The 100 Best Singles of the 1980s
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The 100 Best Singles of the 1980s

When it comes to the music of the '80s, we feel no compelling reason to feel bad about feeling good.

Do you know why VH1 produced more installments of I Love the ‘80s than any other decade? Because there was simply more to love. Many would argue that other recent decades surpassed the ‘80s for diversity of musical expression, for production innovations, for ebullience and personality, for political honesty. In fact, by nearly every individual measure, the ‘80s probably take a backseat to some other era. So why do we still deify those 10 years? Probably because the decade’s best songs offered some of pop history’s finest simple pleasures, which is why you won’t often find humorless rockists making arguments on its behalf like they do for the ‘60s, ‘70s, or even the ‘90s. Sure, there were plenty of tunes that cut deep into the blackest heart of the Reagan era, but some of the most prominent came in such a deceptively sunny disguise (the Boss’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” for example) that they were mistaken to be part of the status quo. In the ‘80s, Public Enemy was the outlier and flourished because of it. Michael Jackson was showing signs of paranoia, but still mostly wanted to rock with you. Madonna was mostly espousing the joy of taking a “Holiday,” and even when she embraced a more militant attitude (“Express Yourself”), she was still arguing on behalf of embracing the pleasure principle. And that’s the way we like it. In so many other arenas, we’re still paying for the mistakes of the ‘80s. But when it comes to the decade’s music, we feel no compelling reason to feel bad about feeling good. Eric Henderson


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100. David Bowie, “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)”

For the title track and third single from what’s widely considered to be David Bowie’s last truly great album, the singer’s delivery is closer to that of a low-budget horror movie’s demented narrator than the dynamic rock showman that shot to megastardom in the ‘70s. Bowie spins a yarn of a young girl falling victim to her own fears and insecurities in his tried-and-tested “mockney” accent, and heightens the air of sheer menace further still with a violent percussion section and the sound of dogs barking. Robert Fripp’s guitar work here is tremendous too, an exemplary exercise in frenzied crosspicking that adds urgency and suspense to Bowie’s deranged psycho-thriller narrative. Huw Jones


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99. Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”

As hopeless and heartbreaking as any song that’s ever topped the pop charts, Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” couches its social commentary in deeply personal revelations and confessions. As the city lights flash by Chapman’s narrator and the song’s arrangement gathers momentum, there’s a palpable desperation in the way she sings, “And I had the feeling I could be someone” Because in that moment, having tried and failed to escape the poverty she was born into, she’s not expressing a sense of optimism that her station in life will improve, but conceding that she was foolish to have ever thought it could. Jonathan Keefe


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98. Public Enemy, “Don’t Believe the Hype”

“Don’t Believe the Hype” is an invitation to question everything, up to and including Public Enemy’s then-growing reputation. It’s the kind of sneakily self-congratulatory gesture that plays as self-deprecation while also being a bit boastful, affirming that there is indeed some hype that needs to be ignored in order to appreciate the group’s second album. Whatever the meaning, the track is indicative of the always probing, never accepting nature of the Chuck D-helmed outfit, his harshly forceful rhymes echoed by the cornucopia of grating sound effects sourced by the ever-resourceful Bomb Squad. Jesse Cataldo


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97. The Replacements, “I Will Dare”

“I Will Dare” marks the most accessible and radio-friendly moment for a rowdy Minneapolis four piece that, with a reputation for notoriously wayward live shows and a staunch belief in the punk ethos, was to this point always a million miles away from what one would consider accessible or radio-friendly. Upon its release in 1984, Paul Westerberg spoke of how the band was tired of playing “that noisy, fake hardcore rock,” and there can be no disputing that “I Will Dare” is all the better for reigning in the anarchy and chaos that underpinned their previous work. It’s about as close to pop music as the band could get, flaunting a sweet mandolin arrangement and a typically jangly guitar solo from R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, and perhaps it’s no coincidence that this is their best single by some stretch. Jones


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96. Chaka Khan, “I Feel for You”

What I previously wrote about “one of the most intoxicating singles in pop history,” a state-of-the-art example of sampling craft, still sums it up. “’I Feel for You’ had enough blockbuster tricks to bury any lesser talent: ultra-hip vocal cutting techniques, a blazing Stevie Wonder harmonica solo that damn near tops anything on his own records, no less than four synth-keyboard players, and a scintillating, shifting beat from Arif Mardin” For someone who allegedly disliked the memorable hip-hop riffing Grandmaster Melle Mel bookended the track with, Chaka interacted beautifully, making this one of the most compelling crossover tracks ever. Henderson


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95. Extra T’s, “E.T. Boogie”

