The 30 best songs released in 1984

Early in the 1980s, the USA was rife with blue-collar rock & roll groups in the vein of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street, but John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band catapulted over the likes of Iron City Houserockers for one simple reason: they were cast as the band in Eddie And The Cruisers, a music melodrama that was a staple on HBO. “On the Dark Side” was the big hit from the film and it remains a modest wonder, an expert distillation of the cinematic sweep of Darkness On The Edge Of Town given a people-pleasing pop punch.

Australian garage rockers Hoodoo Gurus broke into the American underground with their debut album Stoneage Romeoes and its single “I Want You Back.” Melding Byrdsian jangle with scrappy rhythms and ragged vocal harmonies, Hoodoo Gurus evoked the best of 1960s guitar rock while seeming wiley, nervy, and modern.

One of the more unexpected hits of the 1980s, “99 Luftballoons” was a synth-pop anti-war song infused with a healthy dose of nuclear paranoia. Although Nena tapped into the zeitgeist of the time, the lyrics weren’t necessarily instrumental to the success of the song: indeed, the original German version was more popular in the United States than its English-language re-recording, “99 Red Balloons.” The song became a hit due to its synthesized bounce and carnivalesque keyboards, a combination that conveyed excitement, not dread.

A hit tailor-made for the year of Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign, “Pink Houses” painted a portrait of the small-town America of John Mellencamp’s home state of Indiana. From one angle, it could seem like a celebration; from another, it could seem like a cutting commentary, and that tension is what gave the lean rocker a serious kick.

Paul Weller made a definitive break from the Jam with the Style Council, a sleek soul-inspired duo he formed with keyboardist Mick Talbot. The very title of “My Ever Changing Moods” seemed to nod at Weller’s shift in direction, but the single didn’t seem rushed or hasty. With its polished groove—Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions given a synthy makeover—“My Ever Changing Moods” had a charming, relaxed lilt that contrasted sharply with the high-octane punk of the Jam.

Kenny Loggins may not seem to be an ideal candidate to sing a song of rebellion, but he wound up striking the right chord for Footloose, an MTV-era musical about a town that banned dancing. Loggins took a twangy rockabilly riff, spiked it with some synth hits, then gave it an outsized melody that turned “Footloose” into an enduring anthem that could stand apart from its accompanying movie.

The kind of song designed to be taken out on tour—it’s easy to swap the cities in the closing roll call of towns—“The Heart of Rock & Roll” displays a debt to Huey Lewis & the News’ pub rock roots (in an earlier incarnation, they supported Elvis Costello on his debut album). At its heart, this is a good-time rocker, one that tips its hat to oldies—there’s a honking sax solo—yet doesn’t seem nostalgic, thanks to the indelible glossy sheen of the production.

Paul Thomas Anderson recognized the inherent drama in “Sister Christian,” placing it in a pivotal scene in the climax of Boogie Nights. Anderson emphasized the song’s steady crescendo, as it built from a plaintive piano ballad to a crunching arena rocker. Night Ranger manages to sustain tension throughout the song’s four minutes, letting the song ebb and flow between melancholic introspection and soaring deliverance from boredom. It’s perhaps the platonic ideal of a power ballad.

Decades before Taylor Swift set chart records with her own “Cruel Summer,” the British pop trio of Banarama had a smash hit with a song bearing the same name. Working with the production team of Steve Jolley and Tony Swain, Bananarama concocted a song that captured the hazy, heavy heat of a never-ending summer: although the percolating keyboard line suggests good times, there’s a weariness to the melody that conveys the lonely dog days of August.

There’s a stately quality to “Here Comes the Rain Again” that lends the song an otherworldly kind of melancholy, one that’s accentuated by the dramatic swirl of Michael Kamen’s string arrangements. The strings soften the steeliness of David A. Stewart’s incessant synth-pop, letting Annie Lennox float like a ghost over the shimmering instrumentals.

