And this is why the Berlin Wall fell

Ever since I made those two homage mixtapes to the movie Call Me by Your Name (poor, murderous, cannibalistic Armie Hammer, we hardly knew ye), I have been in a '80s Europop groove. I have done my damnedest to avoid '80s nostalgia even when it surrounded me, overwhelmed me, and dismayed me. The 1980s holds such an exalted place in the memory and imagination of so many. And yet I still prefer the 1970s.

Oh don't get me wrong: Even as ridiculous and ultimately predictable as '80s style was (I had an artist friend who once described all '80s visuals as being based on the shape of a triangle), it was infinitely less ugly than 1970s style--both early '70s earth-toned dirty hippie style and late '70s disco extravaganza coke-and-polyester style, neither of which have not aged well. Much like yours truly. Baddabing!

New Wave and electropop can be just as predictable, riddled with sound effect and vocal cliches. (Paul Young's "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down" comes to mind as does Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night.") Although it sounds so much more modern than '70s pop, ultimately so much of what we view as uniquely '80s and modern had its origins in the dodgy old '70s, especially the 4-to-the-floor disco beat, punk energy and rap esthetic, and the clackity-clack of Kraftwerk's, Giorgio Moroder's, and Telex's old-skool synthesizers.

Maybe it's that the '80s distilled the '70s sound, jelled it, and, for better, for worse, commercialized it, making it come together in a highly palatable, addictive form (all sugar and salt and sensory overload) without that '70s stigma.

But for me the beauty of the '70s is that, in retrospect, it seems more like a time or harmony, unity, and acceptance. Perhaps that's teenage me talking--perhaps it realy wasn't that way at all. However, after the intensity of the U.S. civil rights era, the violence of Vietnam, and the feet-of-clay politics of Nixon, the mid- to late '70s seems so much more relaxed. Or exhausted. Or sans souçi. Hard for me to say. And maybe too much of a North American perspective.

And having said all that, it's hard to resist a song as buoyant and simultaneously dark as German group Punch's 1985-ish hit, "Love Me." Honestly I can tell if the lyric is "You just have to touch me" "You don't have to touch me." Either way, coupled with that blazing beat and those blaring synthesizers, it fits, it works.

Nonetheless, my '80s nostalgia is quirky to the core: Living in Washington, D.C., at the time, I had never heard of Punch until recently. Nor had I heard of other oddities on my current '80s hitlist, such as "Don Quichotte" by Magazine 60, "Last Summer" by Wish Key, "Gloria" (the Italian original) by Umberto Tozzi, "Run for Love" by Winder, and many others. All Continental European takes on then-contemporary pop, some in English, some not, sounds that rarely registered a blip on the English-speaking world's musical radar. And now I am compelled to find each and everyone of them, cherish them, and fall in love with them, the unwanted bastard children of a bad relationship between '80s pop and broken English.

What a difference a couple of decades make. By the 2000s, the Swedes had figured out the manufacturing process and now seem to write all the hits. Like Legos with rounded corners, they fit together neatly and yet still seem reasonably cool and clever. Much like the Nordic countries themselves.

Anyway, sideswipes at Social Democratic paradises aside, I will continue to listen but only for so long. The formula will wear thin in time, the copy of the copy of the copy getting blurrier and grainier all the time. But today we dance.