Why was the saxophone such a prominent instrument in 80's pop music?

9 of the coolest wrote:

Nine of the best sax solos are, according to this list—sax player names noted in the link:

1. Gerry Rafferty - 'Baker Street'

2. Billy Joel - 'Just the Way You Are'

3. Sade - 'Smooth Operator'

4. George Michael - 'Careless Whisper'

5. David Bowie - 'Modern Love'

6. Duran Duran - 'Rio'

7. Bruce Springsteen - 'Born to Run'

8. Lou Reed - 'Walk on the Wild Side'

9. Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes - '(I've Had the) Time of My Life'

https://www.smoothradio.com/features/best-saxophone-songs-playlist/

This list is crap without Rindy Ross.

The lost boys saxaphone guy was awesome

It wasn't so prominent. You just cherry-picked a list of saxophone songs from a 10 year period. You can find them in any decade.

It's not a great instrument - it's clunky, hard to play skillfully, only makes one note at a time and only one tone. Most pop use makes exaggerated use of the wind aspect to sound like the player is breathing heavily. A few bad vocalists do that too.

Sax is one of the archaic classical instruments that wouldn't be around anymore without the American tradition of marching bands at football games. It was taught widely in schools until funding started drying up.

You're just listening to all the wrong stuff. Check out Steve Mackay, saxophonist for the Stooges and others.

Best known for his work on the Fun House (The Stooges album). Also on the song "Johanna", Kill City (album) with Iggy Pop and guitarist James Williamson. And this stuff dates back to 1970. That'll change your tune.

Much better a wailing guitar than a wailing saxophone, as per this masterpiece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cw1ng75KP0

Fck I miss the 80s.

Bad Wigins wrote:

It wasn't so prominent. You just cherry-picked a list of saxophone songs from a 10 year period. You can find them in any decade.

It's not a great instrument - it's clunky, hard to play skillfully, only makes one note at a time and only one tone. Most pop use makes exaggerated use of the wind aspect to sound like the player is breathing heavily. A few bad vocalists do that too.

Sax is one of the archaic classical instruments that wouldn't be around anymore without the American tradition of marching bands at football games. It was taught widely in schools until funding started drying up.

You know nothing about the instrument, or indeed about music. Or much else as far as I can see. Your confidence in your ignorance is breathtaking. There would be no jazz without the saxophone, where it has been distinguished by levels of skill and creativity to match any player on any instrument in any other genre. Most melodies require only a single note and it is thus no more limited than the human voice or any other horn instrument in its melodic capacity. Harmony or chordal instruments typically perform a different musical function. But clearly you are impressed by instruments that make as much noise as possible. Like the sound of your own voice. And only the ignorant and the non-musical would judge any instrument by its worst practitioners. An instrument is just that - an instrument - it is not the player, and the player is everything. You embarrass yourself every time you open your mouth.

I agree with you (above). I don't see how the saxophone is any worse than a clarinet. Having said that, I don't really like it for some reason. I didn't know there would be no jazz without the saxophone. This is one of my favourite songs, no saxophone in it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a01QQZyl-_I

I learnt the bass line before I quit.

Guys guys guys this is not meant to be a discussion on the basic value of the saxophone as an instrument. In the 80's (and yes, late 70's and early 90's shoulder periods) we saw an overwhelming prevalence in us american pop music and pop movies of a very particular and distinct STYLE of saxophone music. I've elsewhere in this thread termed this as "wailing" sax solo. Those of you referencing old jazz and earlier-than-80's Rolling Stones songs are missing the point. I'm not talking about Charlie Parker style sax here, nor the sax solos of Can't you hear me knockin.

The sax style under present discussion here is specifically the WAILING sax. You all know exactly what I'm talking about, unless maybe you were born after 1992. It's saccharine. It's cheesy. Hearing one stirs up in your mind images of a woman with frizzed-out hair wearing a business suit with linebacker shoulder pads and shots of the steamy manhattan skyline at night. My curiosity is toward why this fairly specific kind of smooth, wailing sax solo flared up like a herpes outbreak over this one ten (or twelve or fourteen) year period and then died off seemingly overnight. Yes trends come and go. But that particular one seems to me SO specific to this ONE time period during which it seemed to be everywhere you looked. You couldn't escape it. I mean sure, we had boy bands in the 90s and such, that was a preposterous touchstone of that era. But we still have boy bands today. They didn't just vanish overnight.

