Missed the top 10 songs? Read about them here.
11. Steppin’ Out by Joe Jackson
Jackson enjoyed a brief late seventies heyday with two riveting post-punk classic albums released in 1979 – Look Sharp! and I’m the Man. Those albums showed off his urgent, nervy energy with accusatory cuts like “Sunday Papers,” “Is She Really Going Out With Him,” and the haunting minor masterpiece “It’s Different for Girls.” Sort of a less cerebral (and fussy) Elvis Costello, Jackson had plenty to say about the absurdities of the age with a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek delivery that surged over a thin reggae-pop backbeat.
“Steppin’ Out,” from Night and Day (1982), is a different animal altogether, shaped by the past but perfectly positioned as part of a kinder, gentler new-wave eighties age.
The song – complete with deep-focus piano chords, twinkling accents, and a techno beat – landed like a grenade in the early MTV atmosphere with one of those cheap but magical videos that told a fully realized mini-story. Jackson plays the part of a professional piano man entertaining the swarthy human condition at a hotel bar. In the background a maid gets in trouble for daring to imagine herself as one of the chosen rich folks. As Jackson leaves the hotel with a rose in his mouth – the same rose the maid wore in her hair when she dreamed of privilege and ease – the young viewer has been thoroughly schooled on the ever-widening social structures of the time.
The song itself trades melodic variation for expression as Jackson pleads with the listener to indulge in adventure, even if just for one night. “Steppin’ Out” registered even at our tender age thanks to Jackson’s delivery and cutting lyrics (“We are young but getting old before our time/We’ll leave the TV and the radio behind/Don’t you wonder what we’ll find?”), but its message seems especially potent nowadays as we continue to get dragged down from every direction. A superb mix of modern sentiments and old-school homage, “Steppin’ Out” remains one of the defining wonders of a much simpler age.
12. Overkill by Men at Work
“Haunting” is not a term normally ascribed to Men at Work – a mostly silly band who nonetheless produced a couple of catchy classics in “Who Can It Be Now” and “Down Under” from their debut Business As Usual (1982). Then they dropped “Overkill” (from Cargo, also 1982) and dived right into the desperation of loneliness, intrusive thoughts, and sleepless nights. We suffered whiplash. We didn’t think they had it in them.
Saxophonist Greg Ham had a way with a hook, and his mournful, descending motif perfectly captures an internalized gray mood in four simple echoing notes. The song features Men at Work’s usual staccato chording, a hallmark of the new wave-pop sound. But vocalist/primary songwriter Colin Hay deviates from the formula with surprising range and intense feeling. His oddball delivery on “at least there’s pretty lights” sounds convincingly demented, as if he’s fighting off the ghosts peering around the corners in the dark. His octave leap in the final verse drives home the panic of our essential hopelessness: “I CAN’T GET TO SLEEP!” It’s the high-water mark of Men At Work’s brief career, a surprisingly mature, troubled thing that remains a painful but rewarding listen today. Songs from the eighties rarely got this deep. What to do on nights like these? “Ghosts appear and fade away” indeed – we only really get a brief respite until the next night.
Epilogue: Hearing “Overkill” pop up in a stripped-down acoustic version to color a sad montage in Scrubs years later (featuring a very funny and self-aware cameo from Hay) proves that someone else out there got it. Someone else out there heard what I heard and had the influence to use the song as it was always intended. It’s another one of those moments when you realize music connects you to strangers across time, place, and economic differences. The eighties keep on giving, man.
13. Take on Me by A-Ha
The video will probably live on longer than the song because of its cutting-edge animation, quaint English setting (an early MTV staple), and a fantastic ending that seems to show singer Morten Harket magically – and painfully — bursting through the very bonds of reality to be with the girl at the greasy spoon. It’s regularly on the list of the best videos of all time, as it should be. But “Take on Me” as a song (from Hunting High and Low – 1985) lives on its own well enough as new wave pop at its most innocent and affecting. The song also happens to also feature one of the catchiest synth riffs this side of “Axel F.”
Harket’s ridiculous range reads angelic release on the vague threat “I’ll be gone – in a day or two,” and those impossible notes drive home an inspirational message that can’t be replicated to this degree in any other medium. It was years before we realized that A-Ha had more than one hit even after their upper echelon Bond theme “The Living Daylights” dropped in 1987. Turns out this Norwegian powerhouse has sold upward of 100 million units worldwide and set records for concert attendance. This fact seems important to note somehow. Like it proves that we only see small pieces of a much larger story and wrongly judge too many things. Or maybe it helps prove that pop music does more than color the background while we wait for “life” to happen to us. Beyond the easily accessed memories of our childhood experiences, pop music of the kind A-Ha makes (and there is a lot to recommend in their discography) has the power to highlight what other cultures find necessary in their art. A-Ha is a fucking cultural document, is what I’m trying to say, and who would have guessed it at the time?
“Take On Me,” which almost sounds like a trifle, pushes us through sheer earnestness to examine the importance of taking something on that will push you through your own barriers, even if you don’t quite understand it. As long as it’s yours. The inherent joy clearly demands it.
