It's true... 1984 was 40 years ago

January 3, 2024 6:52 PM

180 Songs That Turn 40 Years Old in 2024 [18m22s] is a cavalcade of song hooks coupled with titles. Great for making Gen X feel super old, or maybe as a reference piece for youngs who would recognize a melody but not know the title. It's a lot. I'm sorry.
posted by hippybear (71 comments total)

Oh, there's apparently a full list of the songs pinned as the first comment for the video. Each snippet is only seconds long.
posted by hippybear at 6:56 PM on January 3

Tried to copy the list of songs into a comment here, but it won’t let me select the text on my phone :/
posted by eviemath at 7:07 PM on January 3

Fiction Factory?!! ….and I say that as someone who was an art student 1984.
posted by brachiopod at 7:10 PM on January 3

I can smell the ozone layer being destroyed by hairspray.
posted by clawsoon at 7:12 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]

List of songs:


1. Van Halen - Jump
2. Huey Lewis & the News - I Want a New Drug
3. Duran Duran - New Moon on Monday
4. Fiction Factory - (Feels Like) Heaven
5. Mike Oldfield - Crime of Passion
6. Wang Chung - Dance Hall Days
7. Talk Talk - It's My Life
8. Katrina and the Waves - Que te quiero
9. My Mine - Hypnotic Tango
10. Eurythmics - Here Comes the Rain Again
11. Pointer Sisters - Automatic
12. Kenny Loggins - Footloose
13. Christine McVie - Got a Hold on Me
14. Billy Idol - Rebel Yell
15. Rockwell - Somebody’s Watching Me
16. Break Machine - Street Dance
17. Echo and the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon
18. Nik Kershaw - Wouldn't It Be Good
19. Twins - Ballet Dancer
20. 38 Special - Back Where You Belong
21. Thompson Twins - Doctor! Doctor!
22. Queen - Radio Ga Ga
23. Slade - Run Runaway
24. Al Bano & Romina Power - Ci Sarà
25. Eros Ramazzotti - Terra Promessa
26. Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane
27. Jean-Jacques Goldman - Envole-moi
28. Sade - Your Love Is King
29. Alphaville - Big in Japan
30. Bonnie Tyler - Holding Out for a Hero
31. Phil Collins - Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)
32. Lionel Richie - Hello
33. Bon Jovi - Runaway
34. Kool & the Gang - Tonight
35. P. Lion - Happy Children
36. Alan Parsons Project - Don’t Answer Me
37. Bananarama - Robert de Niro's Waiting
38. Weird Al Yankovic - Eat It
39. Rick Springfield - Love Somebody
40. Night Ranger - Sister Christian
41. The Cars - You Might Think
42. Go-Go’s - Head over Heels
43. Propaganda - Dr. Mabuse
44. Irene Cara - Breakdance
45. Billy Joel - The Longest Time
46. Culture Club - It's a Miracle
47. Depeche Mode - People Are People
48. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
49. Deniece Williams - Let’s Hear It for the Boy
50. Steve Perry - Oh Sherrie
51. Talk Talk - Such a Shame
52. La Unión - Lobo-hombre en París
53. Raf / Laura Branigan - Self Control
54. Evelyn Thomas - High Energy
55. Queen - I Want to Break Free
56. Huey Lewis & the News - The Heart of Rock & Roll
57. Duran Duran - The Reflex
58. Pointer Sisters - Jump (For My Love)
59. Alvin Stardust - I Feel Like Buddy Holly
60. Billy Idol - Eyes Without a Face
61. Dan Hartman - I Can Dream About You
62. Chicago - Stay the Night
63. The Human League - The Lebanon
64. Mike Reno & Ann Wilson - Almost Paradise
65. Peabo Bryson - If Ever You’re In My Arms Again
66. Chris de Burgh - High on Emotion
67. ZZ Top - Legs
68. The Cars - Magic
69. Tina Turner - What’s Love Got to Do with It
70. Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes
71. Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark
72. Corey Hart - Sunglasses at Night
73. King - Love and Pride
74. Elton John - Sad Songs (Say So Much)
75. Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
76. Robin Gibb - Boys Do Fall in Love
77. Ollie & Jerry - Breakin’.. There’s No Stoppin’ Us
78. Prince - When Doves Cry
