopardizing future federal funding of the arts, some art galleries around the country canceled exhibits of and the NEA denied grants to artists whose work was considered controversial. This, in turn, led to protests by other artists who believed that allowing politicians to judge the worthiness of art amounted to censorship and a denial of an artist's First Amendment right to free speech.

The NEA and the art world were not the only entities affected by conservative politicians and social groups. Musicians, moviemakers, and writers all faced criticism during the decade from those who believed their work was immoral, irreligious, or unpatriotic. In 1985, the wives of seventeen politicians, including Tipper Gore, the wife of then-Senator Albert Gore, founded the Parents' Music Resource Center. They believed rock music was becoming increasingly violent and sexually explicit. Among other endeavors, the group tried to persuade the music industry to place warning labels on music products deemed inappropriate for younger children.

The movement to ban books from public and school libraries also increased during the decade, with seriously questionable choices. In some communities, groups tried to ban the works of such notable American writers as John Steinbeck (1902–1968) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940). In one small Wisconsin town, a group of parents tried to ban The American Heritage Dictionary simply because it included words they found objectionable.

Top Films of the 1980s

THE ART BOOM

The furor over government sponsorship of art in the 1980s did little to stop Americans from investing in art. During the decade, as upper- and middle-class Americans became wealthier, they bought more and more art. Consequently, the art market grew tremendously, particularly in New York City. Between 1983 and 1985, more than one hundred galleries opened in New York, seventy-eight of them in the East Village.

The Satanic Verses

In the fall of 1988, Indian-born English writer Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses. Little did he or his English publisher know that the book, a work of fiction, would cause such widespread furor that Rushdie would become a household name even to nonreaders. Nor did they realize that for years afterward, Rushdie would live in hiding out of fear for his life.

The Satanic Verses outraged Muslims around the world who were infuriated by what they believed to be insults to their religion. The central belief of Islam (the religious faith of Muslims) is that the archangel Gabriel revealed the word of God to the prophet Muhammad. These messages were later written down to form the Muslim holy book, the Koran. In The Satanic Verses, a businessman named Mahound claims access to a rule-making archangel, Gibreel, in order to pass his own laws. The angel's "revelations" become little more than a profitable scam for Mahound. Muslims claimed that through his work, Rushdie not only called into question the validity of the Koran but also repeatedly made irreverent use of sacred names.

Islamic leaders around the world criticized Rushdie, and most Islamic countries banned the book. Publication of the book was postponed or canceled in France, West Germany, Greece, and Turkey. In England, protesters burned it. Riots took place in India, Pakistan, and South Africa, in which a number of people were killed or injured. Charging Rushdie with blasphemy (disrespect for God or sacred things), Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini proclaimed that the author and his publisher should be executed. Multimillion dollar bounties were offered to anyone who could carry out this decree. This fatwa or death sentence was reaffirmed by the Iranian government as late as 1993.

In the West, particularly in America, there was a different kind of outrage. Government leaders considered sanctions against Iran. Most political leaders believed Khomeini was using the Rushdie incident as a means of rallying his forces against the West. Meanwhile, American writers joined forces to protect the Iranian leader's actions, signing petitions and organizing speeches, demonstrations, and readings of The Satanic Verses. They also forced American booksellers who had removed the novel from their shelves out of fear of terrorist actions to begin selling it again.

The publicity generated by Khomeini's death threat catapulted The Satanic Verses onto the best-seller lists. Within a few weeks after the death threat was announced, the first American printing had sold out, and bookstores had received advanced orders for two hundred thousand more copies.

As the demand for art increased, so did the price. Gallery sales in 1984 alone exceeded one billion dollars. That year, 50 percent of all art sales were under $1,000; four years later, the average price paid for a work of art had risen to between $7,000 and $11,000. Top auction prices for single works, paid mostly by dealers, hovered at about $3 million early in the decade. By the end of the 1980s, more and more private bidders bypassed dealers to bid on artworks directly. The prices they paid were ten to twenty times the amount dealers had paid only a few years before. Sales at each of the two biggest New York auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, surpassed $1 billion in 1987, accounting for a third of the world's art sales. The often astonishing sums of money collectors spent at art auctions caused a stampede of media coverage. Auctions became gala social events. By 1989, the worldwide cash turnover in the art industry was estimated at $50 billion per year.