Even if he really did send a cabal of Hazmat-wearing lawyers after Extra T’s for cribbing lines from his 1982 blockbuster E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, it’s easy to imagine Steven Spielberg bopping this head to the dance-funk delirium of this underground classic. Not exactly the enviro-friendly, “fax orgy”-wanting otherworldly being of Deee-Lite’s imagination, this alien hero hungers only for home. And that’s all right. Such single-mindedness, matched by the “held-together-by-paperclips 808 beats,” per our own Eric Henderson, is always rewarded. The bassline is all cherry-on-top rush, a call to arms for people who live, Busta Rhymes would say, for movin’ around. Ed Gonzalez


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94. Michael Jackson, “Smooth Criminal”

For such an apparently gentle soul, Michael Jackson repeatedly displayed his dark side with songs like “Beat It,” “Thriller,” “Bad,” and “Smooth Criminal” This is, after all, the same guy who once sang about his close friendship with a telepathic rat. Accompanied by a killer synth bassline, staccato beats, and a frenzied vocal performance from Jacko himself, “Smooth Criminal” rather unambiguously tells the heartwarming story of a home invader who chases a woman named Annie underneath a table and into her bedroom, where he ostensibly bludgeons her to death, leaving “bloodstains on the carpet” Sal Cinquemani


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93. Kate Bush, “The Big Sky”

Not many people could make a song about watching clouds into an epic rumination on living life to the fullest. But that conflation of silly juvenilia and introspective weight is what Kate Bush does best, and “The Big Sky” consequently grows into its own thriving world of weird skyborne shapes, full of wacky asides, cascading handclaps, odd voice inflections, and guitar solos. It testifies to the ephemeral nature of all things while also celebrating the teeming abundance of the world, a quality shared with Bush’s music, which is always spilling over with passion and ideas. Cataldo


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92. Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows”

It may not be Leonard Cohen’s most famous song (a fact that grows more regrettable with every ponderous, overwrought new version of “Hallelujah”), but “Everybody Knows” is the song of Cohen’s that best captures both his knack for writing a pop hook and his pitch-black sense of humor. But it’s the combination of his deep baritone voice and deadpan performance that makes “Everybody Knows” so funny and so absurd: Cohen sounds nothing if not inconvenienced as he delivers a scolding lecture with the bleak message that “everybody knows that the good guys lost” Keefe


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91. Violent Femmes, “Blister in the Sun”

It’s a testament to Gordon Gano’s affable everyman charm that the truth as to whether “Blister in the Sun” is indeed an open ode to masturbation or whether it’s a blithe summary of heroin withdrawal is as irrelevant as it is unclear. It’s a fantastic single, even though it took a spot on the Grosse Point Blank soundtrack almost 15 years later for mainstream consciousness to actually take notice of this stellar bout of unplugged folk-punk. Now, “Blister in the Sun” is instantly recognizable from its introduction alone, where balmy lo-fi acoustic guitar meets hand-me-down snare drums and a bassline that swaggers and struts rather than merely walks. Jones


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90. Connie Case, “Get Down”

This unfortunately un-famous call to the dance floor, a grandiose hybrid of house and acid influences, suggests the theme to the greatest movie never made: a space-age Blaxploitation film starring Pam Grier. In it, she stray-cat struts down sidewalks to fat-as-her-ass beats that spit, dribble, and fall around her like molasses, ducking behind a car to sex up some Puerto Rican honey for a spell before resuming her mosey-on-down-the-road through sheets of rain that shatter into crystals as they hit the ground. Her name is Connie Case, and the insanely domineering bassline that soundtracks her every want is her promise: to treat you right, hold you tight, and make you get down. Gonzalez


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89. The B-52’s, “Love Shack”

The retro-tinged celebration that runs throughout “Love Shack” is both a refuge and renaissance: a bright, blinking abode that served as a last party stop before the long, dark highway of ‘90s grunge, and, perhaps more importantly, the mainstream rebirth of the B-52’s, who, by 1989, had fallen into obscurity. The group is at the top of their beehive-primping game here, celebrating wonderfully oddball imagery with a bevy of clean Stratocasters, brassy horns, and Fred Schneider’s jerky-voiced interludes. True to their roles as hosts, the B-52’s remain the ecstatic drivers of this rainbow-hued vehicle; the rest of us are just along for the sparkly, neon ride. Kevin Liedel


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88. N.W.A., “Straight Outta Compton”

While it always had a conscience, hip-hop grew increasingly political as the end of the ‘80s drew near, its subject matter gradually expanding to cover the ills of urban existence. “Straight Outta Compton” tapped into the frustrations and anxieties of poverty-stricken L.A. neighborhoods, and remains a startlingly cutthroat look at the bleak, Darwinian realities of a gang-addled city. Apart from the coldblooded warnings of Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and MC Ren (with references to Charles Manson, no less), the production itself—including those humming, monotonous samples and bristling beats that chop at every verse—drives home the inevitability of these youth’s callous plight. Liedel


