Singer, songwriter and producer Stevie B. was among the leading lights of the Miami dance music scene of the late 1980s, later reaching the top of the pop charts with the megahit "Because I Love You (The Postman Song)." A native of South Florida, he worked a variety of dead-end jobs ranging from car wash attendant to fast food server before scoring his debut hit with 1987's "Party Your Body" which grew from a regional success to national club smash; it was also the title track of his 1988 debut LP, which went gold with the huge success 'Spring Love'. With 1989's In My Eyes, Stevie B. launched his first Top 40 hit, "I Wanna Be the One" its follow-up, "Love Me for Life," soon cracked the Top 30. With 1990's "Because I Love You," he reached the pinnacle of his success, with the single's accompanying album Love and Emotion also generating a pair of Top 20 hits, "I'll Be by Your Side" and the title cut. However, with the subsequent rise of alternative rock, Stevie B.'s light dance-pop sound lost much of its mainstream appeal, and he never again recaptured his previous success, with records including 1992's Healing and 1996's Waiting for Your Love appearing to little notice. The Best of Stevie B. followed in 1998

Mecano was a Spanish pop band whose debut coincided with La Movida Madrileña (Madrilenian Groove), a sociocultural movement that occurred in Spain during the 1980s. Although Spanish music critics do not consider the band one of the most representative ensembles of the aforementioned cultural wave,[1] Mecano found commercial success in the '80s and the early '90s, both in its native country and Latin America, France, and Italy with 25 million worldwide sales. Most of the lyrics were written by one of the Cano brothers from a male perspective, and were mainly sung by Ana Torroja in a melodic, childlike voice while preserving that male perspective; this gave the group its distinctive, playful and sexually ambiguous style.

"The Message" is an old school hip hop song by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Sugar Hill Records released it as a single in 1982 and it was later featured on an album named The Message.

Though not the first in the genre of rap to talk about the struggles and the frustrations of living in the ghetto, the song was unique in that it was set to a slower beat, refocusing the song on the lyrics over the music[2]. The song was written by Sugar Hill session musician Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher and Furious Five MC Melle Mel. Flash and the other members of The Furious Five, although credited on the record, were uninterested in recording the song and are not found on the finished record.
Remixes have appeared in 1995 and 1997.

Curiosity Killed the Cat was a British pop band that found success in the UK Singles Chart in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The band played soulful, jazzy, and funky pop musicand was initially signed to Phonogram Records' Mercury imprint. They first came to notice of the UK music press when they hooked up with Andy Warhol for the video of the 1986 single "Misfit". This featured the band in New York and at one point featured frontman Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot dancing down a side street whilst Andy Warhol referenced Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by dropping pieces of white card in time to the music (an effect originally done in a long-form promotional film by Bob Dylan for "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in 1965 and also copied by Warhol as well as INXS in their video for "Mediate" in 1988 as well as many other bands).

The Blues Brothers is a 1980 musical comedy directed by John Landis and starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues, characters developed from a musical sketch on the NBC variety series Saturday Night Live. It features musical numbers by R&B and soul singers James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and John Lee Hooker. The film is set in and around Chicago, Illinois, and also features non-musical supporting performances by John Candy, Carrie Fisher, Charles Napier and Henry Gibson. The Blues Brothers: Music from the Soundtrack was released on June 20, 1980 as the second album by the Blues Brothers Band, which also toured that year to promote the film.

Sheila Chandra (born 14 March 1965 in London) is an English pop singer of Indian descent.
Sheila Chandra first came to public attention as an actress, playing Sudhamani Patel in the BBC school drama Grange Hill.

As a teenager she formed the band Monsoon, and created a fusion of Western (synthpop) and Indian pop styles. The band consisted of Chandra, Steve Coe (who became the band's producer), and Martin Smith. Chandra and Coe later married. They made a lone album Third Eye in 1982 from which they had a surprise hit single "Ever So Lonely", which peaked at #12 in the UK. They followed-up with the single, "Shakti", which peaked at #41, but this was to be the band's final charting single. The album also includes a cover of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", featuring the distinctive EBow guitar sound of Bill Nelson.

