The 200 Best Songs of The 1980s

Roses are red and violets are blue, he’s gonna rock this world for you. Slow jam of slow jams, from the only Gregory Abbott who matters, a UC Berkeley English professor turned Wall Street broker turned R&B love man. As he told Billboard’s Fred Bronson, “Emotionally, the phrase ‘shake you down’ made sense to me, and when I repeated it to a lady friend of mine, she definitely understood what I was saying. So that became the hook of the song.” That “well, well” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. 

Green Gartside was one of the Eighties’s weirdest pop stars: a London art-school anarchist who started out the decade making noisy post-punk, then decided to transform into a New Wave fashion plate in Gaultier suits crooning sleek synth-pop hits. “Fear of pop is an infantile disorder,” Green told Rolling Stone. “You should face up to it like a man.” Scritti Politti’s Cupid & Psyche ’85 is one of the all-time great synth-pop gems, with Green sighing and cooing his hyper-cerebral semiotics over the zippiest beats. In “The Word Girl,” he wonders if he’s falling in love with a girl, or with the girl’s words, or with the word “girl.” As he admitted, “ill-digested Derridean-isms are strewn throughout this record.” You can hear “The Word Girl” as a silly love song or an intellectual satire, but either way it soars.

After The Runaways, Joan Jett was dismissed by the music biz as a washed-up leftover with a bad reputation. But then she hit Number One with “I Love Rock & Roll,” a forgotten oldie by the Arrows, claiming it as a feminist dirtbag anthem for the ages. As long as there are jukeboxes, dimes, rebel grrrls in black leather, this song will be blasting.

A transcendent moment of early Chicago house music, from DJ Ralphi Rosario. Xaviera Gold testifies about the power of true love (“that man knows how to sat-is-fy a woman”), over the electro-throb beat. But she’s got some choice words for anyone who tries to mess with her man. (“What that dorky chick got wouldn’t satisfy a cheese stick, much less my baby!”) The track cuts and loops her voice, repeating the words “he’s mine—ALL mine” over and over, until it starts to sound obsessive and deranged, even slightly scary, yet irresistible.

A hilarious takedown of the male gaze, in the acerbic sneer of Patty Donahue. She taunts the men who think they can size her up, with all her gum-snapping sarcasm, only to cackle, “Sucker!” But like all the Waitresses tunes, “I Know What Boys Like” was written by a boy, guitarist Chris Butler. As Butler said, “She could play that role pretty easily; she was a tough party girl.” He scripted brilliant feminist vignettes for her voice (“No Guilt,” “It’s My Car”), as well as the sitcom theme “Square Pegs” and the cranberry-core holiday standard “Christmas Wrapping.”

Peaches, meet cream.

The most outrageously perfect one-hit wonder of the Eighties, i.e. the most one-hit-wonder-intensive era in music history. Let’s face it, when you think of the Eighties, you think shameless. You think hair. You think cosmetic disasters and fashion atrocities and squooshy electro-funk and octagonal synth-drums. Kajagoogoo had it all, with the gloriously gaudy “Too Shy.” An elfin starchild named Limahl sings “Too shy-shy, hush hush, eye-to-eye,” as if it’s poetry, and by the time the song ends, it is. 

An irresistible slice of Eighties R&B nightlife, starring the ladies of Klymaxx. They hit the club, ready to party the night away, but it’s time for a “Meeting in the Ladies’ Room,” so Bernadette Cooper can settle the score with all these women who can’t keep their hands off her man. “I’m much, much unhappy about that,” she warns. “I’d hate to come down to their level and become a B.W., a Basic Woman. But if they don’t stop, it’s gonna get scandalous!” Oh, it gets scandalous. By the end, she’s sniffing, “Don’t slap me, because I’m not in the mooood.” Not a damn thing B.W. about this song.

“I might like you better if we slept together”—now there’s a pick-up line.

