Songs are usually listed by year they were released as a single if they were a single, year of first commercial release otherwise. Occasionally this is overruled in favor of year of impact: if you got to Van Halen’s “Jump” in December 1983 then pat yourself on the Oberheim OB-Xa, but the rest of the world experienced it as a 1984 song. For many African songs there’s guesswork, some of which is probably wrong. One per artist per year, which exaggerates the gap between Prince and Madonna, the best and second-best American singles artists of the decade. I didn’t think about jazz much; we’ll leave that for the 2030s revision. Out of obligation to the kids, playlists for Sp_t_fy, the least ethical streaming service (tied with all the other ones), are supplied. Some alternate versions are substituted for unavailable ones, but only Uncle Neil is completely missing, so send him a few fractions of a cent out of principle.
1980
George Jones: “He Stopped Loving Her Today”
David Bowie: “Ashes to Ashes”
Afrika Bambaataa Zulu Nation/Cosmic Force: “Zulu Nation Throwdown”
Joy Division: “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Diana Ross: “I’m Coming Out”
Bob Marley & the Wailers: “Redemption Song”
AC/DC: “You Shook Me All Night Long”
Kurtis Blow: “The Breaks”
Donna Summer: “On the Radio”
Pylon: “Cool”
Prince: “When You Were Mine”
Tanya Winley: “Vicious Rap”
Blondie: “Call Me”
Loleatta Holloway: “Love Sensation”
Dolly Parton: “9 to 5”
John Anderson: “She Just Started Liking Cheatin’ Songs”
Evidently I’m not applying any retroactive morals clause. One of the things that made what we used to call Old School rap exciting was that women were involved on equal terms from the moment Sylvia Robinson figured she could make a quick buck. It facilitated interaction between women and men on equal terms: the three male MCs are obviously horny but treat Lisa Lee with the utmost respect, and she shows it’s deserved. Now Kendrick does it, much less equally, and everyone thinks he’s a genius. Well, he is, but not for that.
1981
Funky 4 + 1: “That’s the Joint”
Talking Heads: “Once in a Lifetime”
The Swingers: “Counting the Beat”
Taana Gardner: “Heartbeat”
Grandmaster Flash: “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel”
Yoko Ono: “Walking on Thin Ice”
Teena Marie: “Square Biz”
Tom Tom Club: “Genius of Love”
Laurie Anderson: “O Superman”
Kim Carnes: “Bette Davis Eyes”
Prince: “Controversy”
The Go-Go’s: “Our Lips Are Sealed”
Rosanne Cash: “Seven Year Ache”
The Human League: “Don’t You Want Me”
R.E.M.: “Radio Free Europe”
The Specials: “Ghost Town”
Numbers 1, 4, and at a push 7 (and technically 5 of course) would all look fine among the ten greatest basslines of all time, and “Heartbeat” might have the funkiest of them all. Gardner has to work to establish her identity over such a monument, and just when she does, the song stops and the bassline is the world again. Understandingly exasperated by the breakdown of her painstakingly constructed melodic world, Gardner just goes along with it. The heart wants what it wants.
1982
Franco & Sam Mangwana: “Cooperation”
Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force: “Looking for the Perfect Beat”
New Order: “Temptation”
Gilberto Gil: “Banda um”
Orchestra Baobab: “Ledi Ndieme M’Bodj”
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: “The Message”
Stacy Lattisaw: “Attack of the Name Game”
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts: “I Love Rock ’n Roll”
Imagination: “Just an Illusion”
Marvin Gaye: “Sexual Healing”
Iron Maiden: “The Number of the Beast”
The Weather Girls: “It’s Raining Men”
Gregory Isaacs: “Night Nurse”
Prince: “1999”
Ornette Coleman: “Jump Street”
The Chills: “Rolling Moon”
It seems like an under-served niche these days: songs that are enjoyable for children yet have actual musical merit, using repetition without just saying the same damn thing over and over. Playing with language is fun, as only our most avant-garde poets and most violent rappers remember these days.