14. In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins
At one point, as we all know, Phil Collins ruled the world. With and without Genesis, Collins gave us an iconic voice and a thundering drum sound that helped define the atmosphere of the eighties. This song, easily his best solo work from his best solo album (Face Value, 1981 – released the same year as Genesis’ Abacab), shows everything that captivated us for a few years before he decided to aim for the cheap seats with shit like “Sussudio.” Here, Phil gives us trembling, vulnerable vocals mixed in a sinister stew of keyboards and guitar strains. The song tiptoes into an accusatory tale – and what suspense! Something is out there in the murky air and it’s coming for us, for him, for whomever.
Despite entertaining rumors that the song targeted a man who refused to help someone who was literally drowning, Collins here is clearly singing about romantic betrayal, emotional baggage, and the undying need to call someone out on their bullshit. There’s something universal about that sinking feeling of hopelessness when our hearts get ripped apart. Collins distilled that sickening, rageful thing into a sound that positively throbs with menace. It’s a sound he stole from his Genesis counterpart, Peter Gabriel, but Collins does his own thing here. He was never interested in Gabriel’s method of finding revelation through poetry and experiment. Instead, “In the Air Tonight” is raw, bleeding id, and it gets everything right. Betrayal does feel like drowning, and we’re all going down together, content just to inhale the water. Until …
DA DUM DA DUM DA DUM DA DUM DUM DUM!
The drum blast that releases all the tension in the song has moved beyond the iconic. It celebrates rightness, victory, revenge, of finally getting a chance to win an argument we’ve been having in our minds. As Collins’ toms reverberate, we find the courage to say that remark to the person’s face instead of in the shower hours later. It’s a release that everyone relates to. It’s the only drum lick outside of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” that everyone knows. Seemed normal in the eighties that someone who looked like your friend’s dad could capture a feeling like this, and everyone loved it unconditionally.
Collins had a way with paranoia in those early years. He learned how to use his voice to cajole, accuse, and scream at injustice – it became kind of his hallmark. Witness future coda freakouts in cuts like “I Don’t Care Anymore,” “Against All Odds,” and Genesis’ “No Son of Mine.” What works here better than any of those is raw novelty and the fact that the background music sounds formless enough to suggest all kinds of hidden dangers – emotional and physical. This sound, this tension and release, was heady stuff to a ten-year-old kid. The video also sold us: Phil wanders through some cheap nightmare land where he can’t open any doors. At the climax, as the drums blow shrapnel all over the place, a computerized heat signature suddenly lights up his face, and WOW! Talk about imagery that stays with you. His giant head fills the entire screen, alight with blue, yellow, and red areas like a primitive Atari game. We’re right alongside him. Like YES! We see and acknowledge your anger! The eighties were a weird time.
Anyway, this minimalist, sinister song/video combo hasn’t lost any punch. We all still wait for the drum break no matter where we are. “In the Air Tonight” makes thrilling drama out of very little and shows how to imbue the surrounding sound with matching psychological layers. As an everyman who has seen some shit, Collins struck us all in a deep place by defining undefinable emotions through sonic power. It’s also a hell of a song to drum along to on your steering wheel.
15. Let’s Go Crazy by Prince
The ultimate party anthem by one of the decade’s coolest – and most gifted – figures, “Let’s Go Crazy” from the seminal Purple Rain (1984), serves as the celebratory finish to the crummy film of the same name, but it doesn’t matter. “Let’s Go Crazy” embodies the positive spirit of the times and gets everyone hyped up. When we sing along now we think more about the amazing soundtrack and not “The Kid” in the film who treats everyone like sacks of shit but is forgiven because he writes good tunes.
Prince’s charisma always overcame mixed messages, critical failures, or dips in popularity because everything he did felt effortless and cool. “Let’s Go Crazy” features a religious-organ prayer, relentless beat, well-timed hoots, a sub-chorus that triumphantly tees everything up, joyous vocals, and a killer guitar break that cemented Prince’s legend as someone who could pretty much do anything. He understood his own myth.
Reading the lyrics now, I’m struck by how the song isn’t about a party at all but about finding solace in the afterlife or higher power – a place of “never ending happiness” that fulfills us more than “pills and thrills and daffodils.” In fact, there is a spiritual element in all of Prince’s music that we didn’t see as kids because, duh, we were distracted by all that implied sex. However you respond to it, “Let’s Go Crazy” symbolizes the very meaning that a year like 1984 has for us now: Popcorn films, rain-washed streets in our comfortable neighborhoods, and promise of fun times right around the corner. There is definitely something spiritual in that.
16. You Are by Lionel Richie
Man, this little slice of pop heaven features so many things that bring a specific feeling to life. “You Are” (from Richie’s self-titled debut solo album – 1982) arrives with a weeping synthesizer, punctuated bass, groovy background vocals, soaring bridge, and a horn-flavored chorus that sounds like summer days. Richie was everywhere for a while — “All Night Long” has got to be one of the most played videos in MTV history – and his endless stream of hits and powerful ballads felt casually mature, like they came from a place of great wisdom and experience. But “You Are” captures something youthful. Richie celebrates the I’ve-got-butterflies stage of love like nothing else I can think of. Listening to it transports me to some mythical meadow where I twirl around like Maria von Trapp as birds chirp and flowers wave in the wind. As a document of an often deceptively innocent and hopeful time, “You Are” is so fun that you forget about the undercurrents we were left with. So you just tap your toes and smile.