79. Billy Ocean - European / Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run)
80. Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy
81. Alphaville - Sounds Like a Melody
82. Spandau Ballet - Only When You Leave
83. Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters
84. Sheila E. - The Glamorous Life
85. Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Two Tribes
86. John Waite - Missing You
87. Lionel Richie - Stuck on You
88. Alison Moyet - Love Resurrection
89. The Bluebells - Young at Heart
90. Jacksons & Mick Jagger State of Shock
91. Scandal feat. Patty Smyth - The Warrior
92. Mike Oldfield & Maggie Reilly - To France
93. Scorpions - Still Loving You
94. Shakatak - Down on the Street
95. Fancy - Slice Me Nice
96. Huey Lewis & the News - If This Is It
97. Cyndi Lauper - She Bop
98. Lindsey Buckingham - Go Insane
99. Queen - It's a Hard Life
100. Rod Stewart - Some Guys Have All the Luck
101. The Cars - Drive
102. Chicago - Hard Habit to Break
103.Prince & The Revolution - Let’s Go Crazy
104. Laura Branigan - The Lucky One
105. George Michael - Careless Whisper
106. Bruce Springsteen - Cover Me
107. Miami Sound Machine - Dr. Beat
108. Stevie Wonder - I Just Called to Say I Love You
109. Billy Idol - Flesh for Fantasy
110. Spandau Ballet - I'll Fly for You
111. Limahl - The NeverEnding Story
112. Depeche Mode - Master and Servant
113. Iván - Fotonovela
114. Al Corley - Square Rooms
115. Chaka Khan - I Feel for You
116. Sandy Marton - People from Ibiza
117. Tina Turner - Better Be Good to Me
118. David Bowie - Blue Jean
119. Survivor - I Can’t Hold Back
120. U2 - Pride (In the Name of Love)
121. Sade - Smooth Operator
122. New Edition - Cool It Now
123. Queen - Hammer to Fall
124. Freddie Mercury - Love Kills
125. Giorgio Moroder & Philip Oakey - Together in Electric Dreams
126. Bronski Beat - Why?
127. Fancy - Chinese Eyes
128. Daryl Hall & John Oates - Out of Touch
129. Scotch - Disco Band
130. Cyndi Lauper - All Through the Night
131. Prince & The Revolution - Purple Rain
132. Culture Club - The War Song
133. Paul McCartney - No More Lonely Nights
134. Julian Lennon - Too Late for Goodbyes
135. Alphaville - Forever Young
136. Jennifer Rush - Ring of Ice
137. The Honeydrippers - Sea of Love
138. Alison Moyet - All Cried Out
139. Wham! - Freedom
140. Alvin Stardust - I Won't Run Away
141. The Style Council - Shout to the Top
142. Kim Wilde - The Second Time
143. Jack Wagner - All I Need
144. Jermaine Jackson & Pia Zadora - When the Rain Begins to Fall
145. Toto - Stranger in Town
146. Pat Benatar - We Belong
147. Jim Diamond - I Should Have Known Better
148. A-ha - Take on Me (original version)
149. Billy Idol - Catch My Fall
150. Bryan Adams - Run to You
151. Duran Duran - The Wild Boys
152. Murray Head - One Night in Bangkok
153. Eurythmics - Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
154. Tina Turner - Private Dancer
155. Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
156. Ashford & Simpson - Solid
157. Don Henley - The Boys of Summer
158. Depeche Mode - Blasphemous Rumours
159. Madonna - Like a Virgin
160. Chicago - You’re the Inspiration
161. Nik Kershaw - The Riddle
162. Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)
163. Philip Bailey & Phil Collins - Easy Lover
164. Kool & the Gang - Misled
165. Kool & the Gang - Fresh
166. Pointer Sisters - Neutron Dance
167. Paul McCartney & The Frog Chorus - We All Stand Together
168. Billy Ocean - Loverboy
169. Tears for Fears - Shout
170. Frankie Goes to Hollywood - The Power of Love
171. Valerie Dore - The Night
172. Foreigner - I Want to Know What Love Is
173. Glenn Frey - The Heat Is On
174. Thompson Twins - Lay Your Hands on Me
175. Queen - Thank God It's Christmas
176. Teena Marie - Lovergirl
177. Band Aid - Do They Know It’s Christmas
178. Wham! - Last Christmas
179. Wham! - Everything She Wants
180. Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson - I Know Him So Well

