I am a girl of the 80’s and totally willing to freely admit I miss that decade so much! Things were so much better back then than they are today, at least in my opinion. It was a decade full of luxury, great hair, fun clothes, and some of the best pop / rock music ever made!
I really started coming into my own musical tastes around 1984 when I saw MTV for the first time at a friend’s house and started hearing and listening to music on the radio stations I liked. Prior to that it was mostly listening to what my parents listened to which was exclusively country…and old school country at that!
I remember getting my first portable boom box (in CA we called them ghettoblasters for some reason), and starting to collect some cassette tapes from artists I loved. I got Madonna’s Like a Virgin album, Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Springsteen’s best album ever (Born in the USA), Wham’s Make it Big, and Prince and the Revolution’s Purple Rain album. All from my Dad’s Columbia Records music membership.
I played the crap out of each of those cassette tapes, and of course made my own mix tapes from the radio and Kasey Kasam’s Top 40 countdowns every week. I was loving life….loving music…loving the 80’s.
So when I saw this puzzle not too long ago, I knew I had to get it and do it. Master Pieces puzzles have some really funky random cut pieces which in all honesty, I don’t love, but I liked the artwork enough to put up with it. The puzzle was fun and Randy and I worked on this one together for the most part. He’s a huge fan of the 80’s too and knows a lot about everything pop culture. It did have quite a bit of darker areas that were more challenging, and Randy said the 80’s Greatest Hits logo in the middle was a beast to do (thank you, honey for doing that for me)!
We went out of town on vacation during the build so we didn’t make any progress on it for about four days or so, but finished it up last night as I just wanted to finish and get it off my board. Not that I didn’t like it, but I was ready to move on to something a little more colorful and less dark.
Cole joined in on the fun and put together two album covers and only those two. He had actually asked for me to do this puzzle next because he wanted to do these to covers and did not want anyone else touching them! LOL This kid is hysterical, and as you can see by his choices, was born a couple of decades too late for his 80’s pop soul.
I loved Michael Jackson (still do), and of course, I wanted very much to be like Cyndi Lauper and Madonna as a teenager. Teased up hair, short skirts, lots of wrist bracelets — yes, I was a true 80’s girl. LOL
I really loved these two albums as well and played them all the time. I thought Jon Bon Jovi was the hottest thing on the planet for a long time. Just a gorgeous specimen of a man!
Overall, I would give this puzzle a B — my only complaints were the crazy random cut (I know some people love that), and the fact it was really dark in some areas making the build a little more challenging, but we rose to the challenge and we had a good time. Can’t ask for more than that, right? Right!
And here it is completed in all its Blaze of Glory!
