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The 200 Best Songs of The 1980s

The greatest hits of music’s wildest decade – hip-hop, synth-pop, indie rock, metal, Chicago house, Miami freestyle, ska, goth, reggae, acid house, and more

200 best songs of the 1980s

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY GRIFFIN LOTZ. PHOTOGRAPHS IN ILLUSTRATION BY JEFFREY MAYER/WIREIMAGE; ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; ROSS MARINO/GETTY IMAGES, 2; JACK MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES; GIE KNAEPS/GETTY IMAGES

WELCOME TO THE jungle. We got fun and games. The Eighties are one of the weirdest eras ever for music. It’s a decade of excess. It’s also a decade of INXS. It’s got big hair, big drums, big shoulder pads. Not to mention massive stars: Prince, Madonna, Michael, Bruce, Janet, Sade, Cher. New sounds and beats explode everywhere. Hip-hop takes over as the voice of young America. Glam-metal rocks the Sunset Strip. New Romantic synth-pop invades MTV. Thriller becomes history’s biggest hit. Music gets louder, crazier, messier. Do you know where you are? You’re in the Eighties, baby.

So let’s break it down: the 200 best songs of the Eighties, music’s most insane decade. The hits, the deep cuts, the fan favorites. A mix tape of pop classics, rockers, rappers, soul divas, new wavers, disco jams, country twangers, punk ragers, dance-floor anthems, smooth operators, and karaoke room-clearers. There’s all-time legends and one-hit wonders. There’s new rebel voices that expoded out of nowhere. There’s cheese. There’s sleaze. Axl meets Slash. Salt meets Pepa. Echo meets the Bunnymen. Frankie goes to Hollywood. Public Enemy brings the noise. Madonna brings the sex. There’s Chicago house, Detroit techno, Miami freestyle, D.C. go-go. There’s ska, goth, reggae, acid house. But just one song per artist, or half the list would be Prince.

Some of these Eighties songs remain famous around the world. You hear them at weddings, parties, clubs, the karaoke bar. Others make people run and scream in terror. Many are songs you remember; some you desperately try to forget. But every one is a brilliant tune, and each one is part of the unsolvable Rubik’s Cube that is Hair Decade pop.

So welcome to the Eighties. Put this mix tape in the boombox, pump up the volume, and hit play. Push it. Push it real good.

From Rolling Stone US

156

Modern English, ‘I Melt With You’

The greatest humming solo ever. As Modern English singer Robbie Grey said, “It was about a couple making love as the bomb dropped.” But when the music stops cold for that hmm-hmm-hmm climax, the future’s open wide. When Robbie sings, “Making love to you was never second best”—that was probably meant to sound like a bigger compliment.

155

Billy Idol, ‘White Wedding’

Billy Idol lets it rip in “White Wedding,” rebel-yelling about sex and religion and shotguns. This was the summer-of-‘82 hit that established Billy as one of the Eighties’ great rock & roll fame sluts, and he sure had some stiff competition.

154

Peech Boys, ‘Don’t Make Me Wait’

Larry Levan was the legendary DJ guru at the Paradise Garage, influencing dance music ever since. (Famously NYC had record stores that opened early Sunday morning, right after closing time at the Garage, so rival DJs could snap up whatever Levan just played.) The Garage didn’t have a liquor license, so the house beverage was fruit punch spiked with acid—that’s where the Peech Boys got their name. Levan puts his whole musical vision into “Don’t Make Me Wait,” evoking a big city full of party people ready to crawl out at sundown and take over.

153

The Dream Syndicate, ‘Open Hour’

The L.A. post-punk garage band specialized in guitar fireworks, totally shameless about going for a psychedelic buzz. The Dream Syndicate came out of L.A.’s Paisley Underground scene with The Days of Wine and Roses, one of the Eighties’ landmark six-string albums, inspiring bands from Dinosaur Jr to Japandroids. But “Open Hour” was their “Sister Ray” or “Dark Star” or “Marquee Moon,” the jam they kept expanding live, later recorded as “John Coltrane Stereo Blues,” yet best in this KPFK radio jam reissued on the compilation History Kinda Pales When It And You Are Aligned. Karl Precoda and Steve Wynn surf the feedback waves, over a Creedence-worthy groove—8 minutes of guitars doing what guitars were invented to do.

152

Linton Kwesi Johnson, ‘Inglan Is A Bitch’

The Jamaican-born English dub poet Lincoln Kwesi Johnson made a string of politically charged reggae albums, reciting his protest verse in patois. In “Inglan Is A Bitch” LKJ reports on the oppression of Afro-Carribean immigrants in London, from his mighty 1980 Bass Culture.

151

Dominatrix, ‘The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight’

“The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” was a kinky NYC club classic shrouded in mystery: the sound of whips cracking, drum machines slapping, synth frills burbling. The narrator is a robot-sex priestess with a fabulously bored voice. “That night, a wild party. Women beat their men. Animals watch beyond the fire. The dominatrix…sleeps…TONIGHT!”