This huge increase in art collecting and investing in the decade was caused by a number of factors. Chief among these was a change in the U.S. tax laws, which allowed Americans to accumulate or sell all sorts of items without having to pay high taxes in the process. Perhaps the main factor, and the most troubling one, was a seeming resurgence of upper-class greed. Wealthy Americans, from young urban professionals to corporate executives, began to see art as a commodity or good that could be bought, then resold at a higher value, much like real estate. Many of these young tycoons and overnight millionaires were simply looking for new ways to display their wealth.

A new generation of "star" artists also added to the boom in art sales. Julian Schnabel, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and other artists who emerged in the 1980s aggressively marketed their work. They actively sought media attention. Their artwork, with imagery derived from the media, pop culture, and subway graffiti, was highly appealing to a generation of young Americans who had money to spend and who wanted something new, hip, and trendy. Many new buyers, including doctors, lawyers, advertising executives, and entrepreneurs, had little or no art background or knowledge. Their interest was based on investment, not on a love of the arts. Regardless of their reasons for buying art, these collectors helped to make the visual arts one of the most vital American cultural forces of the 1980s.

Bestselling Fiction of the 1980s

THE THEATER BOOM

For most of the 1970s, Broadway was dominated by lackluster performances and the revival of nostalgic old shows. That all changed in the 1980s as Broadway rebounded with bigger shows and bigger stars than it had boasted in years. Production budgets and ticket prices matched the size of those shows. In 1980, the typical cost for mounting a big show was about $1 million. By the end of the decade, the cost had mushroomed to four or five times that amount. The $4-million production cost for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats in 1982 set a Broadway record. Only six years later, his Phantom of the Opera cost $8 million.

Theatergoers, who paid about ten dollars for a seat in the mid-1970s, paid between twenty-five and forty-five dollars a ticket for a comparable show in 1983. Such high prices were partly due to the fact that, like the rest of America, theater audiences had more money to spend by the mid-1980s. Yet the greatest single reason for escalating production budgets was skyrocketing labor costs. As ticket prices went up, theater audiences began expecting bigger and better shows for the higher prices they paid. Producers, in turn, scurried to find sure-fire box-office hits, packing their productions with elaborate special effects and eye-popping scenery and costumes.

The Broadway musical found itself revived in the 1980s with lavish productions. If any single force can be credited with that with revival, it would be Andrew Lloyd Webber. The English theatrical composer's Cats, which had been a smash hit in London, opened on Broadway in 1982. The musical, a splashy fantasy about the lives of cats based on poems by the American-born English writer T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), had American audiences howling with delight. Critics were not as impressed. Nevertheless, Cats went on to became the most successful musical of the 1980s.

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(The longest-running show ever on Broadway, it closed in September 2000.) Heavy on costumes (glowing cats' eyes), effects (actors catapulting onto the stage, a giant tire ascending like a UFO), and scenery design (burning junkyards and oversized garbage), Cats defined the Broadway spectacle in the 1980s. By the end of the decade, the show had grossed almost $700 million.

Other notable musicals of the decade included Les Misérables (1987) and The Phantom of the Opera (1988). With advance ticket sales of $12 million, Les Misérables (1987) became one of the biggest musical hits of the decade and won eight Tony Awards. A melodramatic, big-budget adaptation of the novel by French writer Victor Hugo (1802–1885), Les Misérables featured a revolving stage and breathtaking sets. During a climactic number, two giant towers merged to form a barricade heaped with the bodies of rebel students. Lloyd Webber's second musical hit of the decade, The Phantom of the Opera, made a Broadway star of Michael Crawford and, like Cats, won every Tony Award for which it was eligible. Advance-ticket sales topped $18 million. By 1989, the wait for tickets for the show was as long as eight months. The show itself thrilled crowds with its stunning set design, including an underground lake and a giant tumbling chandelier that swooped over the audience to the stage.