The Boston collective Mission of Burma were so far ahead of their time, they could break up for two decades, then reunite and STILL sound ahead of their time. Burma had their own avant-punk style, drawing from John Coltrane and Syd Barrett, with a fourth member adding tape loops and sound effects. “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” is a seething tale of paranoia, from Signals, Calls, and Marches. “Showbiz has nothing to do with us,” bassman Clint Conley told Rolling Stone in 1981. “When you see us, all you see is a lot of sweat and honest emotion.”

Black Uhuru sound the alarm, from their masterful reggae classic Red. The Jamaican trio of Michael Rose, Duckie Simpson, fellow Kingstonite Michael Rose and Sandra “Puma” Jones give a message of faith to Rastafarian believers all over the diaspora, with the Sly and Robbie riddims driving it home.

The one and only Pete Burns, a human mascara tornado with hazmat hair and a bitch-queen leer, takes a look at miserable pitiful teenage kids everywhere and tells us “you look like you’re LOTS of fun!” and I still choose to believe he meant it. 

Aretha’s sell-out mid-Eighties period was such a golden era. The Queen was super-committed to pop for a minute, with Who’s Zoomin’ Who and Aretha. How strange is it that Aretha packed seven aiming-to-please Top 40 hits into a couple years, ’85-’87, but then never bothered trying that again? While all the other Sixties veteran were hitting rock bottom? It’s the one moment in her career Lady Soul felt like winning folks over—but then she got over that, in yet another Aretha enigma. “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” has one of her cattiest kiss-offs: “Fish in the sea, but they ain’t me!”

Soft Cell were the avant-garde U.K. synth-pop duo who became global pop darlings, with their non-stop erotic cabaret. “Tainted Love” was the pioneering 1981 hit, turning an obscure Motown oldie by Gloria Jones into a futuristic smash that set a new record by staying in the U.S. Top 40 for almost a year. But the keeper is the 8-minute 12-inch version, where it segues into a heavy-breathing soliloquy on the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go?” “People were using electronics in unfeeling, robotic ways,” singer Marc Almond told Rolling Stone. “But Dave [Ball] got these rich, warm, moody sounds. Exciting and slightly dirty sounds. We figured, ‘Why does electronic music have to be cold?’”

If you went to a prom in the Eighties, this song was legally required, and it never failed to melt every AquaNet perm on the dance floor. The Gap Band rolled out of Tulsa with their fly cowboy hats, and a slew of burn-rubber funk hits. “You Dropped A Bomb On Me” combined two of the Eighties’ biggest obsessions: nuclear paranoia and insane basslines. Dave Grohl has proudly said this is where he got the drum intro for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” “If you listen to Nevermind, the Nirvana record, I pulled so much stuff from the Gap Band and Cameo and [Chic’s] Tony Thompson, on every one of those songs,” Grohl says. “That’s all disco—it’s all it is. Nobody makes that connection.”

Obscene, obviously. Frankie Goes To Hollywood starred two of pop’s first openly gay singers, Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford, plus three token straight dudes. They had a political message: nuclear war bad, pierced nipples good. And oh yeah—they also had “Relax,” the biggest-selling U.K. hit single ever at that time. “Relax” still sounds deliciously filthy, a synth-pop orgy of slurps and splashes. Frankie pushed the gay bravado through the roof (they actually called a song “Krisco Kisses”) and some of us will go to our graves defending their sensitive slow jam, “The Power of Love,” but “Relax” is definitely the one that hits you with the laser beams.

Born in London, raised in the Bronx, eternally famous as the expert story-teller with the eyepatch. In the ebullient days of hip-hop’s golden age, Slick Rick tells the new rap generation a bedtime story about the street life, with the haunting finale, “He was just 17, in a madman’s dream / The cops shot the kid, I can still hear him scream.” 

The ska stars take a dire look at an England full of unemployment, riots, racist violence, with a warning that we’d never go back to pre-Thatcher/Reagan days—unfortunately accurate. “At the time, there was a lot of racism happening,” Neville Staple told Rolling Stone. So we just thought, ‘Well, we want to school with Black and white guys. Instead of fighting and calling people names, let’s work together.’ So we combined Black music with punk. We just mixed the two cultures.” R.I.P, Terry Hall.