posted by jzb at 7:21 PM on January 3 [13 favorites]

1984 was quite the year for pop culture.

Films:

The first Beverly Hills Cop
The first Ghostbusters
The first Terminator
The first Karate Kid
The first Red Dawn
The first Nightmare on Elm Street
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
David Lynch's Dune
Gremlins
Footloose
Buckaroo Banzai

Metal records that didn't show up on MTV:

Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Anthrax - Fist Full of Metal
Slayer - Haunting the Chapel
and both the Bathory and Saint Vitus self-titled albums

Run-D.M.C.'s first album. Oh, and Gibson's Neuromancer.
posted by gwint at 7:22 PM on January 3 [21 favorites]

My kids (9 and 12) probably know 30 songs from this list. If you had asked a kid in 1984 about a similar list of songs from 1944 I wonder how many they'd know.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:34 PM on January 3 [9 favorites]

If you had asked a kid in 1984 about a similar list of songs from 1944 I wonder how many they'd know.

I was a teenager in 1984 and here's a list of the top 100 songs in the US from 1944. Now I can't say how many of these songs I might have learned about since 40 years ago -- I was a pretty eclectic teenager involved with a lot of music outside of the mainstream in many ways -- but today I can name 16 songs off of this list that is just over half as long just from their title. I only looked at the list at the top and didn't scroll down through the descriptions and videos included below.

The top of the list was pretty easy but it got tough going. I did get more than a few lower-list items, though.

I have no idea how I'd do if the list was more international as the list in the FPP video is.
posted by hippybear at 7:42 PM on January 3 [8 favorites]

I turned 17 in 1984 and would say I could immediately recall all but about 30 songs from this list, and would also say that only about 30 of them are "good or great" (YMMV). In 1984 I would have been able to name 0 songs from 1944, I'd guess (certainly if knowing that they were from 1944 was an essential aspect).

I feel popular music changed a lot more between 1944 and 1984 than between 1984 and 2024. But I also know nothing.
posted by maxwelton at 7:46 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]

Look, as long as Echo/Bunny is top-20 I’m sure we can work the rest of it out among ourselves.
posted by aramaic at 7:49 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]

I do think it's telling that in the Eighties, it was common for radio in various formats to play music that might mix across the 20 years prior? Like, not much before The Beatles. But today, it's common for radio to play songs that go from the early Sixties to today, sometimes on the same station.

Also, the whole divorce from curation has led to the youngs to discovering a lot of tracks from the past that I wouldn't expect. I remember sitting in a delivery van at a traffic light one day watching a woman in her car completely losing her mind to Sinatra singing New York, New York through her sunroof, and if she were of drinking age I would have been surprised.
posted by hippybear at 7:50 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]

Look, as long as Echo/Bunny is top-20 I’m sure we can work the rest of it out among ourselves.

Does top 20 matter in a chronological list? 🤔
posted by hippybear at 7:51 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]

Thompson Twins - Doctor! Doctor!

There is a page online about the music scene (seventies through 2000) in my hometown — pictures of shows, set lists, scans of posters, and the like. On January 1st this year, there was a scan of someone’s ticket to the first event at our new 18,000-seat arena downtown: a Thompson Twins gig on Jan 1, 1986, presented by Swatch and the local top 40 station.

