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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

180

Peter Schilling, ‘Major Tom (Coming Home)’

The story of Major Tom, revisited. German one-shot Peter Schilling does an unauthorized sequel to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “Ashes To Ashes,” following Major Tom in his space capsule, as he floats lost through the cosmos. But “Major Tom” became a synth-pop classic in its own right—not bad for musical fan-fic.

179

Rush, ‘The Spirit of Radio’

Rush take on the radio, searching for signs of life amid all the glittering prizes and endless compromises. It’s a typically ingenious study of how pop music works, tuned into the timeless wavelength of rhythm, with a reggae break at the end. One of Geddy’s most indelible radio moments: “It’s really just a question of your honesty! Yeah! Your honesty!”

178

Steel Pulse, ‘Chant A Psalm’

“Good tidings I bring you,” David Hinds sings on “Chant a Psalm,” from Steel Pulse’s True Democracy. It was a song of hope, at a time of personal and political conflict for the U.K. reggae stalwarts from Birmingham. Hinds takes comfort in Biblical tales, chanting the names of Moses, Daniel, Samson, and Solomon, telling the faithful, “Attract these angels in dreams and in your prayers.” 

177

Strafe, ‘Set It Off’

A NYC underground boombox blast, with 808s in overdrive and the question, “Y’all want this party started right? Y’all want this party started quickly?” Not a radio hit, but a song you heard echoed in hits for the next couple decades. 

176

The Police, ‘When The World Is Running Down’

The bottle-blonde threesome scored so many iconic hits, yet even their deep cuts put on the red light, as in this fan fave from Zenyatta Mondatta. “It was a very difficult time,” Sting said. “There was a sense of urgency and quite a lot of drugs.” You can kinda tell. It’s a juicy groove about the banality of capitalist tedium, as Sting sings about a bored European hiding in his mansion, watching bootleg James Brown videos on his VCR and wondering why his expensive toys are no fun anymore. All that keeps him going is the mantra: “When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around.”

175

Oran ‘Juice’ Jones, ‘The Rain’

Not exactly the sentimental type, this Oran “Juice” Jones. He sings a smoothed-out R&B ballad about spotting his special lady holding hands with her new guy, so by the time she gets home, he’s got her bags packed. Then he delivers a break-up monologue that should’ve won an Oscar. “What was you trying to prove? This was the Juice! I gave you things you couldn’t even pronounce!” Jones tells her, “You gotta get on outta here with that alley-cat-coat wearing, hush-puppy-shoe wearing crumb cake I saw you with! ‘Cause you dismissed!” But he saves his best line for the end: “You without me like cornflake without the milk!”

174

Bananarama, ‘Shy Boy’

Shy boys without Bananarama? Like cornflake without milk. The girl gang of Siobhan Fahey, Sarah Dallin, and Keren Woodward had a hell of a run, going from post-punk shoop-shoopers (“Cruel Summer,” “Cheers Then”) to hi-NRG disco queens (“I Heard A Rumor,” “Robert De Niro’s Waiting”) without a moment’s thought given to actually learning how to sing. “Shy Boy” is their most irresistible hit, showcasing their seductively bored pouts and unison vocals, from their debut Deep Sea Skiving. It’s one of the few Bananarama songs where they have any time for boys at all—besides Robert De Niro. 

173

Minor Threat, ‘Straight Edge’

Hardcore at its most intense: just kids talking to other kids, from town to town to town, without any adult middlemen butting in, expressing emotions that can’t come alive any other way. The D.C. crew’s “Straight Edge” isn’t about following rules—it’s about looking at your life as yours, instead of something you let happen to you. It’s the briefest song on this list, but it’s 46 life-affirming seconds, especially the moment when Ian MacKaye pushes “something I just don’t neeeeed” until his voice snaps in two. 

172

The Raincoats, ‘No One’s Little Girl’

The Raincoats were redefining punk rock in the early Eighties, with art-school feminist aggro and a very London sense of deadpan humor. “No One’s Little Girl” is a madcap groove, lashing out at misogynistic cliches in the mode of their albums The Raincoats and Odyshape. Gina Birch chants “I never shall be in your family tree,” over Ana Da Silva’s guitar and Vicky Aspinall’s violin.

171

Ray Parker Jr, ‘I Still Can’t Get Over Lovin’ You’

Ray Parker Jr has always been one of the Eighties’ most insanely underrated pop auteurs, from “A Woman Needs Love” to “The People Next Door” to “The Other Woman.” (“Ghostbusters” is…fine?) Parker started out as a Motown prodigy—that’s him playing the guitar solo on Stevie Wonder’s “Maybe Your Baby.” For “I still Can’t Get Over Loving You,” he decides to rip off U.K. synth-pop with his own New Wave ballad, purring “I can’t turn you loose, though I know it’s self-abuse”—with a bitterly sad ache in his voice. But he gives a shout out to his Britpop inspiration at the end, when he slips in the line, “Every breath you take, I’ll be watching you, girl.” 

170

Girlschool, ‘Yeah Right’

Feminist metal leather girls from the U.K., in kill-your-parents mode. Girlschool made this rager about every woman’s right to stay out all night raising hell, with Kelly Johnson showing off her hit-and-run guitar riffs. They get an assist from their buddies in Motorhead: Philthy Animal Taylor makes a drag cameo in the video, as somebody’s angry mom.

169

Ministry, ‘Revenge’

Al Jourgenson, the grand old scuzzbag of industrial metal sludge, has spent the past 40 years ranting about how much he hates his debut album, With Sympathy, where he pranced around with New Romantic synths and the world’s dodgiest faux-Brit accent. (“You did it agaaain! And agaaain! And agaaain!”) Unfortunately for Al, this shit is excellent, so fans won’t let him forget. “Revenge” is the pithiest of teen-psycho break-up plaints. But this fall, Ministry shocked fans by doing “Revenge” live for the first time in four decades.