This wasn’t New Edition’s first hit—that would be “Candy Girl”—but it was their coolest, with their hugely influential boy-band template. Bobby Brown and Bell Biv DeVoe went on to future glory, making this the only big-deal pop group where the lead singer was the LEAST famous member. 

Yaz had the ultimate boy/girl synth-duo combination: the flamboyantly soulful Alison Moyet and the silent synth geek Vince Clarke. They blew apart after one impeccable album, Upstairs at Eric’s, and the damn good You And Me Both. “Situation” focuses on Moyet’s needy, pushy, hungry voice, pouring her heart out over the chilly electro-beats. It’s definitely a situation—“don’t mess around, you bring me down, don’t make a sound, just move out”—but it makes them both feel alive.

Best “baby” of the Eighties: when George kicks off the second verse with that “Baaa-baaay!” He was so in the zone by the end of Wham!, with “I’m Your Man” and “The Edge of Heaven,” people expected him to start his solo career with a bang. But “Faith” shows off his eccentric flair, sounding totally unlike any other pop of the era—acoustic guitar as hi-hat, rockabilly as an excuse to accessorize a motorcycle jacket with pearls, over and out in three minutes, no fade-out, just a cold ending, plus a 30-second instrumental intro that’s just an organ playing a Wham! oldie. Did we mention stubble? Lots of stubble. Total genius. Now if only “Hard Day” had been a single. 

The London club collective Soul II Soul had a plan to remake soul music in the wake of acid house, with DJ/producers Jazzie B and Nellee Hooper. Jazzie B had the slogan: “A happy face, a thumping bass, for a loving race.” Soul II Soul hit big with “Keep On Movin’,” but “Back to Life” went even deeper, an Afro-Carribean jam with funk bass, disco strings, and reggae diva Caron Wheeler singing “Back to life, back to reality.” (For some reason, they left “Back To Life” off their debut album Club Classics Vol I, replacing it with a lame a cappella version, which didn’t go over well in the days when CDs cost $15.99—one reason why fans didn’t rush out to buy Vol II.)

Bryan Ferry is a god. “More Than This” is his most lavishly romantic song, from the 1982 smash Avalon, in the heat of his early Eighties falcons-and-cummerbunds era. Ferry does his suavest crooning, over the lush synths. He spent the Seventies playing the elusively ironic Euro-trash rake of Roxy Music, inspiring New Romantic glamsters like Duran Duran and ABC, so he was right on time. “More Than This” deserves to be his signature tune—but note that Phil Manzanera’s beautifully understated guitar solo is half the song, and it wouldn’t work without him.

Pennsylvania farm boys decide they want to be the Ronettes, move to the Sunset Strip, pile on the makeup, accidentally reinvent the whole concept of “fun.” “Talk Dirty To Me” is as flamboyant and brazen as Eighties pop gets, as these Hollywood hair-metal harlots mix up Sixties girl-group flash, New York Dolls guitars, nursery rhymes, and the moment where Bret Michaels yelps, “C.C., pick up that guitar, and uh, TALK to me!” 

The Scottish tartan rockers had a brilliant sonic trick—bagpipe guitars. But they also had songs full of giant-hearted warmth, singing about pain and truth and things that really matter, with a habit of yelling “shock!” over the twin-guitar battles and giant drums. Stuart Adamson’s big-brotherly compassion is loud and clear in “In A Big Country,” especially when he crams so many syllables into the payoff line: “I’m not expecting to grow flowers in the desert/But I can live and breathe and see the sun in winter-time!” 

Chrissie Hynde’s most gorgeous tune, showing off her reluctant romantic streak. She recalls a secret crush—“You arrived like a day and passed like a cloud, I made a wish, I said it out loud,” just perfect—with James Honeyman-Scott’s messenger-of-love guitar chimes. Yet it feels very punk. “That moment in pop history when punk was happening for six months let me slip in very nicely because no one was allowed to say: ‘She’s good for a girl,’” Hynde said in 1999. “That’s the beauty of rock, it’s androgynous. I was a very androgynous kid.’”

