Unfortunately you all have a terribly simplistic view. The 80's wasn't definable in the 80's. We didn't feel different then to now. It's only when the decade is "old" and seemingly far away do people start to compartmentalize it and genericise it, you are also talking about a teeeensy weeensy piece of that decades music (rather dull music too I feel) Technology IS what was Most important at that time to Most people. Natural music had existed hundreds of years, particularly around the 1981 to 1983 era. Modern and being new and very modern was the order of the day.
Fairlight Sampling and linn drumming SLS digital 32 track Recording consoles. Aural exciters both digital And analogue, new out biard effects using sampled wave technology applied to sound, making it dynamic in ways previously unachievable, and yes then new accurate machine timing was modern and all important, why? Because it WAS NEW.
PEOPLE with new slants on old ideas, irony politics rebelliousness, colour vibrancy contemporaneous newness, and PRODUCERS and futurists and people who made and furthered technology in all ares changed the face of music together.
Remember Futurist bands and people with futurist ideas (whatever they may be to the individual) were THEE most ahead of the music game at the time, that is an immutable fact not opinion an inconvenient truth!.
Metal bands were behind, it took them until the mid 80s to even realize Properly the revolution that had happened.
Britain and then Europe purveyed the most technologically produced pieces of music around, whether to you taste or not, many using "new world sounds" from samples et al. America was resistant heavily so (although at the forefront of music technology inventions with Australia,) and was rather linda ronstted! Or juice newtoned lol, to us although grown up and smart they were just safe, we had the edge! We saw the future we utilized at the time,its unfair to use the erroneous word of "cheesy" when looking back, most people don't listen too or hear properly regards depth feel.
There's no real such thing as 80s in the way you think you mean it, technology chronologically through the decade made it sound a particular way, technology changes, thus 90s came, etc etc.The 80s was actually the era of sampling tech, synth were mere embellishment in all reality. The mid to very late 70s is the true synth era, well in Britain and Europe any way, ( Synths were all over our telly at that time, 80s very different, you must remember, it took time for ideas and genre to form, there is chronology, tech was the change. The 1st Jan 1980 wasn't suddenly the 80s in every way, 1981 is as different to 1985 as it is to 1989, its different. These days change doesn't happen so much obviously) think cds, They are a long sample, commercially available to the western world in 83, but the Japanese had access to that mid 70s on aeroplanes, cinemas, etc. Our pop charts were filled (by late 1981) with music that used sampling techniques by producers like Martin Rushent and Trevor Horn. They started to take hip hop and commercialize it using guess what? Sampling tech fact! Music is what it is. It's all How you record it that leaves the aural trademark.
The 80s didn't sound what you would term complete and full "80's" until mid to late 1982. In the UK every thing else before were mere glimpses like human league heaven 17 Phil Collins etc etc. By '84 music evolved so far ahead, that 1980 was (at that time in '84) the equivalent of 30 years ago sound wise! Fact! Today's music is Hardly far removed. It's just duller.