Huge ’80s Songs That Didn’t Age Well: Stories Behind Autograph, Cyndi Lauper, Nena, and Rockwell episode artwork

EPISODE · Mar 9, 2026 · 35 MIN

Huge ’80s Songs That Didn’t Age Well: Stories Behind Autograph, Cyndi Lauper, Nena, and Rockwell

from Professor of Rock

Coming up….we celebrate songs from one of the greatest years in music. These songs were HUGE back in the day, but decades later, sound really DATED. Just because they haven’t held up well doesn’t diminish our love for the songs, but it makes for an interesting study in music. One of the songs, Turn Up the Radio, came from a bunch of drinking buddies who were all in other bands but jammed for fun on the weekends. But it just so happened that the drummer was jogging buddies with frontman David Lee Roth of Van Halen, and he heard one of their drunken jams and loved it so much he invited them to open for his band on one of the biggest tours ever. Another one, She Bop by Cyndi Lauper, was written about self-love and faced the wrath of a bunch of politicians’ wives who named it one of the dirtiest songs ever and got it banned. Another was written by an unknown singer named Rockwell who tried to hide his true identity due to his famous father and even used a fake British accent to throw off reporters, and one song became a hit because a famous actress was on a radio show and she was trying to play her boyfriend’s band but played the wrong side of the tape where the German singer Nena blew up the phones lines and made the song that was never supposed to be released in america a smash. Let’s do it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Huge ’80s Songs That Didn’t Age Well: Stories Behind Autograph, Cyndi Lauper, Nena, and Rockwell

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