Nobody made goth girls twirl harder than the Bunnymen. These Liverpool lads had it all: an excellent name, scary album covers, long scarves, black overcoats, and psychedelic guitar squalls. Ian McCulloch stood at the top of the U.K.’s hot-gloom-dude charts—bigger hair than Morrissey, poutier lips than Robert Smith, not as dead as Ian Curtis. “Never Stop” is the Bunnymen at their most gloriously pretentious, with McCulloch preaching over a Velvets-style groove of guitar, cello, and congas. 

Blondie scored a Number One hit in the summer of 1980, with this glossy glam-disco stomp with European producer Giorgio Moroder, from the soundtrack of the Richard Gere movie American Gigolo. Debbie Harry coos in French (“appelle moi, mon cherie, appelle-moi”) and rolls in designer sheets, over a riff purloined from Black Sabbath, of all places. Debbie also did an iconic version on The Muppet Show. 

Detroit techno wizard Kevin Saunderson soups up a vision of disco transcendence, where the beats sparkle with excitement, but with a desperate faster-faster-faster energy. Like Inner City’s first 12-inch “Big Fun,” “Good Life” is a song that just never quits, with disco diva Paris Grey giving the ultimate benediction: “I want you to want me to want the good life all night!”

A reading from the Book of Dave: “I like the way the line runs up the back of the stockings. I’ve always liked those kinda high heels too. No-no-no-no, don’t take them off!” Edward Van Halen told Rolling Stone he wanted their music to sound like “Godzilla waking up,” and “Everybody Wants Some!!” delivers, with peak EVH, peak Alex, peak Michael Anthony, and peak “yeah, that’s it, a little more to the right” Diamond Davery. Richard Linklater used the title for an excellent hangout film about college baseball dudes listening to music one day in 1980, without a single song out of place.

Best goth purple-hair sex-club disco anthem ever, plus the best hit with the word “parthenogenesis” in the chorus. The London art pervs in Shriekback came up with a monster 12-inch hook, full of slithery synth beats and spooky death chants, as if it’s a soundtrack to the most decadent orgies of the Roman Empire. Not a lot of Eighties dance hits that feature centaurs and cannibals, but Shriekback fill the void.

Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith emerged in the hip-hop summer of 1988, two suburban dudes from Strong Island, with their own laid-back sound. “Strictly Business” is EPMD’s sure shot, kicking off their stellar four-album run. It’s stoned to the bone, with enough bass to shred woofers in jeeps or blow up backyard barbecues. It’s the low-riding beat that would turn into the West Coast G-funk style. In a real conceptual masterstroke, they sample “I Shot The Sheriff”—not the rootsy Bob Marley original, but the Eric Clapton version, with Parrish scratching it up into their own groove. As Sermon said, “While the world was sampling James Brown, we was over here venturing out on something that was other. We sampled some other type of shit.” Yet “Strictly Business” sounds like nobody but EPMD.

Every time those bells ring, a devil gets his wings and Bon Scott crushes an empty on his forehead. “Hells Bells” is the epic opener from AC/DC’s Back in Black, with tolling chimes over the skull-crush twin guitars of Angus and Malcolm Young. Brian Johnston was just starting as the new singer, taking over after Bon’s tragic death, but he doesn’t hold back. “If you’re into evil, you’re a friend of mine” is such a relatable sentiment.

The whole disco story in one epic song: Black women, Eurodisco gay men, gospel, sex, rain, thunder, the apocalypse. The Weather Girls were two legends: Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes Armstead, longtime back-up singers for disco queen Sylvester. They rip into “It’s Raining Men,” written by producer Paul Jabara and David Letterman sidekick Paul Shaffer, in a flurry of hallelujahs and amens. The Weather Girls deliver a meteorological report on an impending sex storm, advising, “Get ready, all you lonely girls, and leave those umbrellas at home!” But the clouds really open when they belt the climax: “God bless Mother Nature! She’s a single woman too!” Amen.