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87. Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, “It Takes Two”

It’s not that “It Takes Two” was either the single best or the single most influential of all the late-‘80s songs that cross-pollinated the history-minded elements of hip-hop’s first dynasty (that “Hoo! Yeah!” from Lyn Collins’s “Think,” the use of which quickly became a prerequisite for all hip-house jams) with the futurism and metallurgy of early techno and the juicy thwomp of house. That it qualified so damned highly on both the “best” and the “most influential” lists, though, has ensured it a permanent place in the canon. As fusty as that position makes “It Takes Two” sound to the uninitiated, most unassailable fixtures should “rock right now” this hard. Henderson


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86. Peter Gabriel, “Sledgehammer”

One of those songs that’s been partially overshadowed by its inventive music video, “Sledgehammer” highlighted the possibilities of a new visual medium while also signaling the end of Peter Gabriel’s most creative period. Coming nine years after his exit from Genesis, the song sounds more mainstream than much of his earlier work, with its processed trumpet sample and trilling keyboard line, a fact that doesn’t suggest any hewing to convention as much as the modern landscape having caught up with his innovations. The video hews to the track’s theme of mutability, but by this point Gabriel’s skill for transformation was waning, a fact that makes this last shot even more compelling. Cataldo


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85. Janet Jackson, “The Pleasure Principle”

The penultimate single from Janet Jackson’s Control was the lowest-charting to that point, but has enjoyed arguably the longest shelf life. And its contradictory message to be aware of how pleasure can cloud your judgment—this against some of the hardest skittering beats in her back catalogue—is still converting people today, like me. A few years back, I protested the emerging consensus that “The Pleasure Principle” should be one of the songs we included on our 100 Greatest Dance Songs list. “I won’t be happy with [‘The Pleasure Principle’] as the song sounds like someone vomiting into my mouth and telling me I’m a fun-hatah for spitting it out,” I emailed. Which only goes to show the dangers of giving into the short-term pleasure of snap judgments. Henderson


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84. The Bangles, “Hazy Shade of Winter”

The Bangles didn’t just remove the indefinite article from the title of Simon & Garfunkel’s “A Hazy Shade of Winter” (no surprise, since they often remove the article from their own name), but they excised a reference to drinking vodka, added a dreamy, harmony-rich intro that, in many ways, is even more S&G than the original, and transformed the rest of the track into a rollicking tribute to each band member’s chops on their respective instrument (including a brief solo vocal turn by Susanna Hoffs). Aside from those minor details, though, the Bangles’ rendition of the folk duo’s 1966 hit, produced by Rick Rubin for the Less Than Zero soundtrack, is remarkably faithful. Cinquemani


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83. Pat Benatar, “Love Is a Battlefield”

Pat Benatar was pushing 30 when she recorded “Love Is a Battlefield,” a song that speaks to the pangs and virtues of youth. But she and her team of writers and producers still managed to capture the heightened melodrama that accompanies young heartache. Benatar comes roaring out of the gate, taking to the frontline of the metaphorical battlefield on behalf of an entire generation, proclaiming their unity during the spoken introduction and then employing her classically trained pipes to declare their collective strength and obstinacy. While the song might seem cheesy or dated nearly three decades later, Benatar sells it like ice on a hot day. Cinquemani


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82. Devo, “Whip It”

Widely misinterpreted at the time of its release as an ode to masturbation or an anthem for BDSM, Devo’s “Whip It” isn’t about anything more subversive than the idea of bettering oneself through dedicated effort. While that sentiment may have been at odds with the trickle-down politics of the day, its fundamental optimism goes a long way toward explaining how one of the band’s founding members, Mark Mothersbaugh, has gone on to have a lucrative career in children’s entertainment: Yo! Gabba Gabba!, it turns out, is far more hospitable to a genuinely oddball POV than the pop charts are. Keefe


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81. Gang of Four, “Outside the Trains Don’t Run on Time”

Blending lock-step militarism with unruly, seditious noise, Gang of Four creates an ordered system infected with a pronounced undercurrent of chaos. To wit, the bassline and drumbeat on “Outside the Trains Don’t Run on Time” exist in one sphere: martial but placid, with every note in its right place. The guitar work, which is layered on top with the consistency of messily sprayed icing, is a distortion-heavy tangle of jagged transitions and meandering dead ends. The resulting dichotomy suggests the volatility of totalitarianism, evoking the larger image of a world caught between two dissimilar styles of rule. Cataldo


