3 One-Hit Wonders From the 1980s That Parents Were Actually Scared Of

Parents fear change. While they know the world is eventually going to evolve right under their noses, they don’t want it to. They want things to stay the same always—and that includes their popular music choices.

Here below, we wanted to highlight three songs from back in the day that parents would have preferred to ignore. Indeed, these are three one-hit wonders from the 1980s that parents were actually scared of.

“Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood from ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’ (1984)

Perhaps more than any art form, songs can be subversive. They can be like Trojan horses. They can enter your world one way and depart another. Parents, therefore, are always worried about the next hit single corrupting their kids’ minds. Well, in the mid-1980s, few songs were attempting to do just that more than “Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The synth-driven sexualized track had much more than first met the eye (or ear). Kids knew it, and parents feared it.

“Genius Rap” by Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde (Single, 1981)

Rap music officially began in the early 1970s in New York City. Soon, the parks and house parties there were saturated with the music. But that didn’t make it easy for parents around the world years later to swallow the new genre. As we said, parents fear change. Any new style or sound that might attract their kids—that’s the stuff of nightmares. So, when rap music started to hit the mainstream in the early 1980s, parents quaked in their discount sneakers. Of course, they had nothing to worry about, but that didn’t stop their knees from knocking.

“Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner And Garcia from ‘Pac-Man Fever’ (1982)

The 1980s were a major time of change, especially from a technological standpoint. Popular songs of the day included more and more digital instruments, like synthesizers. Outside of music, kids flocked to arcades and home video games for entertainment. This left parents scratching their heads, scared. Adults who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s had no idea what to do with things like Pac-Man. And thus, they feared it. We know that “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner And Garcia raced up the Billboard charts, but we doubt that it was because of any parents giving the tune airtime.

Photo by Mike Maloney/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

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