In addition to giant musicals, theatergoers in the 1980s also appreciated dramatic plays with serious and challenging themes. The award-winning works of three playwrights stood out. David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross (1983) focused on a group of cutthroat real estate agents who would do anything to make a sale, including sell each other out. The play won a Pulitzer Prize and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Another play that won a Critics Circle Award was Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind, (1986) which told the story of two families connected by a violent marriage who struggle to make sense of relationships that become increasingly disturbing and dangerous. Emerging playwright August Wilson, however, captured the most attention with his cycle of dramas. His 1986 play, Fences, focused on the bitterness of a former baseball player who was too old to play by the time African Americans were allowed into the major leagues in the late 1940s. The play won not only a Critics Circle Award but a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award.

MTV AND THE VIDEO BOOM: NEW WAVE, NEW ROMANTICS, AND HAIRCUT BANDS

The music video, in which short performances accompany and illustrate songs, appeared in the early 1980s, seemingly out of nowhere. It quickly became the most influential art form of the decade. Artistically these videos were a mixed lot, ranging from electrifying to boring. Most fell somewhere between these extremes. A typical video was a quirky, dreamlike collection of images (a "mini-movie") designed to illustrate fantasies or approximate the live performances of the artist or band.

The music video singlehandedly brought back to life the slumping recording industry. It revolutionized television, expanded radio formatting, ignited the careers of dozens of unknown music performers, breathed new life into dance and choreography, and created a new interconnection among television, movies, and music.

The earliest videos were often simply concert clips, but several artists, particularly in Europe, were experimenting with different formats by the late 1970s. In Europe, the shortage of radio stations motivated many young musicians to seek alternative ways to gain exposure. They made promotional videotapes, which were then played at discos and on television. In England, David Bowie became a forerunner in the new form. Other musicians, such as new-wave bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s, also embraced the form, even if they had limited money to spend on the production.

Top Television Shows of the 1980s

The true force behind the 1980s video explosion was Music Television (MTV), which began broadcasting in August 1981. MTV was the brainchild of former radio-program director Robert Pittman. With the financial backing of Warner Communications and American Express, Pittman created the cable network to reach teenagers and young adults who had grown up with television and rock music. And it worked: 85 percent of the viewers were between the ages of twelve and thirty-four. MTV showed twenty-four hours of nonstop music videos every day, with breaks for rock news, commercials, occasional special programming, and chitchat from the "veejays" (video's equivalent of radio's disc jockeys). Record companies supplied their musicians' videos for free in return for free airplay.

Style Over Substance: Milli Vanilli

With the spectacular success of music videos, the "look" of a band or a singer became as important as the quality or content of a song. Record companies began to sign a host of new recording artists who were highly photogenic but who had little to offer musically. Such was the case with the pop duo Milli Vanilli, made up of Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan. The handsome pair, who sported dreadlocks, were dancers by trade, not singers. Yet their 1989 album, Girl You Know It's True, sold more than ten million copies and spawned five top-ten singles. In January 1990, they were award the Grammy for Best New Artist.

Then the truth surfaced. In November 1990, Milli Vanilli producer Frank Farian admitted the pair neither rapped nor sang a word in any of their songs on the album. In their videos and stage shows, they had merely lipsynched. Farian exposed the pair because they insisted on doing their own vocals on their next album. Reaction to the confession was swift. Legions of fans turned their backs on the duo, the media criticized them mercilessly, and the Recording Academy forced them to return their Grammy Award.

In 1992, the pair attempted a comeback with Rob & Fab, an album on which they actually sang. It sold just two thousand copies. In the spring of 1998, Pilatus died in a German hotel room from an apparent alcohol-and-drug overdose.

