Mildly to Outrageously Ridiculous 80s Music

OK, I'm beginning a (hopefully short) series of posts that will probably only interest readers my age (which I suppose are the majority of my tiny readership anyway): posts about music that I listened to when I was growing up (in the 80s, obviously).

I grew up in Brazil, but I'm pretty sure that the English language songs we listened to there were popular here (and maybe in the U.K.) too. I'd be really curious to know whether you ever listened to any of these songs. I'm beginning with the more ridiculous ones and I'll have another post (or posts) for those I consider "cooler" and still like and can listen to.

Today I was looking through an old stack of piano sheet music I have (most of which I was never good enough to play anyway) and in the middle of a pile of old/classic film scores ("New York, New York," "Lara's Theme" from Dr. Zhivago, "The Pink Panther," "Theme from Love Story," "Tara Theme" from Gone With the Wind, and some gems such as "As Time Goes By," "My Way," "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and even the awesome "California Dreaming") I found this (Italian) song called "I Like Chopin" by this guy ridiculously named Gazebo (I realize that the name probably doesn't sound bad in Italian). Here's the video clip. I don't recall having ever seen it, but my cousin Denise loved this song, so I liked it too and bough the sheet music.


George Michael is not as bad, is it? Tell me please if in 1984 or 85 you were not absolutely crazy for this song as I was:

I liked this one too and I was really disappointed when I learned some years later that he was gay ;)
(Edited to add: wow, I just found a news article from May this year in which he actually apologizes for "letting down" the gay community and then I found out that... he's only SEVEN years older than me? Is that for real? So he was really young back in the 80s. Wow, I'm feeling super old now!Sigh...):



Even back then I thought that this other Italian song, translated into Portuguese, was positively horrid so here you go... CRINGE, a thousand times cringe!!!
Here is it in Italian:

And in Portuguese -- and I just found out that this song had a ressurgence in Brazil in the past decade -- unbelievable! This performance is actually recent (here's the original recording in Portuguese):



I think Madonna should deserve her own post (were you also "Crazy for You" like I was?), but she's so ubiquitous that I probably won't get to do it. Lionel Ritchie too... "Say You, Say Me," anyone?!

What did you listen to in the 80s?

P.S. I loved Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors." I just wanted to say that in case I forgot.