Thompson Twins were defunct a few years later, the rawk station has been all-news for a generation now, Swatch (while still a going concern) has probably 0.1% of the cultural cachet they did in the mid-eighties, and the arena has long had its original name honouring a longtime mayor stripped off for a series of corporate renaming labels, as differ telcos fork over for naming rights for a couple of years (and the building itself is about to see a major overhaul).

I was a teenager in 1986 and the ticket revealed a lot more to me than it would to a person the same age today. I suspect this hypothetical teen would be like me trying to puzzle out the references in an editorial cartoon about the Teapot Dome Scandal.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:56 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]

I was a teenager in 1984 and here's a list of the top 100 songs in the US from 1944.

I recognize more songs from the 1944 list than from the 1984 list.

That's because I learned a lot more songs from the Hal Leonard jazz fakebook and a couple of similar big-books-of-songs than I did from radio or TV. So for many of the 1944 songs I haven't actually heard the original recording, but I know the song.

Often when I do hear the original recording I'm disappointed, because it sounded better in my head...
posted by clawsoon at 7:57 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]

I often theorize about what it would mean if we could have a modern American Songbook built out of all these songs that everyone knows but only one person ever sang that once so that's the only version we know.

I think we lack a lot in our culture when we don't have artists reinterpreting songs over and over. Even Hendrix was covering Sgt. Peppers in concert the week the album came out. But it is SO rare to have the kind of covering of rock or pop songs that we have from what is now considered "the standards" or "the jazz songbook" or whatever, which at the time was actually the Top !00.
posted by hippybear at 8:01 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]

Does top 20 matter in a chronological list?

Quality point, except that Yes and also No.

…in a list of arbitrary length, Echo & The Bunnymen will always appear at a point below n=20. You can go back to pre-Mesopotamian music, and the relationship holds.

It’s sort of like Pi, except very extremely not like Pi.

There’s an entire SCP division focused on this kind of math; if you weren’t born during the right years you will never understand the excess geometries, you can merely accept that they are true.
posted by aramaic at 8:03 PM on January 3 [8 favorites]

My favorite song from 1984: Felt, "The World is as Soft as Lace"
posted by perhapses at 8:25 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]

hippybear: But it is SO rare to have the kind of covering of rock or pop songs that we have from what is now considered "the standards" or "the jazz songbook" or whatever, which at the time was actually the Top !00.

We mostly get that now from talent shows like American Idol and The Voice.

...oh, and Walk Off The Earth...
posted by clawsoon at 8:36 PM on January 3

Also released in 1984:
Simple Minds - Up on the Catwalk
Cocteau Twins - Treasure (album)

No New Order release that year.
posted by perhapses at 8:37 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]

One more not on the 180 list:
The Cure - Shake Dog Shake
posted by perhapses at 8:43 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]

Swatch (while still a going concern) has probably 0.1% of the cultural cachet they did in the mid-eighties

They've been busy. Building a portfolio of the most prestigious brands in watch making/sales. Blancpain, glaushutte, omega, breguet. All swatch owned brands. Revenue of approx. 10 billion.
posted by Keith Talent at 8:43 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]

Sometimes I think it would be fun to play "Hold Me Now", "We Belong", "One Night In Bangkok", etc., for my kid to show her what planet I'm from. And then she'll probably say, "Oh, that one from TikTok."
posted by peachfiber at 9:08 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]

Eurythmics - Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

That entire album is such a hidden gem in their catalogue.  I stumbled across it when it was released with the movie solely because I was a fifteen year old who adored how…odd…their non-singles were.  They had a deeply weird musical streak you only found if you delved into the non-hits that was fascinating.

I still come back to the 1984 soundtrack today.   It's got some haunting tunes, all with such a superbly chilly sound, perfect for the story.  Never saw the version of the movie it was attached to, but man, that album…
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 9:08 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]

So many great hooks in there. A while back somebody ran a program that analyzed novelty vs repetitiveness in songs, and found that songs have been getting less harmonically and melodically varied, over the years. Maybe, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been listening to much new stuff. I was still relatively small in 1984, but so many of these songs are burned into my brain, I found them so exciting. Well and yes I’d have heard them over the years on radio, of course. Still, catchy!