17. What’s Love Got to Do With It? By Tina Turner
Talk about experience and longing. Tina’s weathered dignity, emotional rawness, and gritty originality struck us as kids before we ever knew anything about her past. A melancholy tune that warns us kids about dangers we hadn’t yet faced, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” is powered by Tina’s amazing, thrilling vocal delivery. She’s sad and resigned because she knows the heart wants what it wants no matter the cost. Yet, as the video makes clear, Tina convinces us she’ll weather the storm, a little wiser than before.
She owns the New York landscape she saunters through, only adjusting her high-heeled walk once as men and women alike stop to pay tribute. “Love” turned into Tina’s signature song because it understands her triumph and displays a built-in inspiration for millions caught in the same trap. Powered by a catchy bridge, a key change at just the right moment, and expressive synth harmonica solo, “What’s Love Got To Do With It” is simple, unadorned pop perfection.
18. Burning Down the House by Talking Heads
I’ve written about the legendary video here, but we must praise the song as well. A jittery dirge, “Burning Down the House” shows Heads frontman David Byrne leaning into his charismatic-weirdo-nerd vibe with a vocal performance that sets the standard. This is the power of “new wave” – an evolution of punk energy that killed the dinosaurs. Byrne is paranoid, shrill, odd, and urgent, and the band matches him with a throbbing dance track. Little oddities peek out everywhere: Background vocals (especially on “HOLD TIGHT” and “ALL WET”) that sound like a ‘70s horror film, clattering percussion like someone dropped a can of soup down the stairs, squeaking synths, and then – an eerie, windy outro that fades away into oblivion as the drums pile on. They don’t make soundscapes like this anymore.
The song isn’t about arson – Byrne was never mind-numbingly literal. Instead, “House” pushes the idea of redemption through destruction of what keeps us safe. “And I don’t know what you expect staring into the TV set” he yelps like a demented robot, and you call your whole existence into question. That’s what great tracks do: They scare the shit out of you when you realize you’ve grown right into them.
19. Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler
Good god, this thing. Jim Steinman’s dramatic tracks (for Meat Loaf, Celine Dion, Air Supply, etc.) exhaust me, but they remain a guilty pleasure when the mood hits right. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” works more than other Steinman songs because of Bonnie Tyler’s commitment and distinctive rasp – a quality that seems to ground this obnoxious, hilarious, and totally awesome track. The eighties call to mind many things, but we loved our DRAMA in all caps.
“Eclipse” sounds desperate in all the right ways, totally nailing heartbreak’s raw anguish. There’s a lot to admire in Tyler’s near hysterical delivery (“LIVING IN A POWER KEG AND GIVING OFF SPARKS!!”) – she believes it, she’s felt it, and she’s not above it. It’s effort with no irony. The eighties were big about that, too, before we all lost ourselves in sarcasm.
The video scared the shit out of a young me. Remember that creepy dude’s eyes that suddenly start glowing? The fact that it looks cheap and fake only made it even worse somehow. I’m mesmerized by lo-fi effects like these. Horror films of the seventies are scarier because of the grain in the film, the dinginess, the homemade quality. Modern CGI puts up a barrier that we sense subconsciously. Just watch the remake of The Thing compared to the practical effects in John Carpenter’s version. Technology might make things easier, but it strips the emotion out of everything. But I digress.
Anyway, turn “Total Eclipse” up loud, sing in your car until the veins in your neck burst, and you’ll have a good idea of a certain over-the-top quality specific to the ‘80s.
20. Manic Monday by the Bangles
Oh, the sweet stuff of youth. “Manic Monday” is so effortless and buoyant that it manages to make the Sunday scaries sound good. If only. Part of this is due to the sweet flow of the backing track, which is uninterrupted by complicated chord changes and instead drifts along like a sweet sigh as it describes the stress of just hauling your ass out of bed in the morning. The other part is Susanna Hoffs’ dreamy vocal, which has one foot in the memory of an amazing hookup the night before. I think what the song is trying to say is that the loving was worth it, and the everyday grind will continue to kill you unless you have something to come home to. Credit songwriter Prince for understanding love and sex, per usual. He also realized Hoffs had the kind of distinct voice that allowed her to sing ridiculous lines like “Doesn’t it matter that I have to feed the both of us? Employment’s down” without blinking.
A prime example of a wispy sound that seems perfect for eighties reverie, “Manic Monday” is anything but manic. But that’s the point. We drift along now in a different way, easily tapping into our sadness. We remember all those adults trudging off to work while we went outside to play. We never thought it could happen to us. This track convinces me that this is all a bad dream. Maybe if we can close our eyes tight enough, we can make it fade away in the morning light.