The most soulful of arena rockers, with one of the saddest AOR break-up songs. As John Waite once said, his style is “Heathcliff with a Marshall stack.” In the post-“Billie Jean” era, songs all had to have long, long, long fadeouts—there was no concept that you could repeat the title too many times al coda. But “Missing You” is one where you hang on the end, hoping you might get a late-breaking glimmer of hope. (Any DJ who fades it out before that last “oh nooo” is a failure at life.) The most devastating moment: when he rips into the words “heartbreak overload.”

The B-52s were the tacky little dance band from Athens, G-A, mixing up surf music, girl-group harmonies, beehive hairdos and post-punk guitar into their own unique groove. But they had emotional staying power, as in the loopy freakout “Private Idaho.” Fred Schneider shrieks his warnings about living in your own Private Idaho (“get off the patio!”) while Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson do all 16 dances and then some.

The “Smells Like Teen Spirit” of freestyle, from the Miami mastermind Lewis Martinée. As in all the greatest freestyle hits, from Miami (Trinere, Sequel, Company B) to New York (The Cover Girls, Sweet Sensation, Corina, Lisette Melendez), the singers belt with raw emotion, over the bangs and booms and whooshes of the rhythm machines, holding nothing back, until the whole song reaches the point of no return. 

Fugazi’s 1988 debut EP was a shock—a band of D.C. punk lifers with a fierce DIY ethic, refusing to go quietly or rest on their laurels. Their whole story is a testament to renewed artistic inspiration and political solidarity. Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat joined voices with Guy Picciotti from Rites of Spring in “Waiting Room,” their furious yet jolliest all-together-now shout, digging in for the long haul. Fugazi did everything their own way, and made compromise look like a sucker’s game. Imagine going back in time to 1988 and telling people that “Waiting Room” would be more famous in 2023 than practically any of the year’s pop hits.

Larry Blackmon’s band of Atlanta funkateers already had plenty of hits, from “Shake Your Pants” to “She’s Strange.” But “Word Up” is a monster, bridging the disco and hip-hop eras yet belonging to neither. Just a nasty guitar groove, spaghetti-western whistles, real horns pretending to be synth horns, and a punk-rock nasal voice as distinctive as his red leather codpiece. Blackmon shares his birthday with Bob Dylan, but we’re still waiting on this poet to win the Nobel Prize he deserves for lines like, “Give us music, we can use it, we need to dance! We don’t have the time for psychological romance!” 

The ultimate “sad girl listening to disco on the radio” anthem. Indeep’s immortal one-shot captures a moment when club sounds, rap, New Wave, R&B, were all mixing it up. Reggi Magloire and Rose Marie Ramsey pray to the DJ to heal their broken hearts, over that low-budget Chic beat, until the DJ comes in to promise: “There’s not a problem that I can’t fix, because I can do it in the mix.” “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life” is a classic because it speaks to any fan who’s ever gone searching for salvation in her favorite baseline and found it. 

“Atlantic City” is the centerpiece of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, just the man and his acoustic guitar. A Jersey guy has debts no honest man can pay and a wife no broke man can keep, so he does a little favor for the mob. All those things that used to seem so important—well, mister, they’re deader than the Chicken Man. All he can tell his wife on his way out the door is, “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact/But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”

De La Soul open up rap’s D.A.I.S.Y. Age. Posdnous, Maseo, and the late great Trugoy the Dove had their own fresh style, grabbing inspiration from anywhere, with their producer Prince Paul piling on the samples. “Eye Know” was just one highlight from their Native Tongues masterwork 3 Feet High and Rising, with a little help from Steely Dan, at a time when the Dan were not necessarily the hippest band to appreciate. But as Posdnous told Rolling Stone, “When me and Dave [Trugoy] worked in the mall, we would just hear songs playing in the loudspeakers. They would always play Steely Dan’s ‘Peg’ and we were, even then, aspiring to be a group, and we were like, ‘Yo, that could be a dope song to use.’” So won’t you smile for the camera?

