1984: The Year in Top 40 Hits (An Introduction)
What I’m going to be doing for the next 52 weeks, and why.
10 years ago for a website that no longer exists, I wrote an article called “1984: The Year The Top 40 Achieved Perfection.” By that I didn’t mean that 1984 was the best year for Top 40 hits — although I know a lot of my fellow Gen Xers would make that argument — but that it was the year that the Billboard Top 40 felt the most balanced and creative.
Along with the way Michael Jackson’s Thriller continued to spin off hits and how some 1983 releases belatedly gained steam — 1984 was the year both Madonna and Cyndi Lauper broke through on the radio — there was a ton of fresh blood on the charts. Most of it came from MTV, of course, both the British popsters who were the first to benefit from 24-hour music videos and from mostly-American hard rockers who learned how to incorporate pop hooks and even occasional synths — what’s good, Night Ranger? — into their formulas.
Comebacks were big that year, with aging artists from Tina Turner to Yes teaming up with younger names (the British Electric Foundation and Trevor Horn, respectively) to reinvent themselves for a new audience. Meanwhile, folks like Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and Lionel Richie just kept on doing what they were doing.
