I wasn't aware that the new Tears for Fears album was out yet. When was it released?
It seems that there has been a concerted attempt at bringing back 80s nostalgia for some time now. It catches on slightly for awhile then fizzles. I guess the powers that be thought that the 70s 'nostalgia' of the 90s could be replicated with the 80s. I guess not. The grunge music of the 90s was somewhat a throwback to Black Sabbath (early 70s) and then 70s fashion started to hit around the mid 90s into the early 00s. Whereas "That 70s Show" was/is popular, the attempt at "That 80s Show" was a quick flop. Maybe people just aren't ready for an 80s revival yet. The article mentions "The Big 80s", but that show has been around for almost 10 years, hasn't it? If it's still on, it would be reruns, I think.
When I lived in California in the mid 90s, I remember there was an article in the Orange County Register talking about the emergence of 80s nostalgia much earlier than one would expect; sort of an instant nostalgia for a time that hadn't been gone all that long. The article mentioned the "The Big 80s" and did a small interview with Julie Brown (the redheaded comedienne VJ on MTV). It was a pretty long article and I recall thinking that they were right. There did seem to be some nostalgia for the old 80s videos and some of the pop culture. So, one could argue that this has been going on for a while.
Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of 80s music. I was still a Led Zeppelin guy and thought that the early 80s synth pop stuff was too wimpy. Now I have more of an appreciation of some of the more adventureous music of the 80s, as the rock/hard rock scene today is boring. The same guitar sound abounds in each song and the singing is off key much of the time. One thing you can say is that the music of the 80s was more fun as opposed to today.
Yep. Today's music is either full of violence and obscenity, weird sounds like somebody playing with a shortwave, trite ideological statements or a combination.
Oddly, I've heard contemporary popular musicians whining about the lack of interest in their music and blaming it on file sharing software. The truth is that this decade has so far produced some really DISMAL music.