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80. Janet Jackson, “What Have You Done for Me Lately”

Nothing sends me into a trembling, corner-cowering stupor than a giggly, under-enunciated Janet Jackson jam. Something about this youngest Jackson has always felt frustratingly passive-aggressive. For better and for worse, even her most ostensibly empowered shows of self-expression suggest an act, and “What Have You Done for Me Lately” is no exception. The bouncy, jazzy caged heat of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s spectacular production matches, beat for beat, the litany of gripes Miss Janet lobs at her lazy lover. I don’t believe he’s actually in the room with her as she skips sassily around the couch, but you understand that she’s building control, and that she may actually put it into practice when he comes home. Gonzalez


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79. Cybotron, “Clear”

The clattering, dystonic patina of Detroit techno was an abnormal but, in retrospect, inevitable merger between two somewhat freshly debased environments. Primarily, it was one of the offshoots of what remained of the post-disco scene, but it was also a grim reflection of the waning American industrial sector. Motor City being the capitol of what would increasingly become known as the country’s Rust Belt, Detroit techno danced like it couldn’t even fathom what 1999 would look like. Juan Atkins’s trendsetting hit “Clear,” with its spry-paced but, um, clearly disquieted breakbeat, continues to eat metal even today while the rest of the world moves from unleaded toward hybridization. Henderson


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78. Pixies, “Monkey Gone to Heaven”

Granted, “Monkey Gone to Heaven” may not thrash and wail with as much balls-to-the-wall fervor as the average entry in the Pixies songbook, but it stands out as one of their most fondly remembered singles for its impeccable performances and superb songcraft. The string arrangements aren’t simply tacked on for the sake of sounding flamboyant or ostentatious; rather, they provide a wonderful contrast to the distortion-heavy guitar licks and Black Francis’s incensed apocalyptic roar. The roar itself is a dizzy blitz of holes in the sky, pounds of sludge, people in the sea, Hebrew numerology, and monkeys gone to heaven, almost as if Francis needed to be at his most bizarre and madcap to offset the song’s lush violins and cellos. Jones


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77. Patrice Rushen, “Forget Me Nots”

Good taste is perpetually undervalued. Keyboardist, composer, and one-woman band Patrice Rushen (who, in the late ‘70s, was intoxicating enough a talent to have reportedly inspired a young Prince to write “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and “I Feel for You” in hopes she would record them) has a long string of fresh, clean, indelibly perky R&B hits (“Haven’t You Heard,” “Breakout”) with just enough jazz and disco underpinnings to annoy hardline fans from both camps. The sleek, urbane “Forget Me Nots,” like a sophisticated soul sister to Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out,” isn’t likely to inspire many shouts of “That’s my jam!,” but everyone will surely two-clap along. Henderson


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76. Public Enemy, “Bring the Noise”

Farrakhan, the Terminator X, Eric B., Anthrax, Sonny Bono, Yoko Ono. Public Enemy invite everyone to the table before launching into this blistering, polyrhythmic sermon on the marginalization of rap music, delivered by Chuck D and Flavor Flav at the speed of dark. Arguments about whether Public Enemy was both “too black” and “too strong” answer themselves when one considers that “Bring the Noise” stalled out at #56 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop singles chart, but Public Enemy weren’t in the game to make friends. “Bring the Noise” remains one of their most propulsive tracks, a cacophonous barrage delivered with the hustle and focus of a bullet train. Henderson


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75. Eurythmics, “Here Comes the Rain Again”

By their third album, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart had already starting moving away from the hardline synthetic sound of their breakthrough, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). The exception, the single “Here Comes the Rain Again,” was a refinement of that synth-pop style—less bombastic, but retaining the rhythm and even a similar melody as the title track from their previous album. Lennox, whose voice is gentler and more melancholic, recounts a downward spiral into depression as the British Philharmonic emulates the sound of the falling rain that torments her. Oddly, the song is composed of two refrains, but no proper verses, and the melody ascends temporarily during the second refrain as Lennox, accompanied by girl-group backing vocals, implores her lover to talk to her. Cinquemani


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74. Gary Numan, “Cars”

The snappy new-wave sound that ultimately came to define a good chunk of ‘80s music can essentially trace its origins back to one song: “Cars,” the moog-drenched missive courtesy of the pioneering, nasal-voiced Gary Numan. Initially released in the U.K. in 1979, “Cars” serves as a blueprint for the following decade’s obsession with synthesized music, a versatile brand of sci-fi trope-obsessed nerd rock that was eventually perfected by Devo. Few, however, could emulate the track’s gorgeous droning, a cascading miasma of uneasy keyboards that hinted at the ultimate dangers lurking beyond Numan’s womb-like automobile. Liedel


