spots that they were, rather than becoming the driv-
ing force behind their careers. The well-established
acts that did develop a reputation for uncommonly
imaginative videos (including the Police, the Cars,
David Bowie, and Dire Straits) ultimately proved no
more durable or lucrative than those that did not.
On the other hand, performers who began the
1980’s with considerable commercial momentum
but who had little visual appeal (such as Christopher
Cross, Toto, Dan Fogelberg, Air Supply, and most of
the 1980’s country stars) found it difficult as MTV
took hold to keep pace with their more photogenic
competitors. Certainly, clever videos helped visually
drab acts such as the Moody Blues and the Grateful
Dead remain afloat despite both groups’ consisting
of members who were as old as the parents of MTV’s
target demographic.
Charity Begins at Home Perhaps the best example
of the boundary-dissolving nature of 1980’s music
was the ensemble that gathered in Hollywood’s
A&M Recording Studios on January 28, 1985, to re-
cord the Michael Jackson-penned anthem “We Are
the World.” Like “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”—
recorded several months earlier by an all-star cast of
British pop stars calling itself Band Aid—“We Are
the World” was intended to raise money to feed the
famine victims of Ethiopia. Its roster of featured vo-
calists—who billed themselves as USA for Africa—
constituted a Who’s Who of the decade’s most suc-
cessful performers, including Jackson, Joel, Lewis,
Perry, Springsteen, Diana Ross, and Tina Turner. It
also included superstars of previous decades (Bob
Dylan, Paul Simon, Dionne Warwick) and genres
(Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Al Jarreau, Kenny Rog-
ers). That the racially integrated nature of the en-
semble generated no commentary showed how far
pop music and the culture it had helped shape had
come in transforming itself from an outlet for youth
rebellion into a force for social good.
“We Are the World” eventually sold seven million
copies (four million as a single and three million
more on theWe Are the Worldalbum), and its video re-
mained on MTV’s heavy-rotation roster for weeks.
By the summer of 1985, the popularity of both the
Band Aid and the USA for Africa songs led to the
bicontinental fund-raising concert Live Aid, which
was broadcast live by MTV and generated nearly
two million dollars in donations. If the question of
whether the money actually alleviated any suffering
remains debated, the fact that the publicity directly
benefited the performers who were involved has
never been in doubt. At the very least, Live Aid illus-
trated the unprecedented extent to which the pop-
music world was intent on establishing a morally im-
peccable beneficent image.Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow Like any decade, the
1980’s had its share of one-hit wonders, short-lived
successes, and fads. Despite dominating the radio
and MTV airwaves in 1983 and 1984 with hits like
“Karma Chameleon” and “Do You Really Want to
Hurt Me,” Culture Club and its flamboyant, cross-
dressing frontman Boy George were commercially
passé by mid-decade. The brevity of their popularity
entailed the failure of several acts that had tried to
capitalize on the androgyny trend that Culture Club
had popularized.
To some extent, fashionable androgyny resur-
faced in the heavy-metal bands that became briefly
popular during the decade’s second half and were
labeled “glam rock” groups. Mötley Crüe and Poi-
son, heavily made-up acts that in their more flatter-
ing photos could have been mistaken for women, re-
leased nine Top 40 hits between them, giving rise to
a spate of major-label signings of other “hair bands”
that for the most part proved less popular. By 1988,
however, Mötley Crüe and Poison were eclipsed in
sales, critical acclaim, and notoriety by Guns n’
Roses, a determinedly non-effeminate band whose
albumAppetite for Destructionsold more than thirteen
million copies and yielded the top-five hits “Sweet
Child o’ Mine,” “Welcome to the Jungle,” and “Para-
dise City.” Even Guns n’ Roses turned out not to be
immune to the drawbacks of overnight fame. By the
mid-1990’s—in keeping with one of rock and roll’s
hoariest traditions—the group had collapsed be-
neath the weight of drug abuse and internecine acri-
mony.
Female groups, too, sometimes fell victim to the
nation’s fickle tastes. No sooner had the Go-Go’s,
who from 1981 to 1984 placed five hits in the Top 40,
demonstrated the ability of an all-women band to
hold its own than they were superseded by the Ban-
gles. It would be well into the 1990’s, however, before
another all-female band followed in either group’s
footsteps, and even then the band that did, the
Donnas, made far less of their moment than either
the Bangles or the Go-Go’s had. Although the con-
secutive late-1980’s hit streaks first of Tiffany, then ofThe Eighties in America Pop music 771