The Minnesota punk trio spent the Eighties making the most ferociously emotional rock records around, in landmarks like Metal Circus, Zen Arcade and New Day Rising. The Huskers pushed the limits of the hardcore scene, blowing Mohawked minds at a time when it was still controversial to learn a fourth chord. “Celebrated Summer” is their most intensely cathartic song, with Bob Mould raging about the kind of summer that takes an instant to pass but a lifetime to get over. Halfway through, his guitar buzz pauses, and he busts out his 12-string acoustic guitar for a hushed moment of loneliness. His question: “Do you remember when the first snowfall fell? / When summer barely had a snowball’s chance in hell?” Tough stuff.

Power Ballad Armageddon. In this corner: Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh pop belter with the sandpaper voice. In that corner: Jim Steinman, the lord of mega-pop overkill, composer of operatic rockers for Meat Loaf and Air Supply, the guy who calls himself “Little Richard Wagner.” Result: “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” a Number One ballad that spirals through about 12 climaxes, with the ultimate karaoke credo, “Once upon a time I was falling in love/Now I’m only falling apart.” Killer ending: the guy with the glowing eyeballs chirps one last, “Turn around, bright eyes!”

“I’m the dandy highwaymen you’re too scared to mention! I spend my cash on looking flash and grabbing your attention!” Adam Ant was the great New Wave provocateur of his era, flouncing in pirate drag. He declared war on everything boring about the Eighties, in classics like “Prince Charming,” “Antmusic,” “Zerox,” “Goody Two Shoes,” “Jolly Roger,” and the yes-it-really-happened “Ant Rap”? But “Stand and Deliver” is his ultimate glam manifesto, with Adam yelping and howling over tribal drums and mega-twang guitar, with his message to the world: if you’re not making a bizarre spectacle of yourself, what are you even doing with your life? Or as Adam laments, “It’s kinda tough to tell a scruff the big mistake he’s making!” 

The most effervescent old-school Sugarhill rap, from a crew of South Bronx kids. “We got golden voices and hearts of steel,” the Funky Four boast, with Plus One herself, the pioneering female MC Sha-Rock. They keep passing the mic for verse after verse, over the funk groove of the Sugarhill house band and Doug Wimbish’s bass. “That’s the Joint” captures the spirit of early rap at its most utopian. Lil Rodney C sums up what it’s all about: “Just chilling hard, living in luxury, and being very proud to be an MC.”

The Pixies rip into their second album Doolittle with “Debaser,” blasting through the loud/quiet/loud formula, but without the quiet part. Frank Black screams about the notorious “slicing up eyeballs” scene in the Luis Bunuel/Salvador Dali film Un Chien Andalou, while Kim Deal adds her ineffable Midwest cool to the chorus. The best thing to happen to the word “groovy” since Simon and Garfunkel broke up.

“Face down in a memory, but feelin’ alright”—you’ve probably had a few nights like that. Roseanne Cash claims her crown with a country-rock tale eviscerating a smooth-talking ladies’ man as he prowls all over L.A., ripping him to shreds. (“Heartaches are heroes when their pockets are full”—true that.) I will never understand why this song isn’t as famous as “You’re So Vain,” but it’s an absolute Casanova-killer, and the best L.A. singles-bar song of a very L.A. singles-bar era. What a chorus: “The boys say, ‘When is he gonna give us some room?’/The girls say, ‘God, I hope he comes back soon.’”

Eddy Grant wrote “Electric Avenue” after the 1981 Brixton riots, where African-Caribbean youth battled the police. But it became a global smash, a radical mix mashing up reggae, synth-pop, punk and funk, with a drum loop distorted to roar like a revving motorcycle. His voice hits home with a no-bullshit adult style of working-class anger, growling, “Can’t get food for the kid—good gaaaawd!”