Probably no other decade polarizes musically as much as the 1980s. It was the decade in which pop music, having already become big business in the 70s, found its commercial flowering, performed in full awareness of its potential to captivate the masses. A decade of strange clothes, synthetic sounds, but also of ironic play with the meaning of pop itself, in which numerous styles cross-fertilized each other and new paths were taken. In a multi-part series, we remember a time that was more complex and multilayered than many remember.