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73. The Cure, “Just Like Heaven”

The Cure had pop romanticism on lockdown in the ‘80s, and heart-tugging tracks such as “Just Like Heaven” were the reason why. The song is gleaned from the same formula that produced “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Close to Me”: breezy, clean guitar-and-synth parts peppered with cymbal splashes and, of course, Robert Smith’s fluttery vocals. As with most of the coiffed Brits’ output, however, “Just Like Heaven” isn’t all joy, as the track offers a good amount of misery, regret, and unrequited desire to go along with all the bliss. Smith himself once admitted that the song was about hyperventilation, confirming that, for the Cure and their legions of teenage idolizers, love and pain are often synonymous. Liedel


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72. Kate Bush, “Hounds of Love”

One gets a sense from the opening barrage of drums on the gothic “Hounds of Love” that Kate Bush has just been chased out of her comfort zone, a suspicion confirmed by the single’s frantic take on her artsy brand of pop. Here, the baroque songstress feels literally pursued by an animalistic desire, and as her trademark cooing grows distraught, she races from fraught highs to growling lows. Bush takes a knowingly coy stance on what she truly craves: Despite decrying the love that’s chasing her (“It’s coming for me through the trees”), she ultimately professes that she needs it, making the pursuit all the more exhilarating. Liedel


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71. Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City”

Early in the decade that found him responding to new heights of fame by growing increasingly subversive, Bruce Springsteen added shading to his persona with a stripped-down package of four-track recordings, originally intended as the framework for a new album with the E Street Band. Folkie Bruce doesn’t always come off perfectly; his lyrics are better suited to large canvases and don’t always withstand close scrutiny. But everything comes together on a chilling song like “Atlantic City,” a haunting dirge that subsists on pure, unadulterated desperation. Pinned beneath a “debt that no honest man could pay,” it’s the story of one of Springsteen’s saddest working-class analogues, a man forced to dream of a world where “everything that dies someday comes back” Cataldo


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70. A Number of Names, “Sharevari”

A lot of songs from the post-disco/pre-techno era manage the feat of sounding both ahead of their time and, now, quaintly dated. The spare, deep “Sharevari,” one of the earliest proto-techno dance tunes, continues to sound like both Hill Valley in 2015 and downright Flinstonian. (Released in 1981, it’s technically stuck in a boogie time warp all its own: too late for disco, too early for electro, and besting both.) It’s really all about that bassline, so massive it scarcely leaves any room for a tight little high hat and a few “Moscow Discow”-like interjections. Deep, primordial, basic to a fault, but it fills a room like a brontosaurus pulling a b-boy windmill. Henderson


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69. Run-D.M.C., “Walk This Way”

The single that first made rap music “safe” for white America, Run-D.M.C.’s collaboration with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry on a cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” marks the point at which the two most dominant forces in American music definitively changed their respective courses in ways that are still shaping trends decades later. After “Walk This Way” conquered both radio and MTV, never again would hip-hop be considered some sort of fringe movement or novelty, and its pervasive influence on all aspects of pop culture would push MOR rock—as embodied by acts like Aerosmith—ever closer to irrelevance. Keefe


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68. The Rolling Stones, “Start Me Up”

Nearly 20 years before it was used as a marketing anthem for Microsoft, “Start Me Up” was an unceremoniously scrapped B-side from Black and Blue, destined for a dusty studio heap until it was rescued for 1981’s Tattoo You. It would have been an ironically lame fate for what’s become one of the Rolling Stones’ most iconic and recognizable tunes, a bluesy, hard-edged throwdown that supplied the perfect credo for, in 1982, the 20th anniversary of the so-called greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. The track proved to be prescient, its red-meat guitar riff doubling down nicely on Mick Jagger’s promise to “never stop” Cataldo


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67. Kraftwerk, “Computer Love”

For a group that immersed themselves in technology, computers, and all things electronic, “Computer Love” displays a tender, human side to Kraftwerk. So tender and human, in fact, that Coldplay’s Chris Martin wrote to the German electronica pioneers requesting to sample the song’s gorgeous minimalist melody for his 2005 smash “Talk” This single is also one of Kraftwerk’s most weighty prophecies, telling of our disquieting attachment to computer monitors, TV screens, or whatever device our urban society uses to get their technology fix. It’s unnerving to think that Kraftwerk warned us against our march toward this soulless existence as far back as 1981, but there’s never been a more apt time for a generation neck-deep in “data dates” to heed this message. Jones


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66. Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force, “Looking for the Perfect Beat”