After starting with a relatively small playlist—a few hundred clips, mostly rock—and an equally small operating budget, MTV grew rapidly. Although the company did not turn a profit during its first two years, its reach was impressive. When it started, MTV was shown on three hundred cable outlets reaching more than two million American homes. Two years later, it had grow to include two thousand cable outlets received by more than seventeen million homes. By the end of the decade, it was carried by more than five thousand cable outlets and seen by more than forty-six million viewers. Pittman's slogan for the burgeoning network clearly reflected the desire of its audience: "I want my MTV."

New wave, a pop-driven offshoot of punk, finally broke through to mainstream America in the early 1980s, largely due to MTV. Through video exposure, the slick electronic sound of many new wave bands hit a responsive chord in Americans, whose lives in the early 1980s were already becoming inundated with video games and personal computers.

English bands and artists dubbed "New Romantics" were a movement within new wave. The high gloss and style-over-substance of these bands was appealing to fashion-conscious America in the early 1980s, and MTV embraced these musicians and their arty, often quirky, sound. American viewers who would never otherwise have heard, much less seen, these bands were treated to the moody visuals and fashion-plate looks of Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (O.M.D.), Adam Ant, ABC, Haircut 100, A Flock of Seagulls, The Fixx, Talk Talk, and others. Not surprisingly, American bands such as The Romantics, Oingo Boingo, Romeo Void, and 'Til Tuesday adopted this look and sound.

Pouty makeup, big spiky hairdos, and complicated fashions formed the standard for video style in the 1980s. The one group that met and raised that standard was Duran Duran. The English group owed its musical life to MTV. In 1983, MTV began playing the highly cinematic videos from Duran Duran's 1982 album, Rio. Almost overnight, it went platinum. By the end of 1985, thousands of adoring teenage girls were packing American stadiums to see Duran Duran, which had racked up nine top-twenty hits, including "Hungry Like the Wolf" (1983). Their photogenic good looks, high-tech clothes, and impeccable hairstyles aided immeasurably to their success, and it was all seen on MTV.

MICHAEL MANIA AND MADONNA THE IMAGE MASTER

In 1983, a single talent redefined the style, course, and possibilities of music videos: Michael Jackson. That year he released Thriller and made recording history. The album spent thirty-seven weeks of 1983 at number one on the Billboard album chart. By early 1984, thirty million copies had been sold, and it was still selling at a rate of more than a million copies a week worldwide. At its height, Thriller sold a million copies every four days. It spawned a record-setting seven top-ten singles, including the number-one hits "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" in 1983. Jackson also became the first artist in history to top the single and album charts in both traditional pop and black categories, and he was the first artist of the decade to have two songs in the top five at the same time.

Matching the high-tech pop music on the album were Jackson's flashy dance moves in the accompanying videos. He was electrifying. His catlike twirls, spins, glides, and poses were perfectly matched by his vocals featuring gasps, whoops, moans, squeals, pops, and whispers. The video for "Billie Jean" showed both with style, as Jackson danced along a sidewalk whose squares lit from below when he stepped on them. "Beat It" was harder-edged, with Jackson breaking up a street rumble and leading an aggressive and athletic line dance. Thriller, which inspired a thirty-minute video on its creation, was the ultimate well-marketed video product. In 1984, Jackson won an unprecedented eight Grammy Awards for Thriller, which went on to sell more than forty million copies to become the topselling album of all time.

Top Singles of the 1980s

By 1984, Jackson was one of the richest men in America and easily one of the most famous. He earned at least $40 million from the sale of Thriller. He pocketed another $50 million from the sale of related products,

such as Michael Jackson key chains, duffel bags, pencils, notebooks, caps, posters, T-shirts, and bubble gum cards. All featured the trademark Jackson image: rhinestone gloves, military jackets, red leather. There was even a Michael Jackson doll.