(40 years, can’t actually handle that, I just sort of glide by the numbers these days)
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:09 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]

Somafm.com has an 80s streaming channel that offers some deeper cuts you'll remember (if you were the right age in the 80s) that don't get alot of radio airplay on today's 80s stations.

A big local "oldies" station kinda dropped the 60s about 5 or 10 years ago, so about 50 tunes from the 80s are on extremely high rotation. Pretty dismal listening, IMO, but it sells advertising. I wish oldies stations went backward instead of forward. There are some youtube channels that play recordings about 30-90 minutes long from various stations from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, commercials and all. They've become skilled at editing out the copystrike tunes, which tend to be the most remembered ones, leaving the less well known. That kind of ephemera is like gold to me.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:33 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]

You dipstick, Hippybear. I have work to do. Now, none of this will happen.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 9:38 PM on January 3 [6 favorites]

Never saw the version of the movie it was attached to, but man, that album…

Oh, you should see it, if you're at all curious. That version of Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of those very rare films-from-novels that are exactly like the book. (And my favorite track was Double Plus Good, which like most of the LP wasn't heard in the film.)
posted by Rash at 9:43 PM on January 3

One more not on the 180 list:
The Cure - Shake Dog Shake

which they played on their tour this year!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:15 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]

Amazing list thanks hippybear! '84 was the start of a lot of changes and it's probably only songs that give me any idea of what I did from then to ?87, just strings of (what at the time seemed like meaningless jobs, and some people I should have walked by).

INXS Original Sin should be on the list I think.
and a few local to NZ things that still stand out:

The Mockers - Forever Tuesday Morning
and things like The Body Electric's – Imagination

Thompson-Twins segued into a NZ group in the early 80's , which was the first I'd heard of them - NZ was quite isolated pre-net.
posted by unearthed at 11:30 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]

Eurythmics - Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

Doubleplusgood!

Just a great album.
posted by chavenet at 1:24 AM on January 4

My fave deep track from Nineteen Eighty-Four is the haunting ballad Julia.
posted by ovvl at 3:13 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Kudos to the compilers for taking an international perspective to the list. Its a reminder about how siloed music was at the time: by language and country of release - but also by the pop/indy divide. If you were listening to John Peels's 1984 Festive 50 then there was almost no overlap with the year's UK Top 40 best selling songs - and if you were to compare that list with the the top selling songs in France that year - you would be again looking at something almost entirely different. The Billboard 100 contained a remarkable amount of British music that year - but there was still limited cross-over. No radio station or record shop would begin to have the overall scope of a list like this.
posted by rongorongo at 3:38 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

- Noticing, in passing that nobody at the time seems to have a flagged a little similarity between Evelyn Thomas' High Energy (released September 1984) and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax (released November 1983)?
posted by rongorongo at 3:56 AM on January 4

I was all ready to bask in the nostalgia, then you guys had to bring up Sexcrime. I loved the Eurythmics with all my teen heart, but made the mistake of playing the 1984 album on the family stereo, and had to explain Sexcrime the song (and Orwell's concept) when my Extremely Baptist mom heard it. Forty times forty years is not long enough to live down the humiliation.
posted by mittens at 5:22 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Kudos to the compilers for taking an international perspective to the list.

somerandomguy_music is German, which would have a lot to do with it.