The Go-Go’s fell apart after releasing the Martin Rushent-produced Talk Show in 1984 but listening to its singles “Head Over Heels” and “Turn To You,” the band seems vibrant and alive. A hardened power-pop number that doesn’t neglect to rock hard, “Turn To You” gets a slight edge: Rushent gives the guitars a bitter, crystalline edge and Belinda Carlisle leans into the extremes of her range, singing with pronounced grit.

The last single pulled from her eponymous debut album, “Borderline” is perhaps the purest pop tune of Madonna’s earliest hits. Underpinned by a lively modern soul rhythm, it’s graced with percolating keyboards and a sunny melody that gives the entire single an incandescent radiance—a trick that Madonna would pull off several times throughout the 1980s, but one that she discovered here.

The only Culture Club single to top the American charts, “Karma Chameleon” is cheerfully self-aware: Boy George sings that he’s a man “who doesn’t know how to sell a contradiction” when that very trick is his specialty. By playing with his pop persona throughout “Karma Chameleon,” Boy George winds up with perhaps his definitive single: infectious, playful, and wickedly smart.

The goofiness of “Ghostbusters” is central to its appeal: Ray Parker Jr. realizes “Ghostbusters” is a comedy, not an adventure, so he gives his bouncy bassline a call-and-response chorus that became iconic in its own right. Parker seems to sing the entire song with a perceptible grin, as if he can’t quite believe that he’s getting away with something this silly, and that good cheer is infectious.

A song written by Kimberley Rew—the former Soft Boy who later wrote “Walking On Sunshine” for his band Katrina and the Waves—“Going Down To Liverpool” was an ideal vehicle for the Bangles to channel their love of classic 1960s guitar-pop. Although the title nods in the direction of the Beatles, the jangle of “Going Down To Liverpool” recalls the Byrds and fits neatly into the Paisley Underground neo-psychedelia emanating from Los Angeles in the first half of the 1980s.

The culmination of ZZ Top’s incredible hot streak of the early 1980s, “Legs” is a sleek, streamlined fusion of blues and New Wave that captures all the futuristic charm of its parent album Eliminator. Where previous hits “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and “Sharp Dressed Man” largely steered clear of the band’s penchant for punning innuendo, “Legs” is good-natured sleaze given a lift by the cool glint of the propulsive drum machines.

The lone moment of brilliance on Tonight, David Bowie’s misbegotten sequel to his smash Let’s Dance album, “Blue Jean” updates glam rock for the age of 1984. All stylish swagger and crackling hooks, “Blue Jean” displays a wicked sense of humor—particularly in the video, where Bowie plays the dual role of a rock star and a bumbling square—that’s overshadowed by a reliance on spiky melody. This is Bowie pulling out all the pop stops, winding up with a minor classic.

A masterpiece of moody tension, “The Killing Moon” unfolds slowly and surely, as if it was being swept across the water on a gale of wind. There’s a sense of foreboding in how the strings deepen the melancholy of Ian McCulloch’s haunted vocal: it sweetens the song without softening it, helping to extend its sense of midnight gloom.

“(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” isn’t quite country-rock but with its shambling acoustic rhythms and upright piano, it comes close enough to count for R.E.M., offering a distinct, appealing variation on their standard jangle-pop. The shift in arrangement wasn’t the only notable difference on “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville,” either. Unlike many early R.E.M. songs, the words here are written by bassist Mike Mills, who tells a tender story of having his heart broken by a girl who decided to move back home. The shift in tone and lyrical approach provided a crucial turning point for R.E.M., broadening their musical and emotional palette.

“Missing You”—the breakthrough hit from former Babies lead singer John Waite—exists at the precise intersection of AOR and MTV: an album rock veteran who happily adopts the new fashions of the time, all in hopes of getting one big hit. He succeeded, reaching No. 1 in the U.S. with this cooly modulated ballad, a single that placed as much emphasis on the sleek, pulsating beat as it did on Waite’s earnest pleading.

The decidedly downscale video accompanying “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Cyndi Lauper’s breakthrough hit, helps emphasize one of the most appealing things about the song: it has an almost homemade quality to it. Although the production is hardly DIY, the spare, synth-heavy arrangement and emphasis on Lauper’s deliberately quirky delivery seems utterly fresh: the song seems larger than life, just like Lauper herself.