However, resenting pressure from their record company over musical direction, Monsoon dissolved and Coe and Smith set about promoting Chandra as a solo artist on an independent label.
Chandra went on to release a number of albums in the 1980s, at times experimenting with her voice as an instrument through a range of techniques. In the 1990s she released three albums on Peter Gabriel's Real World label, although Martin Smith was no longer actively involved by this time.

Miles Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.
Widely considered one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music including cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz and fusion. Many well-known jazz musicians made their names as members of Davis' ensembles, including John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Cannonball Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Tony Williams, George Coleman, J. J. Johnson, Keith Jarrett and Kenny Garrett.

On the verge of an international breakthrough Belgian funky new wave band Marine lost their singer Marc Marine in London.
Quickly replaced by Sarah Osborne from Repetition they did their planned Peel session and changed their name to Allez Allez.
After the release of Promises, Sarah left the band for a marriage with Heaven 17 singer Glenn Gregory.

Rational Youth was a Canadian New Wave band, originally formed in 1981 in Montreal, Quebec, by synthesizer wizards Tracy Howe and Bill Vorn, both of whom idolized the German synthpop pioneers Kraftwerk.
Among the band's notable singles were "Saturdays in Silesia" and "Dancing on the Berlin Wall," from their debut album, Cold War Night Life (1982); and "Holiday in Bangkok," from Heredity (1985).
In 1999, Rational Youth, with a new lineup of original frontman Howe and new keyboard players Jean-Claude Cutz and Dave Rout, released its first album after fourteen years, To the Goddess Electricity.
Rational Youth toured throughout Scandinavia over the next two years, and played its final concert on November 3, 2001, at the Tinitus Festival in Stockholm, Sweden.

Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American music conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter. During five decades in the entertainment industry, Jones has earned a record 79 Grammy Award nominations,[1] 27 Grammys,[1] including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is best known as the producer of the album Thriller, by pop icon Michael Jackson, which has sold over 110 million copies worldwide,[2] and as the producer and conductor of the charity song “We Are the World”.

In 1968, Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African-Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award in the "Best Original Song" category. That same year, he became the first African-American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for "Best Original Score" for his work on the music of the 1967 film In Cold Blood. In 1971 Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. Jones was also the first (and so far, the only) African-American to be nominated as a producer in the category of Best Picture (in 1986, for The Color Purple).[citation needed] He was also the first African-American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards, Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award. He was played by Larenz Tate in the 2004 biopic about Ray Charles, Ray.

The Dude is a 1981 album by American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter Quincy Jones. The album featured the debut of vocalist James Ingram on the singles "Just Once" and "One Hundred Ways," which reached no. 17 and 14, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100. It also contained "Razzamatazz", which reached no. 11 in the UK Singles Chart, one of his few hits there. He won the Grammy award for best R&B vocal performance for his work on the album. Belgian harmonica player and puccaloist Toots Thielemans also contributed to the album, appearing on the instrumental track "Velas."

Masanori Takahashi (高橋正則 Takahashi Masanori), better known as Kitarō (喜多郎), is a Grammy award-winning Japanese musician, composer and multi-instrumentalist.

Inspired by the R&B music of Otis Redding, Kitaro taught himself how to play guitar. While attending Toyohashi Commercial High School, he started the "Albatross" band with his friends, performing at parties and in clubs. "I started out playing the guitar but then changed to the keyboards. Before one of our gigs, the drummer was injured. I had no experience at all on the drums, but I had to learn it because I was the leader of the band, and we had to do the gig… Later, the bassist had injuries, so I had to learn how to play the bass. [These accidents are] the main reasons why I can play all these instruments; I had a crash course in how to play them. It was a hard time for me, but a very good experience.”