1983
Orchestra Super Mazembe: “Shauri Yako”
DeBarge: “Time Will Reveal”
Prince: “Little Red Corvette”
Marshall Crenshaw: “Whenever You’re on My Mind”
Tabu Ley Rochereau & Franco: “Lisanga ya Banganga”
The Go-Betweens: “Cattle and Cane”
Michael Jackson: “Billie Jean”
Pretenders: “Back on the Chain Gang”
New Order: “Blue Monday”
Melle Mel: “White Lines”
Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens: “Emthonjeni Womculo”
George Strait: “Amarillo by Morning”
Cyndi Lauper: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
Rammellzee & K-Rob: “Beat Bop”
George Clinton: “Atomic Dog”
Eurythmics: “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”
It’s funny that George Strait has had a billion country number ones, yet the only song of his that normies north of Mason-Dixon know peaked at number four. For a narrator with two lost loves and a broken leg, Strait projects a remarkable sense of ease, his voice a spotch of color on a vast landscape, the fiddle drifting infinitely into the West Texas plain.
1984
Franco: “Tres Impoli”
Prince: “When Doves Cry”
Umahlathini Nabo: “Qhube Manikiniki”
Madonna: “Borderline”
Sam Fan Thomas: “African Typic Collection”
Van Halen: “Jump”
The Chills: “Pink Frost”
Run-D.M.C.: “Rock Box”
Chaka Khan: “I Feel for You”
Bruce Springsteen: “Born in the U.S.A.”
Patea Maori Club: “Poi E”
Cyndi Lauper: “Money Changes Everything”
The Replacements: “I Will Dare”
Thompson Twins: “Hold Me Now”
Sheila E.: “The Glamorous Life”
Deniece Williams: “Let’s Hear It for the Boy”
In “Poi E”, “dated” becomes a virtue, so that the synth noises transport you very specifically to 1984, a warm day near Mount Taranaki, before tea time, as Polynesian and hip-hop cultures make first contact and some future millionaires are nodding along at home muttering how bizarre, how bizarre. Also the greatest music video of all time, presented here in glorious 240p.
1985
Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam with Full Force: “I Wonder If I Take You Home”
Double Dee & Steinski: “The Payoff Mix”
Wayne Smith: “Under Me Sleng Teng”
Tears for Fears: “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
The Smiths: “How Soon Is Now?”
Tom Waits: “Downtown Train”
A-Ha: “Take on Me”
LL Cool J: “I Can’t Live Without My Radio”
Commodores: “Nightshift”
Barrington Levy: “Here I Come”
Pet Shop Boys: “West End Girls”
Kate Bush: “Running Up That Hill”
Madonna: “Crazy for You”
Ramones: “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”
Katrina & the Waves: “Walking on Sunshine”
Prince & the Revolution: “Raspberry Beret”
If you’re ever frustrated at the turn radius of the arc of the moral universe, play “I Wonder If I Take You Home” after “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and check out how much more autonomy Lisa Lisa has compared to what she would’ve had a quarter-century earlier. And it’s not because men got inherently better.
1986
New Order: “Bizarre Love Triangle”
Prince: “Kiss”
Metallica: “Master of Puppets”
Cameo: “Word Up”
Kate Bush: “Hounds of Love”
Madonna: “Open Your Heart”
Slayer: “Raining Blood”
Pseudo Echo: “Funky Town”
Janet Jackson: “When I Think of You”
Run-D.M.C. & Aerosmith: “Walk This Way”
Bruce Hornsby & the Range: “The Way It Is”
Beastie Boys: “Fight for Your Right”
The Bangles: “Manic Monday”
Dave Dobbyn & Herbs: “Slice of Heaven”
The Smiths: “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”
David Bowie: “As the World Falls Down”
Pseudo Echo’s “Funky Town” isn’t the most ridiculous song on these lists (spoiler, there’s still a Whitesnake song next year), but the most ridiculously Eighties. Four Australian kids, one with a keytar, cover a hit that’s barely six years old as if the only other music they’ve ever heard is Van Halen’s “Jump” and maybe their sisters’ Duran Duran albums, and rock all the subtlety and wit out of it until it’s pure id. Play that clunky music, white boys.