168

The Rolling Stones, ‘Undercover of The Night’

One of the great underrated Stones nuggets, from their most underrated era. Whatever else the Stones did or didn’t have going on at any given moment, they always had Bill and Charlie, who go nuts here. “Undercover of the Night” is the only time the Stones set out to make a real Eighties record, crunching the Clash, Grandmaster Flash, Lee Perry, and Duran Duran into an attack on U.S. imperialism in Latin America. 

167

The Jim Carroll Band, ‘People Who Died’

Has any rock star killed off so many of his friends in one song? Jim Carroll was a NYC poet and punk scenester, putting his tough street life into his book The Basketball Diaries.(You can hear him in the crowd on the Velvet Underground’s Live at Max’s Kansas City, looking for Tuinols.) “People Who Died,” the hit from his debut Catholic Boy, is a high-speed rock & roll funeral for friends wiped out by drugs, booze, disease, war, subway trains, and killer bikers. Shout-out to Bobby, who manages to die three times.

166

Samantha Fox, ‘I Wanna Have Some Fun’

Oh, Samantha Fox—the irrepressible trash-disco starlet with the cheeky London accent, a future lesbian icon, returning from her hit “Naughty Girls Need Love Too” for a pro-fun-having anthem, with acid-house strings and a hired B-boy chanting “Sa-Sa-Sa-mantha Fox!” She begins this one with a drunk dial: “Helloooo — it’sme again! Don’t you know it’s hard to keep a good woman down? But then again [naughty yet love-needing giggle] maybe that could be fun!”

165

Queen & David Bowie, ‘Under Pressure’

Freddie Mercury never packed so many galileo-tastic vocal peaks into one song like he does in “Under Pressure.” It figures that Freddy would hit so many heights in a duet where he’s showing off for a fellow killer queen. But Bowie keeps up by never trying to top the prima donna—instead of competing, they both just stop, collaborate, and listen. “Under Pressure” is a total one-off for both artists, with no parallels in either career. Neither made any other record with this sound. (Neither was big on flutes.) Heartwarming footnote to “Under Pressure,” stupidly left out of the Mercury biopic: Bowie got his hair done at Live Aid by Freddie’s boyfriend. 

164

Dexy’s Midnight Runners, ‘Come On Eileen’

Kevin Rowland and crew trotted out of the U.K. to score this Celtsploitation banger, with Irish fiddles blazing and “too-rye-aye” chants. They went right to one-hit-wonder heaven in the U.S. Great line: “At this moment, you mean everything.”

163

Lionel Richie, ‘All Night Long (All Night)’

“That song has created more babies after the song,” Lionel Richie said. “We have populated the world.” “All Night Long (All Night)” sums up Lionel in his pastel era, dancing on the ceiling in a calypso-inspired hit full of Trinidad-via-Tennessee lilt. He adopts a Jamaican accent so over-the-top Phil Collins must have sent him a fruit basket. (“Life is goood, wiiild, and sweeeet!”) As for the African chant, don’t bother trying to translate, because it’s total gibberish—Lionel just made it up, but it works. Bonus points for one of the most pointless subtitles in the history of parentheses.

162

The Stone Roses, ‘I Wanna Be Adored’

Manchester guitar boys take a glorious ego trip. Drugs are overrated, adoration is underrated.

161

New Kids on The Block, ‘Hangin’ Tough’

Listen up everybody, if you wanna take a chance. Just get on the floor and do the New Kids dance. Here’s to Joey, Jordan, Donnie, Jon, and Danny, the perfect boy band, as they put you in a trance with their funky song. Chuck D proclaimed himself a fan of the New Kids—“they sincerely love hip-hop”—and that tells you how awesomely weird the late Eighties were. 

160

Missing Persons, ‘Words’

Teen angst, man. When Dale Bozzio sang, “No one notices/I think I’ll dye my hair blue,” we all felt that.

159

Ratt, ‘Round And Round’

Ratt came from the Sunset Strip glam-metal scene, but they instantly crushed the competition with their summer-of-’84 smash “Round and Round.” Stephen Pearcy sang like a thug, with seductive neon-light poetry (“looking at you, looking at me” counted as a romantic overshare by ’84 metal standards) and all that mysterious echo in the chorus. Fantastic video, starring old-school comedy legend Milton Berle in drag, and a fancy dinner-party guest who hears Ratt jamming in the attic and naturally sheds her clothes. (Who amongst us, right?) Also, maybe the best Shakespearean allusion in any Ratt song: “Like Romeo to Juliet, time and time, I’m gonna make you mine.” This is not actually what happens in Romeo and Juliet, but hey, it’s a love story—baby, just say yes.

158

The English Beat, ‘Twist And Crawl’

One of the decade’s slinkiest basslines. The Beat were a multiracial ska crew from Birmingham, flouting the racism around them with their herky-jerky rhythms. Bonus points for their Go Feet record-label graphics, which invited girls to the ska party in a pointed statement of anti-misogyny. (Gwen Stefani always said she got into ska because she wanted to be the Go Feet girl.) “We thought it would be nice to be a dance band,” Dave Wakeling told Rolling Stone in 1980. “We just want to survive World War III by trying to find a place where the bombs might miss.”

157

L’Trimm, ‘Cars With The Boom’

Psych—you thought you were driving a car, but it’s actually a guerilla boombox for two teenage girls named Tigra and Bunny to cause Miami-bass havoc on the highways. “Everybody beep your horns if you hear us! Beep louder!” 

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!”