To my mind, that particular smooth-jazz romance-saxophone solo absolutely defines the decade of the 80's in a way that I cannot match to any other time period a comparable single trait.

Please don’t play fast and loose with the truth like Obama, Hillary, or any of the dim-witted new school clowns like Alexandria. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon prominently featured the sax on both “Money” and “Us and Them.” This album was released in 1973, which is clearly not the late 70’s. Get your facts straight.

Y’all wrote:

Y’all need to get your decades straight. ‘75 (Born to Run) and ‘94 (Run Around) are not the eighties. Don’t be like the president—truth and accuracy matter.

I like the notion that Clarence Clemons inspired the trend. The sax solo from Jungleland was playing in my head as I was going to sleep last night, coincidentally. So good.

Anyway, I think the whole premise of the thread is wrong, and that sax solos were just as popular (& likely better) in the late 70s (Springsteen, Van Morrison, Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Chicago, etc.) as the 80s. Think “Young Americans” (1975).

Gladwell, of the debunked (moronic) Tall Kenyan running theory, gets wrecked again.

Armstronglivs wrote:

You know nothing about the instrument, or indeed about music. Or much else as far as I can see. Your confidence in your ignorance is breathtaking.

You should really try to find something you like and focus on that. It's not healthy to make a habit of spewing venom and getting yourself worked up.

I know you think it hurts me too, but you should think again and not make assumptions. Even if it did, is it worth the harm you do to yourself? Is your life really better like that? Sacrifice your own peace of mind just to try to get at me?

I'm really looking out for you here. Obsession isn't good for you and bad manners will lead you to bad places. You can be better if you try.

You belong to the city wrote:

The sax style under present discussion here is specifically the WAILING sax.

simulated human voice, as I more or less explained already. Useless, difficult instrument (clarinet being even worse doesn't save it) but a glut of skilled players who learned in school bands, found a niche in pop music, which is by definition cheesy. It's not good music, it's just catchy, and wailing and other emotive acts make a good hook.

The emotive singer who moans and cries and howls is the standard hook. The 80's were huge on that too, that's how Michael Bolton and that guy from Simply Red made it. Simulating that with an instrument puts a twist on it that seems different and stands out, and breathy, throaty sax is the instrument most suited for it.

(certain people who want to be offended will find a way to be offended by this, I'm sure. But it's true, like it or not.)

You lead with your chin. And you wonder why it's such a tempting target. If you simply belched you would have more to say than the rubbish you insist in spouting on a subject you know nothing about. And I say that as a professional musician for over twenty years.

The discussion is not about the virtues or otherwise of the instrument - and some express a view about that undeterred by their ignorance of its substantial lineage in genres other than pop - but the style of music in which it was adopted at a given period, which was the eighties. The saxophone is a melody instrument; as such it is also capable of expressing emotion - like the voice - in a way that is powerful and expressive. For music producers I dare say it was a rather obvious choice for incorporating into pop songs as a solo 'hook' for the listener. It was a different sound from the typical guitar solo, less 'brassy' than a trumpet, more powerful or 'sexy' than a flute, and more voice-like than a keyboard. It added something extra to the vocal line. The saxophone got the gig. But styles and fashions in music change. The eighties 'sound', as many remember it now, seems dated - and so do the accompanying saxophone solos. But who is to say it won't feature again in a more modern genre, in a way that suits the ears of listeners today, while continuing to draw the ear as it always has, with a distinctive and often seductive sense of melody?

I too.

Banned. wrote:

It wasn't just the saxophone was it

What was the instrument dexys midnight runners played

Brass and wind instruments seemed to be the in-thing

Come on Eileen is marked by a violin solo, which is neither a brass nor a wind instrument.

The Butler Brothers wrote:

Nobody has mentioned them yet, but the Psychedelic Furs and their sax players Duncan Kilburn and Mars Williams deserve to be in this conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xsEOGRENb0

The Furs were the best band to consistently use the sax. It was a perfect counterpane to RIchard Butler's bass vocals.

INXS had it down as well

I just had finished listening to Haircut 100 Love Plus One when I saw this thread. It has the perquisite saxophone solo!