The media covered Jackson's every move. In January 1984, when his hair caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial, the accident made headline news around the world. His lifestyle was equally newsworthy. Countless tabloid stories detailed his friendships with children, his obsession with singer Diana Ross, his "shrine" to actress Elizabeth Taylor, his dream of starring as Peter Pan, his Neverland estate (complete with a petting zoo and a private amusement park), his habit of sleeping in an airfiltered pod, and his fondness for plastic surgery, which made his face seem increasingly feminine and Caucasian. The constant media frenzy over Jackson made it easy to overlook his true significance as the most powerful force in popular music since the 1960s English rock group The Beatles.

One musical artist of the 1980s who welcomed the attention of the media was Madonna. A shrewd businessperson, Madonna became a one-woman conglomerate, largely through her clever use of music video. Her 1983 self-titled debut album was a harmless collection of upbeat dance hits, including "Holiday" and "Burning Up." Madonna's outfits in her videos began a fashion trend imitated by millions of teen and preteen girls: straps, buckles, belts, bootlaces, hair ribbons, and jewelry (especially her trademark crucifixes) worn in complicated layers over junk-store tights, skirts, black bras, and bustiers.

Madonna's 1985 follow-up album, Like a Virgin, launched her to super-stardom. It featured what became her theme song in the 1980s, "Material Girl." By this time, feminists began to criticize Madonna, claiming her "boy toy" belt buckles and sexy video come-ons were setting the women's movement back twenty years. Madonna stood firm, stating that her performances were merely entertainment and that her complete control and planning of her image, career, product, and sexuality made her an ideal role model for modern young girls, who made up the bulk of her fans. Others claimed her vocals were weak and her dance-pop sound was frivolous. Good or bad, Madonna seemed unfazed by the press. She merely reveled in the attention.

In a span of five years, Madonna racked up a staggering, recordshattering number of consecutive top-five hits: sixteen, including seven number-ones. She wisely mixed catchy dance numbers with ballads. By constantly changing and updating her look, especially in her videos, Madonna was able remain in the media spotlight for the rest of the decade. In 1986, she junked her thrift-shop image and emerged with a toned dancer's body and sleek blonde looks for the video of "Papa Don't Preach" from the album True Blue. Madonna then took a break from music, acting in Shanghai Surprise (1986) and Who's That Girl! (1987). Both films received poor reviews.

However, Madonna's carefully timed absence from music created an audience and media demand that paid off handsomely with the release ofLike a Prayer in 1989. The title video featured a dark-haired Madonna kissing a black Jesus, dancing on a hillside amid burning crosses, and finding stigmata (marks resembling crucifixion wounds) on her hands. Outraged Catholics protested. In response, Pepsi-Cola, which had signed a $5 million deal with Madonna, withdrew a commercial that featured the song in a different context. Madonna kept the money. With typical confidence and business sense, she shrugged off criticisms from the media and feminists. Indeed, by the end of the decade, it was hard to accuse Madonna of anything except being the master of her own incredible wealth and fame.

BREAK DANCING AND RAP HIT THE MAINSTREAM

During the late 1970s, an underground urban movement known as "hip-hop" arose in the South Bronx area of New York City. Encompassing graffiti art, break dancing, rap music, and fashion, hip-hop became the dominant cultural movement of the African American and Hispanic communities in the 1980s. The popularity of hip-hop spread quickly to a mainstream white audience through movies, music videos, radio play, and media coverage. Rap music in particular found a huge interracial audience, and it emerged as one of the most original music forms of the decade.

Break dancing, a mixture of dancing, tumbling, and gymnastics, became one of the predominant dance forms of the 1980s. Incorporating acrobatic moves such as splits, headstands, flips, and handsprings, breakdancers spun on their shoulders, backs, and heads in an often dazzling display of athletics and choreography. Most dancing was competitive and, like rap music, performed by young inner-city males. This dance style began in the late 1970s as a type of mock urban warfare in which members of opposing street gangs, usually Hispanic, tried to "one-up" each other with hot moves. These teenagers started congregating to perform and compete in underground clubs and on street corners, spinning on pieces of linoleum or cardboard boxes to the thunderous beats of boom boxes. In some innercity schools, breaking started to replace fighting between rival gangs.