1987
New Order: “Temptation” (Substance version)
Straitjacket Fits: “She Speeds”
Public Enemy: “Bring the Noise”
Rhythim Is Rhythim: “Strings of Life”
Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield: “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”
Prince: “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”
The Go-Betweens: “Right Here”
Franco: “Attention Na SIDA”
Suzanne Vega: “Luka”
Crowded House: “Don’t Dream It’s Over”
M/A/R/R/S: “Pump Up the Volume”
Whitesnake: “Here I Go Again”
Guns N’ Roses: “Welcome to the Jungle”
The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl: “Fairytale of New York”
Bruce Springsteen: “Brilliant Disguise”
Sonny Rollins: “G-Man”
There’s no single origin for what was soon to be retconned into narrow-sense techno, but “Strings of Life” was as massive a step forward as any. Every individual sound is a matter of pride, acting as gear and pistons slamming us into a post-industrial age, ready or not. The future is here now, and it always will be.
1988
Pixies: “Gigantic” (EP version)
Sonic Youth: “Teen Age Riot”
Tracy Chapman: “Fast Car”
Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock: “It Takes Two”
Metallica: “One”
Pet Shop Boys: “Left to My Own Devices”
Guns N’ Roses: “Sweet Child o’ Mine”
Cheryl “Pepsii” Riley: “Child - The Confrontation Mix”
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: “The Mercy Seat”
Roxanne Shante: “Go on Girl”
Neneh Cherry: “Buffalo Stance”
Eric B. & Rakim: “Paid in Full”
Ofra Haza: “I’m Nin’Alu”
Tony! Toni! Toné!: “Little Walter”
Randy Travis: “On the Other Hand”
Fine Young Cannibals: “She Drives Me Crazy”
There’s long been hunger for literal drama within R&B, so much so that too many of us temporarily forgot what a terrible person the author of “Trapped in the Closet” was while overpraising it. The two-minute introductory confrontation on “Child” features acceptable-for-daytime-TV flat acting, but this just serves to tee up Riley to just emotionally destroy the song like she’s taking revenge on everyone who’s ever wronged her: her baby’s daddy, her label, whoever convinced her to turn down “I Wonder If I Take You Home” a few years earlier. Now that’s acting.
1989
Neil Young: “Rockin’ in the Free World”
Public Enemy: “Fight the Power”
Ten City: “That’s the Way Love Is” (Underground mix)
Lucinda Williams: “Passionate Kisses”
Black Box: “Ride on Time”
Living Colour: “Cult of Personality”
Madonna: “Like a Prayer”
Digital Underground: “Doowutchyalike”
Pixies: “Monkey Gone to Heaven”
Soul II Soul: “Keep on Movin’”
Technotronic: “Pump Up the Jam”
Roxette: “The Look”
The B-52’s: “Love Shack”
The Stone Roses: “She Bangs the Drums”
Biz Markie: “Just a Friend”
N.W.A.: “Express Yourself”
Yes, the Silk Hurley mix of “That’s the Way Love Is” is a milestone of deep house and all that. The Underground Mix, in contrast, relies on old pop tricks: take a simple hook—a string motif, say—and ram it into the listener’s ear over and over again. And in this case, it fits the song better. Byron Stingily (name of the decade) can falsetto-emote all he wants about love’s unpredictable flip-flops, but the beat is going to go on and it’s going to provide structure, dammit. Seems fitting that he went on to become a school principal.
Complaints, suggestions, and “but Atomic Dog was 1982” may be directed to twitter.com/bradluen.