“Planet Rock” was the cornerstone for a new rhythmic electro nation and still lands atop most lists of proto-techno and early hip-hop, but it’s “Looking for the Perfect Beat” that feels more like the uncut manifesto. It’s definitely the more focused and preoccupied: “I must get mine/I’m out to get it” Afrika Bambaataa’s mission isn’t to land a #1 or fill floors. The quest to craft the perfect beat spans the epochs of “universal people” and the “Mighty Zulu Nation” If the song’s rhythms are notably less off the cuff and inventively playful than those crashing throughout “Planet Rock,” well, no one ever accused zealots of lacking concentration. Henderson


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65. Janet Jackson, “Rhythm Nation”

Janet’s socio-political tour de force opens with an inventory of samples and sounds, including her own “Nasty” and part of the bassline and horn section of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You (Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” But letting you be yourself wasn’t on Janet and producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s agenda. The song doesn’t espouse personal freedom; it calls for social justice, with lyrics that promote the virtues of “strength in numbers” and calls for a generation to “come forth with me,” or as Eric Henderson once put it, “unity through mandatory multiculturalism” Just as the costumes and sets for the accompanying music video were worryingly uniform, even oppressive, the music is militant and regimented, with beats that fire like artillery juxtaposed with the typically thin-voiced Janet’s unbridled vocal performance. “Rhythm Nation” makes its statement without relying on schmaltz; it’s no wonder why big brother Mike was envious of it. Cinquemani


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64. Prince, “1999”

It’s no surprise that the Purple One would envision the end of the world as one big sex party, and “1999” befittingly serves as the dance orgy’s funk-pop soundtrack. Prince, however, doesn’t take center stage at the ball, and his decision to split up vocal duties among members of the Revolution lends the song a deliciously campy play-acting quality reminiscent of tragic Greek choruses. As expected, the band’s tack is to embrace the apocalyptic tide: “Life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last,” they happily sing in resignation, fully doused in the waves of synths, electro-claps, and wriggling basslines. Don’t you wanna go? Liedel


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63. U2, “Where the Streets Have No Name”

“Where the Streets Have No Name” represents the crest of U2’s yearning-filled Joshua Tree opus, fading into the ears on the back of Edge’s guitar peels and a heady sense of momentum. The track is easily one of the band’s greatest moments, bursting with a pure, emotive fervor that predates all the arena-filling motifs and other rock gimmicks we’ve come to expect from the world’s biggest rock acts. “I want to reach out and touch the flame,” Bono gushes, reminding us that, before the spectacle arrived, the angst and idealism were very, very real. Liedel


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62. Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”

From its elastic bassline to its cornball horns, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” didn’t exactly break any musical molds back in 1987, but it suggested that the overly refined Whitney Houston, Clive Davis’s number one creation, was capable of two tons o’ fun. Its schmaltzy sonic tinkling is spry but unsurprising for almost four minutes, until all of its synthy effervescence reveals itself as a reverie, from which Whitney awakens breathless, almost frustrated, and the song soars as a series of provocations, with the finest, if steeliest, voice of a generation no longer dreaming of the dance, but insisting on it. Gonzalez


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61. New Order, “Ceremony”

It’s a shame that “Ceremony” has forever been blighted by sects of a supposed diehard faithful who can’t seem to stop bemoaning the fact Ian Curtis isn’t lending his vocals to the track. It’s impossible to shake off Curtis’s ghost here, given that he has a writing credit and that the song sounds and feels so much like a Joy Division number. But the single manages to catch New Order close to their best and at their most somber, with each of the band’s accomplished musicians complementing one another in a whirlwind of industrial psychedelia and sobering post-punk sorrow. Jones


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60. Laurie Anderson, “O Superman (For Manneset)”

The ending to this particularly spooky scary story in the catalogue of one of our most remarkable multimedia performance artists once seemed unknown. Above two alternating chords, Laurie Anderson’s vocoder-ed voice delivers a weird state of the union address about, I guess, military might. It takes planes and smoke as its motifs, responsibility and inevitability as its themes, beginning almost absurdly with an embarrassing, existentially fraught message left by a mother on her child’s answering machine and finishing as a saxophone-y dirge. Before T-Mobile returned the song to the mainstream, it was 9/11 that seemed to finally make sense of it, proving what seemed like the ramblings of a borderline cat lady to be the wisdom of a prophet. Gonzalez


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59. Blondie, “Atomic”

The first great dance-punk single, released a full two decades before dance-punk was even a trend, Blondie’s “Atomic” suggested how the band would survive the looming fallout from disco’s end of days: By shielding their dance music behind some heavy rock. Producer Mike Chapman’s brilliant arrangement suggests a spaghetti western playing out in middle of a dance floor. Lyrically, “Atomic” is just barely a song at all, but the track’s sense of urgency makes even a throwaway line like “Oh, your hair is beautiful tonight” hit with the force of a nuclear bomb. Keefe


