Curated category
1980s fads and trends
- House musicHouse music was born in the dark of Chicago's underground club scene, somewhere between a disco record and a drum machine.
- MTVMTV launched at 12:01 a.m. on the 1st of August 1981, with a single video: "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles. It was a fitting prophecy.
- Slasher filmSlasher films are among the most commercially successful and culturally contentious subgenres in cinema history. A masked figure stalks a group of teens…
- Gangsta rapGangsta rap began its life under a different name: reality rap. That original label tells you something honest about what the genre's founders believed they…
- Shopping mallShopping malls are so woven into everyday life that it is easy to forget someone had to invent them. In October 1956, a fully enclosed, regionally scaled…
- New wave musicNew wave music crept out of the mid-to-late 1970s with a strange and specific energy: twitchy rhythms, high-pitched vocals, choppy guitars, and a humorous…
- Amusement arcadeThe amusement arcade has gone by many names over the decades: penny arcade, video arcade, amusements, or simply the arcade.
- Electronic dance musicElectronic dance music, known the world over simply as EDM, began in the nightclubs and warehouses of the late twentieth century and grew into a global…
- BreakdancingBreakdancing began in the Bronx borough of New York City, born from the African American and Puerto Rican communities who shaped it into one of the most…
- Pac-ManPac-Man arrived in arcades on the 22nd of May 1980, and within two years it had earned more than a billion dollars in quarters from American players alone.
- Trivial PursuitTrivial Pursuit, the Canadian board game in which plastic wedges of pie stand between you and victory, was invented in 45 minutes on the back of a cigarette…