The dance form hit the mainstream in 1983 when Rock Steady Crew of New York performed break-dance moves in the hit movie Flashdance. Soon break dancing was prominently featured in music videos and television commercials. It was also being taken seriously as a new art form: The San Francisco Ballet opened its 1984 season with a gala featuring forty-six break-dancers, and the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles featured one hundred break-dancers in the closing ceremony. All this commercial exposure, however, led to a watering-down of the form: Much of the original style and charm of break dancing was soon lost. By mid-decade, with elderly actors break dancing in movies, the dance form seemed merely silly.

The Death of the LP

April 2, 1988, marked the end of a scratchy old era and the birth of a shiny new one. On that day, for the first time, all the albums on the Billboard Hot 200 Albums chart were available on CD (compact disc). This was the beginning of the end for the vinyl LP (long-playing record) as CD sales surpassed vinyl sales for the first time. The first six months of 1989 were even bleaker for the twelve-inch records: Vinyl sales slipped from 15 percent of the total market to just 6 percent, while CDs rose another 38 percent over the previous year. With an increasing number of new releases available only on CD or cassette tape, record stores began dropping LPs and vinyl 45s (singles) from their inventories. Vinyl-record pressing plants closed their doors for good.

The change had happened so quickly—CDs were introduced in late 1982—that it left many music performers, industry leaders, and fans shaking their heads in bewilderment. Yet in an era of stunning technological advancements, from movie special effects and music videos to home computers and VCRs, it was change or die. And the technology of CDs was hard to resist: They were more resistant to warping and scratching, had better sound quality, and held more music than their vinyl predecessors.

Many vinyl fans, however, refused to make the switch to CDs. They believed the new discs were cold and sterile, lacking the friendly appeal and creative packaging of LPs. They missed the liner notes, posters, foldouts, inner sleeves, and other marketing gimmicks that came with LPs. Their resistance helped keep the LP alive, but only for a few more years. By the 1990s, LPs had become a part of recording history.

Rap originated in the early 1970s in the South Bronx, where DJs at parties played riffs from their favorite dance records, creating new sounds by adding drum synthesizers or scratching over them (scratching involved placing the record needle in a record groove and manually turning the disc back and forth in rapid succession). A partner, the MC, would add a rhyming, spoken vocal (a rap) over the mix, often using clever plays on words. While most rappers boasted about their physical prowess and coolness, some early rappers promoted global and racial harmony. Others expressed serious political and social messages, often addressing the effects of racism, poverty, and crime on the African American community.

Rap remained primarily an underground urban style until the mid-1980s, when it exploded into the mainstream with the unexpected popularity of Run-D.M.C. Formed in 1982, the trio released their first record the following year and watched it become the first rap-music gold album (sold more than five hundred thousand copies). Their true breakthrough to a wider commercial audience came in 1986 when they recorded "Walk This Way," a remake of the song by the rock group Aerosmith. The album that featured it, Raising Hell, sold more than three million copies and became the first platinum rap album. Inspired by the success of Run-D.M.C., MTV launched a daily Yo! MTV Raps program in 1988. It quickly opened the door for other rap artists, including female rappers such as Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte, and Queen Latifah.

While some rap songs were lighthearted and fun, rap music became increasingly political as the decade progressed. Sensing that nothing was being done about the rising problems of crime, poverty, drugs, and unemployment in their communities, many rappers openly raged against the police, the federal government, and big corporations. In response, some critics attacked rap music for being violent, racist, sexually explicit, and demeaning to women. The 1989 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be by the group 2 Live Crew was declared by a Florida judge to be legally obscene (the ruling was later over-turned on appeal). Most rappers responded to such criticism by insisting that they advocated improving black life through empowerment.