It also means that next year's compilation ought to have The Hoff in it.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 5:43 AM on January 4

In 1984, R.E.M. released their second LP, Reckoning. I was 16, and going to see them for the Reckoning tour was my first proper rock show (going with friends, not accompanied by any parents). The dB's were the opening act, touring with R.E.M. in support of their own 1984 release, Like This. It was an ultra-formative experience. I still remember so many details from that night. I can picture Michael Stipe, when all the lights cut out and a single light behind the band came on to backlight him, creating a glowing halo of his shaggy mop of hair as he crooned Moon River during the encore. Lots of us in the audience sang along. I fell in love with every single little bit of that night. Later in 1984, I would also go on to get my first electric guitar. Coincidence?
posted by fikri at 5:58 AM on January 4 [6 favorites]

Martha and the Muffins, Black Stations, White Stations. “This is 1984”.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:07 AM on January 4 [3 favorites]

Killing Joke, Eighties
The Special AKA, Free Nelson Madela
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:12 AM on January 4 [6 favorites]

I want to note for the record that if you need something to help make you feel better after that mind bending assault on your pop and folk sensibilities, the same producer's list of 200 songs that turned 30 in 2023 will… not do that.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:15 AM on January 4

I listened to about the first third of the video. For me, it is a funny mix of at most 30 or 40% songs that are instantly recognizable by the first notes (Van Halen, Echo and the Bunnymen), but more than half of them I don't recognize at all. In a lot of those cases, I don't even recognize the name of the group, much less their song snippet.

I blame my ignorance on the fact that in about 1984 or 1985, I began listening pretty much exclusively to the local college radio station, which was both somewhat eclectic but also very narrow -- I don't recall them playing many, if any, songs by black artists, for example. They had someone on staff who really, really loved Echo and the Bunnymen, so those songs were on frequent repeat all day. They also had a literally open door, so as a kid I could wander in, browse the records, and chat with the DJ if they weren't busy. The studio always smelled like weed.

My memory of that era is that musically, things were much more balkanized than now. If you were a person who was clued into Metallica, you probably weren't all that aware of what was coming out in the Country section, for example. Even though I've never been a big fan of metal, I can recognize a lot of metal songs because at the high schools I went to, the people who liked punk and new wave sort of inevitably hung out with the metalheads by default since the jocks and preps were doing their own thing and were pretty exclusive.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:49 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

I'm not going to say I love all those songs, but most are perfectly listenable - my rant is that if you listen to radio (or Amazon music, or Spotify or whatever) and listened to a list of songs from that era, you'd get about 10 of those songs, played endlessly with the rest being basically forgotten even though that list is mostly top 40 hits, unless you personally made your own playlist.

That so much music exists and so little of it is played is a crime worse than any of those songs. That's why I say it's the opposite of the American songbook is what we want. We don't want Billy Idol or Billie Eilish constantly playing Rebel Yell. We are getting the American Songbook. It's too limiting.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:07 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

43. Propaganda - Dr. Mabuse
Original 12'' version - if you were going to be messing about with a Fairlight in 1984, this is what you would want to have been doing.

Token additions: Cocteau Twins: Domino, The Smiths: How Soon is Now, Torch Song: Don't Look now!, The Blue Nile: Tinseltown in the Rain, Julian Cope: An Elegant Chaos, Talking Heads: This Must be the Place, The Farmers Boys: Phew Wow, The Violent Femmes: Its Gonna Rain, Tom Petty - Running Down a Dream.
posted by rongorongo at 7:13 AM on January 4 [4 favorites]

Everyone. Synchronize Swatches.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 7:27 AM on January 4

Sigh. I'm turning 50 tomorrow, so I'm feeling it, and not sure if I'm going to thank or curse hippybear...

(J/k of course, he's a national site treasure!)
posted by Harald74 at 7:34 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

the same producer’s list […] 2023 will… not do that

Accurate, if only because I get a location blocking message when I click on the link, so the 2023 list won’t do anything of any sort for me. :/

(Has anyone found some way to check location blocking on YouTube videos? It hasn’t been an issue in any FPPs that I’ve noticed in a while, fortunately, but I know I’d try to do a check before posting links that work for me if there were some easy way to do so.)
posted by eviemath at 7:45 AM on January 4