Opening the Replacements’ landmark album Let It Be, “I Will Dare” functions as something of an anti-rallying cry for the band: Paul Westerberg says he’s ready to make a leap of faith, but only if his partner dares to go first. That sense of ambivalence is obliterated by the Replacements’ big pop swing: instead of placing their foot on the gas, they bounce along to an infectious riff that suggests that Westerberg might really be ready to make a dare.

The song that brought Tina Turner back to the top of the charts, generating her first-ever No. 1 hit, “What’s Love Got To Do With It” became an anthem to rival “Proud Mary” for the singer: after all, it provided the title for her 1993 biopic. What gave “What’s Love Got To Do With It” such resonance is that it seemed autobiographical, quite a feat for a song originally pitched to Cliff Richard. The key is that while the song is fashionable with its synths, it doesn’t pander to youth: it’s a proudly adult song, which helps demonstrate Turner’s depth as a singer.

“You Might Think” ushered the Cars into the age of MTV with a video that deservedly won the first MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year. As good as it was, it bettered as a single by its sequel, “Magic.” Driven by an insistent power chord riff that’s stylishly embellished by a mocking organ and slapping bass, “Magic” is perfect power pop. From construction to production, it’s all a gleaming hook machine.

Arriving just as Prince went supernova with Purple Rain, “The Glamorous Life” served as an early indication of how glorious a year 1984 would be for Prince. The Purple One constructed the busy, bustling track, pairing it with evocative lyrics that seemed simultaneously stylish and sexy—the ideal soundtrack to “The Glamorous Life,” in other words. The demo released on his posthumous collection Originals shows just how much Sheila E. brought to the table: her nonchalant charm and hyperactive percussion give this real flair.

One of two new songs tacked onto the triumphant hits compilation Rock N Soul Part 1, “Say it Isn’t So” is the last great single Daryl Hall & John Oates released during their Imperial Period. They’d stay on the charts for a while longer but on “Say It Isn’t So,” they sounded invincible by doing what they did best: modernizing classic soul tropes by adopting new-wave fashion and imaginative, moody production.

Originally cut during the sessions that resulted in the gloomy Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen revived “Born in the U.S.A.” for the album that bore its name, changing it from a searching, restless acoustic plea into a galvanizing arena rocker. The walloping backbeat and rousing chorus disguised the disquiet at its heart—during its reign on the charts in 1984, it was misappropriated by the Reaganite right—but it’s that tension between dashed dreams and stirring music that gives “Born in the U.S.A.” its lasting power.

Originally tucked away as the B-side of “William, It Was Really Nothing,” “How Soon Is Now” is perhaps the apex of the Smiths’ power. Propelled by a churning tremolo guitar riff from Johnny Marr, “How Soon Is Now?” is cinematic in its undertow, the heavy thump of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce providing a sturdy bed for Morrissey’s pleas, all culminating in the refrain, “I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does.” Against the grimy clamor of the band, Morrissey seems unusually empathetic, which gives “How Soon Is Now?” a lasting resonance.

The first single pulled from Purple Rain was one of the last songs Prince completed for the project. Where the Revolution played a crucial part on so much of the album, “When Doves Cry” is the sound of Prince alone with a drum machine, guitar, and synth. Famously bereft of bass, “When Doves Cry” has a haunted, spectral quality that isn’t lessened with repetition: Prince captured something intangible and powerful here.

Van Halen had fiddled with synthesizers long before moving them to the forefront on 1984, the group’s monumental final album with David Lee Roth. The difference with 1984 is that the group paired an emphasis on synths with an embrace of pop hooks, a combination that came to a stunning pinnacle on the album’s lead single, “Jump.” Propelled by a simple, nagging synth line—power chords translated to a keyboard—“Jump” provides plenty of space for Roth and Edward Van Halen to trade lines and jibes, the pair adding color and humor with their interjections and solos. As fluid as Van Halen’s guitar solo is here, what’s striking about “Jump” is how his fills are equally memorable: it’s all in service of a song with undeniable pop power.