Doo-wop in 80s cartoons.

[castletonsnob]

I was watching 80s cartoon themes on YouTube, and I realized that a lot of 80s cartoons had doo-wop in them, either in the theme, or in musical numbers.

Why did a lot of 80s cartoons have doo-wop?

[Spider2024]

Because The Jetsons was so popular?

Fun fact: That show, which mainly ran in the 60s, actually went back into production in the 80s to make and release a brand new set of episodes.

[rocket]

Same reason why 80's nostalgia is still prevalent today.

[James Fabiano]

Feb 7, 2021 15:32:40 GMT -5 rocket said:

Same reason why 80's nostalgia is still prevalent today.

Suddenly, Vince wanting Honky Tonk Man as a face because oldies stations is not as nonsensical as it seemed.

[Mozenrath]

It was probably what some of the cartoonists grew up around or aimed at the parents for them to get.

[DSR]

Yeah, there was plenty of 50s nostalgia going on in the 80s. That's part of it.

[Hassan bin Sober]

There were also a lot of greaser villains in those cartoons.

[wildojinx]

Feb 7, 2021 19:28:41 GMT -5 DSR said:

Yeah, there was plenty of 50s nostalgia going on in the 80s. That's part of it.

Just look at the Q-Bert intro:



or the 1985 intro of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner show (though some of those cartoons actually WERE from the 50s):

[Paul]

[castletonsnob]

Feb 7, 2021 19:28:41 GMT -5 DSR said:

Yeah, there was plenty of 50s nostalgia going on in the 80s. That's part of it.

Wasn't there a rockabilly revival in the 80s?

[greyfmdan]

Feb 7, 2021 20:49:38 GMT -5 castletonsnob said:

Wasn't there a rockabilly revival in the 80s?

Yep, spearheaded by the Stray Cats. This song actually hit #3 on the Billboard pop chart in 1981:



There was sort of a second wave of the rockabilly revival in ‘87 with the movie La Bamba.

Ironically, Stray Cats lead singer Brian Setzer spearheaded another genre revival, this time swing music, in the late 90s. This song was a top 40 radio hit in the US & UK in ‘98/‘99:

[Deleted]

Feb 7, 2021 19:28:41 GMT -5 DSR said:

Yeah, there was plenty of 50s nostalgia going on in the 80s. That's part of it.

I remember in the 80's one of the McDonalds near my house was a 50's retro McDonalds.

Lol, in 40 years people are gonna be like "Why is everyone in the 2020's dressed like they're from the 80's?"

[Sephiroth]

Remember the amount of doo wop in the old school Nickelodeon commercials? Turns out they had an exclusive deal with a real group called the Jive Five.

[James Fabiano]

Also, you could still readily get authentic '50s-era shows on local television then cable. Happy Days was dying out but it stuck around a bit in the first half of the decade. You could see Grease reran on cable and network.

Another example of retro music score? A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.

[hassanchop]

Will next gen cartoons have New Jack Swing intro songs and Vanilla Ice wannabe characters?

[Alyce: Old Media Enthusiast]

Feb 7, 2021 15:26:27 GMT -5 castletonsnob said:

I was watching 80s cartoon themes on YouTube, and I realized that a lot of 80s cartoons had doo-wop in them, either in the theme, or in musical numbers.

Why did a lot of 80s cartoons have doo-wop?

Because every new generation ends up with traits from two-three decades prior, due mostly to that generation being involved in media. It's why the 90s had a lot of references to the 70s, the 2000s the 80s, the 2010s both the 80s and 90s and so on

[HMARK Center]

One of the clearest ways you can see the 50s influence on movie/show-makers in the 80s is to see so many highly regarded 80s horror movies and count how many of them were remakes of 50s B-movies - The Thing, The Blob, etc. Lots of moviemakers grew up at those matinees and wanted to recreate them when they were adults, so it probably stands to reason that many showrunners for kids' cartoons wanted to share things from when they were kids, too, like the music and general style of the era.

That said, I'm curious what nostalgia is going to look like in the near future; early cable was a place where a lot of older shows would get aired, so a lot of us who were kids in the 80s and early-to-mid 90s got to grow up watching classics on the regular, be it having Nickelodeon airing Looney Tunes and Rocky and Bullwinkle, or other channels showing sitcoms from the 50s-60s. Beyond that, each decade from the 50s through 90s had a very distinct aesthetic and style...I know, neatly dividing each into easy to consume ten year increments is misleading (e.g. it's not really fair to treat MC Hammer/Vanilla Ice 90s the same as Britney Spears/Limp Bizkit 90s), but since the 00s it does seem we've retreated a bit from there being a really distinctive style that kind of defines the era the way that we associate tie-dye with the 60s, wood paneling and brass instruments in pop tunes with the 70s, etc.

A lot of that is, again, I think kids now don't really grow up as much with their parents' media, not unless their parents go out of their way to share it with them; cable channels that used to run older shows started making their own original programs, which cut down how easily kids could see older stuff. Even more than that, though, is how fractured the media landscape is now, and has been for awhile. Can we honestly say there's a really distinctive style of pop music that fully encapsulates the current era? Not really, since it's easier than ever to just ignore stuff that might've been super mainstream and almost unavoidable a few decades ago; we're all able to curate our content diets from the music we have on hand, the shows we watch, the movies we care about, etc. There are still popular things, but it's not the 80s anymore where tens of millions made sure to watch Thriller debut on MTV or whatever. That being the case, it's hard to say what styles will really carry over in the coming years.