I was born in 83. I recognized more songs from the 40 year old video than the 30 year old video. My best guess is that I spent my childhood with my parents controlling the aux (lol), and they loved stuff from the early 80s when they were still in their 20s, but quit listening to new music somewhere around the end of the 80s and kept listening to the older stuff. So I heard stuff from the 70s and 80s constantly until I was old enough to make my own music choices and listen on my own, which was somewhere right around 94. Ace of Base on cassette tap at the mall was the first music purchase I ever made on my own with my own money, but a lot of the songs in the 94 video were not what this sheltered white suburban sixth grader would have been listening to.
posted by jermsplan at 7:48 AM on January 4

ctrl-F: "Howard Jones"

Well jeez, here's MY favorite song from 1984 - how did it get left off this list? Howard Jones, New Song
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 7:49 AM on January 4 [6 favorites]

For kids unfamiliar, Howard Jones was somewhat famous for touring with a mime named Jed. Apparently they're still friends today!
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:00 AM on January 4 [3 favorites]

My kids and I still get a kick out of the local radio station that plays “Hits from the 80s, 90s…and today!”
posted by gottabefunky at 8:23 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

So I am making an Apple Music playlist of this list (watch this space, I'll post a link) and it is very fun how many song titles get duplicated over the years and make fascinating pairs. My favorite so far is "Eat It" by Weird Al but also by Megan Thee Stallion.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:47 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

No New Order release that year.

They did release, single only, Thieves Like Us, one of their best songs though (and also Murder, not one of their best).
It's important to remember that the best song of 1984 was The Very Things with The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:17 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Seriously, who could ever forget Eros Ramazzotti? He is to music as Stephanie Courtney is to insurance.
posted by y2karl at 9:27 AM on January 4

There's a story on one of the first-season Simpsons DVDs that Matt Groening tells. Hank Azaria joined the cast...5-10 episodes in? He wasn't part of the very first episodes. Anyway, Groening says, during the DVD commentary, that, 15 years in he still thinks of Azaria as "the new guy". Anyway.

"41. The Cars - You Might Think"

I hate the The Cars' new music.
posted by Gorgik at 9:31 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Here is the Apple Music playlist. It's only 177 songs since I left off the three holiday-themed tracks so they don't randomly pop up in shuffle.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:36 AM on January 4 [4 favorites]

The Rub - Hip-Hop History 1984 (a DJ mix)
Ego Trip's Greatest Hip Hop Singles of 1984 (now-defunct magazine's list reposted on Discogs)
1984 - A Great Year for Hip-Hop (Village Voice list)
posted by box at 9:44 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Sigh… I guess I really am An Old because I immediately recognized at least 80% of those songs. We got basic cable in my house in 1983, and I spent the next 3-4 years pretty much glued to MTV whenever possible. My middle school notebooks were covered with meticulously faithful doodles of the MTV logo.

Now to see how many I recognize from the 90s.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 10:01 AM on January 4

Recognised about 90% of these. AM/FM radio (& the Top 40) back in the day felt pretty homogeneous. I used to tune into Casey Kasems Top 40 every weekend in NZ; I had no idea who John Peel was until maybe 4-5 years later when I noticed EP's of something called a 'Peel Session' and broadened my musical horizons a bit (also Student Radio pointedly did not play anything from the MoR Top 40).
posted by phigmov at 10:39 AM on January 4

Coming back to the "my kids would recognize about 30 of these" musing, I listened to a lot of oldies (and... pre-oldies? The Swingin' Years shows and whatnot) radio when I was a teen in the '80s, and I would frequently wonder about what songs from the '80s would be played on an oldies station in the future.

I assumed a lot of Pointer Sisters from their overly-produced era, Laura Branigan, Toto, Phil Collins, anything from the Top Gun soundtrack. And they aren't, really. It's way more Cyndi Lauper, Depeche Mode, the Cure, Prince... and I never would have predicted that.
posted by queensissy at 10:55 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

I assumed a lot of Pointer Sisters from their overly-produced era, Laura Branigan, Toto, Phil Collins, anything from the Top Gun soundtrack.