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58. Paula Abdul, “Straight Up”

Give me the camptastically endearing funk of “Vibeology” any day, but let’s give a hand to “Straight Up” for proving that some cheeses age better than others. Elliot Wolff’s production is a convincing imitation of the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis sound (sorry, Jody Watley), and Paula Abdul gifts it with a committed vocal turn that, by her Minnie Mouse-voiced standards, feels almost gutsy. Don’t let David Fincher’s black-and-white video fool you into thinking this is some sort of class act: The song’s karaoke-grade keyboard runs and scarcely un-horny horns sound as if they could have only been contrived by, say, Arsenio Hall and Bill Clinton, but you have to give Paula props for tirelessly matching them beat for beat with her every “oh, oh, oh” Gonzalez


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57. Nu Shooz, “I Can’t Wait”

They said they couldn’t, but it’s a good thing Portland freestyle group Nu Shooz did wait anyway. Their majestic mid-‘80s dance smash “I Can’t Wait” spent the better part of a year languishing in obscurity before Dutch remixer Peter Slaghuis took the ditty (itself a pleasant listen, to be sure) and blew it out with the vocal-cutting, bell-chiming atmospherics we now know and love. You know I love this song, even when it doesn’t try. But that immortal introductory refrain of “ah-ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh-ah-ahh, ah-ahh-ahh-ahh-ah-ahh” is the mark of a true classic. Henderson


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56. The Stone Roses, “Made of Stone”

The mysterious complexities of the Stone Roses’ only great album begin with the arcane cover art, which features a Jackson Pollock-style painting, French flag colors, and three slices of lemon. They continue on songs like this one, which revels in murky lyricism and syrupy musical textures, a sound that favors mood and tone over logical progression. It’s never totally clear what frontman Ian Brown is singing about, considering the barebones collection of car-crash and post-riot city-street imagery, but the overall image is clear: a pronounced sense of loss, with the marked feeling of a big comedown. Cataldo


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55. The Clash, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”

Even simple Clash songs have ornamental touches that make them resonate, further evidence of the creativity that got the band halfway through this decade, while less sturdy groups collapsed from limited ability and lack of ideas. The core material here is astoundingly simple (a great riff, a timeless question), but it’s the little things that make the song, like Joe Strummer’s Spanish backing vocals, reputedly translated over the phone by a friend’s Ecuadorian mother. Details like this function as kitschy trinkets, reinforcing the band’s gleefully incongruous image, as painfully stylish radicals equally concerned with kitsch and revolution. Cataldo


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54. Simple Minds, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”

Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole saturday to write these blurbs about the 100 best singles of the ‘80s, but we think you’re crazy for making us try to distill the essence of a track like Simple Minds’ de facto theme song from John Hughes’s seminal coming-of-age dramedy The Breakfast Club into 150 words or less. You see these songs as you want to see them, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of them is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal. “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” is a romantic synth-pop ballad, a dance-floor gem, and a snarky new-wave anthem all at once. It’s the stuck-up rich girl putting her diamond stud in the bad boy’s leather-clad palm. Does that answer your question? Cinquemani


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53. Kid Creole & the Coconuts, “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy”

The evil twin of “Billie Jean” A mean cocktail of island rhythms and New York attitude. Another great proclamation from one of the under-sung lyricists of the decade. Where Michael Jackson’s hit swathes itself in righteous indignation against an accusation from an opportunistic fan, Kid Creole bends his profuse wit into a withering attack on the progeny of an old conquest, who “wanted love, but only ended up with you” He denies being the child’s father, but can’t resist toying with the kid a little, stretching the inquest out past six minutes, finally deciding that “if I was in your blood, you wouldn’t be so ugly” Cataldo


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52. Mr. Fingers, “Can You Feel It?”