CHARITY EVENTS: ROCK TO THE RESCUE

English pop performer Bob Geldof of the 1970s group Boomtown Rats singlehandedly started a craze for "charity rock" in the mid-1980s. In 1984, Geldof became concerned about the conditions in famine-plagued Africa and decided to organize a relief project. Under the umbrella name of Band Aid, a group of well-known English pop and rock performers recorded "Do They Know It's Christmas?" Released during the 1984 holiday season, the song struck chords of sympathy and guilt with English and American listeners. The song went to number one in England and climbed as high as number thirteen in America, selling three million copies. The Band Aid single and a subsequent album raised $11 million in relief funds, but Geldof also achieved something bigger: He raised awareness of the crisis among millions of pop-music fans.

Meanwhile, in America, singer and actor Harry Belafonte had become equally concerned about conditions in Africa. Aware of Geldof's efforts, Belafonte soon enlisted the help of pop stars Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson to write a song. Out of their collaboration came "We Are the World," which a collection of American pop and rock stars recorded in January 1985. The song was released in early March under the name of Belafonte's nonprofit relief organization, USA for Africa. The reaction was overwhelming: In just four weeks, "We Are the World" reached number one on the Billboard chart, making it the fastest-climbing single of the 1980s. By July, USA for Africa had earned $55 million, which was to be distributed through established relief agencies.

Country Ladies

Anew breed of independent, career-minded female artists burst onto the Nashville scene in the early 1980s. Leading the way for country music's tough new women was Reba McEntire. Her gutsy, spirited country sound, showcased on her 1984 release, My Kind of Country, earned her that year's Country Music Association award for best female vocalist of the year. From 1985 through 1989, she was the top female country artist, with hits such as "Whoever's in New England" (1986) and "What Am I Gonna Do About You" (1987).

Quickly following in her footsteps were Kathy Mattea, Patti Loveless, and Sweethearts of the Rodeo. Rosanne Cash, daughter of country music legend Johnny Cash, was a spiky-haired rebel favorite with a string of big hits, including "Never Be You" (1986) and "If You Change Your Mind" (1988).

However, the most popular country female act that decade was the mother-daughter singing duo The Judds. Naomi and Wynonna Judd made it big in 1984 with "Mama He's Crazy" off their self-titled debut album. By the end of the following year, the album had produced six number-one singles. The Judds stayed on top of the country music charts for the remainder of the decade, selling more than twenty million records and winning over sixty music industry awards, including five Grammy Awards.

Even as "We Are the World" was dominating radio, Geldof was organizing the rock-concert event of the decade: Live Aid. The concert was the most complicated live broadcast ever attempted: Two simultaneous events were planned, one at Wembley Stadium in London and one at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. At a cost of $4 million, the sixteen-hour concert was beamed live via fourteen satellites to an estimated billion and a half people around the world. Before the first of some sixty acts ever took the stages on July 13, 1985, Geldof had already raised $7 million in ticket sales and an equal amount for the broadcasting rights. Despite this success, Geldof and his fellow organizers soon faced a massive problem: how to spend the money. Unfortunately, Geldof's organization lacked the knowledge of how to handle relief efforts. After spending $2.7 million on trucks and trailers to transport grain, it discovered that many of the railways and roads in Africa were impassable. It also received very little cooperation from the government in Ethiopia, one of the area's hardest hit by the famine. In the end, 608,000 tons of grain were stranded in African ports, never to reach those in need.

Spurred on by Live Aid and other charitable efforts, country singer Willie Nelson pushed ahead with his own relief project in 1985: Farm Aid. He was quickly joined in his efforts by musicians Neil Young and John

(Cougar) Mellencamp. Organized to draw attention to the plight of American farmers, the Farm Aid concert was held on September 22, 1985, in Champaign, Illinois, before a crowd of eighty thousand people. The event raised about $10 million. The concert has been held at different locations around the country almost every year since.

Throughout the 1980s, pop and rock musicians recorded songs and played concerts for various causes, including raising awareness about AIDS, the world's shrinking rain forests, Amnesty International (a worldwide organization dedicated to freeing political prisoners), and apartheid (the racially discriminatory social policy of the Republic of South Africa).