1980s Music and Pop Culture Photography

The 1980s were a period of groundbreaking music and pop culture, with women including Madonna and Whitney Houston leading the female artist charts and Michael Jackson and Prince topping the Billboard Top 100 list over and over again. The band Duran Duran was an enormous hit when they exploded into mainstream popularity between 1982 and 1984. Rock music brought arrivals such as Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and Bon Jovi, with many '70s hard rock artists and bands like Heart and AC/DC continuing in popularity with a whole new generation of fans. MTV helped launch new artists into stardom, especially when, in 1983, David Bowie asked on air about the lack of African-American artists allowed to be played on the show after Rick James was denied a spot for his song "Superfreak." The '80s also brought actors and actresses like Kevin Bacon and Demi Moore into the spotlight, and Whoopi Goldberg was noted as the first African-American woman to win Best Supporting Actress in roughly 50 years, and the second African-American woman to receive an Academy Award for acting after her role in the movie Ghost. View our collection of 1980s music and pop culture photos below.

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