IDK, I think you got it mostly right. The Toto Africa song is one of the most played in the world, the Kenny Loggins title track from Top Gun is right up there, and Phil Collins solo material gets way more play than the far-superior Genesis tracks. The Pointer Sisters are the only ones who got shafted.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:17 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Well jeez, here's MY favorite song from 1984 - how did it get left off this list? Howard Jones, New Song

It was released in the UK (and presumably Germany) in the summer of 1983. Lots of records by UK and European artists weren’t released, if at all, until months later in the US.
posted by otters walk among us at 12:50 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]

After listening to the playlist for a while this afternoon, I can confirm that many of these tracks hold up much better as a five second clip than they do as a four minute song. There are still plenty of certified bangers though.
posted by Rock Steady at 3:12 PM on January 4

Reading over this list, I would have guessed some of these songs were released on the radio YEEEARS apart, instead of months.
That’s got to have something to do with my having only been 9 or 10 when these songs came out, and a year being a much larger chunk of my life, but it’s still astonishing to me that, say, The Reflex and Wild Boys were the same year.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:43 PM on January 4

I was 25 in 1984, and a DJ at a pop radio station. This playlist puts me right back there, with songs that remind me of certain people and events. That's the year I moved to a new state where I knew no one, got involved in politics, tried cocaine, and met my second husband. Excuse me while I wallow in adult nostalgia.
posted by Miss Cellania at 5:21 PM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Is that a young Piter De Vries in a Toto video?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:31 PM on January 4

"Forever Young" was actually used (a few years after its original release) as our graduating class theme song. Which you would have thought was too "new wave" for our class (people tend to forget that back then bands like Depeche Mode and the Cure were considered "weird" by all but the "waver" segment of high-school populations), but there you go.

Along with what's mentioned in Peel's Festive 50, it's worth noting that 1984 also gave us such works as Husker Du's Zen Arcade, the Replacements' Let It Be, and the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime. Props to college radio and zines for spreading the word on these bands and more back when you had to trudge 50 miles through the snow to buy a "indie" (or "import") rekkid instead of clicking on a link.

1984. Seems like only yesterday (okay, maybe last week....)
posted by gtrwolf at 6:16 PM on January 4 [3 favorites]

That first Alphaville album is pretty much pure gold, every track. My favorite from it for pure fun factor is The Jet Set, but I think there's fewer than 10 tracks total on that and they all stick in my mind very clearly.

And then their next album just a couple of years later, Afternoons In Utopia, which is one of those late-Eighties surrealist musical masterpieces that doesn't come along very often in a lifetime.
posted by hippybear at 6:21 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]

As a person who was 18 in 1984, and who was glued to Night Flight and whatever non-MTV music television I could find, I was surprised to not know every single song on this list. It's cool to listen to these new-to-me recordings!

Fun fact: when I arrived at my dorm (which was Failing Hall, perfect name, no notes) in the fall of 1984, every single room on my floor had the poster included with the album Purple Rain on the walls.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:15 PM on January 4

I was 19 for most of 1984, deployed on WESTPAC cruise aboard USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) from Jan-Aug of that year; I recognize over 70% of the songs on that list I think. And no Berlin? Sheesh!

Berlin -- No More Words, Dancing In Berlin
posted by Fuzzypumper at 8:58 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]

The Blue Nile: Tinseltown in the Rain

I don't think I ever heard The Blue Nile on any commercial radio station. That first record of theirs is early 80s synth pop I suppose, but their sound has aged extremely well. Not very 80s suggestive at all. That record could have come out last month.
posted by 2N2222 at 6:52 AM on January 5 [1 favorite]

No XTC love? This is 40 years old, too.
posted by pmbuko at 2:41 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]

Swatch (while still a going concern) has probably 0.1% of the cultural cachet they did in the mid-eighties

They've been busy. Building a portfolio of the most prestigious brands in watch making/sales.

Cultural cachet. I can’t recall the last time I saw a Swatch ad, bit these seemed to take up about 15% of any given magazine in the eighties.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:36 AM on January 29