So begins the version of Mr. Fingers’s house classic that includes spoken lyrics, “In the beginning there was Jack, and Jack had a groove/And from this groove came the grooves of all grooves/And while one day viciously throwing down on his box/Jack boldly declared, ‘Let there be house,’ and house music was born” Instructive yes, but the non-declamatory instrumental version of Chicago producer Larry Heard’s early house anthem—a hypnotic carousel of three moody synth chords that are systematically given shading from drum programming that is, by turns, muted, urgent, and jackhammering—is just as definitive even without borrowing text from the Book of Genesis. Henderson


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51. David Bowie, “Let’s Dance”

David Bowie’s die-hard fans were quick to decry “Let’s Dance” as something far worse than heresy: a bid to get airplay on MTV. It’s true that “Let’s Dance” has only a tenuous connection to Bowie’s more progressive early work and set the precedent for his middling late-‘80s run. But what the single’s naysayers overlooked was the unimpeachable craft—thanks to producer Nile Rodgers at the helm and the legendary Stevie Ray Vaughan on lead guitar— behind such a simple, straightforward pop song. “Let’s Dance” allowed Bowie to further blur the line between pop and “real” art. Keefe


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50. Sonic Youth, “Teenage Riot”

If there were ever any doubts whether the pugnacious noise-rock scene of the late ‘80s could produce works of beauty, then look no further than Sonic Youth’s “Teenage Riot” It took seven years and five albums of rough and aggressive punk for Thurston Moore and company to arrive at the dreamy Daydream Nation sound, and it’s with this sound and this single that the band united the underground rock scene by, quite simply, imagining a world where J Mascis was President. Tellingly, “Teenage Riot” isn’t an anarchist’s anthem, nor is it a song that endorses insurrections with endless rebel-rousing clichés, which is perhaps why anyone who’s ever enjoyed even a fleeting penchant for alternative rock has a soft spot for Daydream Nation and “Teenage Riot” Jones


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49. Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the U.S.A”

Where “Atlantic City” is all choking doom and gloom, Bruce Springsteen’s now-signature song is the ultimate Trojan-horse anthem: Rhythmically repetitive and vacuously bombastic on the surface, its faux-triumphant fanfare famously cloaks a tale of defeat that seems more on par with the America envisioned by Upton Sinclair than Reagan’s thriving paradise, with the state as an immense force grinding down on the common man. Its boilerplate stuff for the Boss, who spent the decade morphing from wide-eyed suburban poet to embittered folk hero, but rarely has he presented his message with such sneaky verve. Cataldo


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48. Taana Gardner, “Heartbeat”

Taana Gardner’s oft-referenced but never replicated “Heartbeat” comes to life with a palpitating drum beat, but it’s that defibrillating bassline, emulated by post-disco and hip-hop producers in perpetuity, that’s the song’s real lifeblood. Famed New York DJ Larry Levin’s epic, 10-minute club mix is likewise sustained by Gardner’s performance, at once squeaky and guttural, predating the anonymous female singers who populated the Latin freestyle movement just a few years later. (One of those acts, the Robert Clivillés and David Cole creation Seduction, even recorded an accelerated cover of “Heartbeat,” which managed to best Gardner’s version by cracking the Billboard pop charts in 1990.) Cinquemani


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47. Young MC, “Bust a Move”

By the time “Bust a Move” was released in 1989, techno was already a widely recognized musical movement, and some hip-hop artists had successfully married much of their own genre to thumping EDM. Perhaps taking a cue from Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” from the previous year, Young MC swings the pendulum back toward the rhyme-heavy end of the equation without sacrificing any of the dance beats. “Bust a Move” thus balances its wordiness with plenty of rhythm, pairing a vigorous drumline with a funky Ballin’ Jack sample and bass parts provided by Flea. What results is lightning in a bottle: a skillful groove that effectively captures the zeitgeist of late-‘80s, dance-centric hip-hop. Liedel


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46. Prince, “Sign o’ the Times”

In the throes of a decade awash in mawkish, high-profile charity singles like “We Are the World,” “(Ain’t Gonna Play) Sun City,” and “Hands Across America,” Prince’s “Sign o’ the Times” served as a reminder that social consciousness didn’t have to be completely anathema to art. The song’s nervy, sly funk groove gives “Sign o’ the Times” its hook, and Prince’s understated performance is genuinely empathetic as he touches on most of the ‘80s hot-button social ills and tragedies, from AIDS and gang violence to post-Cold War nuclear paranoia and the Challenger space shuttle explosion. Keefe


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45. Adam Ant, “Goody Two Shoes”

It would take more than just a little makeup, makeup for anyone to mistake Adam Ant for Al Green, Al Green. Not with that twangy rockabilly guitar riff atop that blasting Motown-by-way-of-Iggy Pop backbeat and wonky horns straight out of Was (Not Was). The sedate “Let’s Stay Together” is, in fact, just about the only musical template not sucked into the vortex of “Goody Two Shoes,” a whiplash-inducing tornado of new-wave energy that hits the ground raving and only proceeds to lose inhibitions the longer it goes and the more disjointed key changes it attempts. Cocaine is a helluva drug. Henderson


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44. Soft Cell, “Tainted Love”

Calling Gloria Jones’s original Northern-soul version of “Tainted Love” a minor hit is probably an overstatement, but Jones’s single had just enough impact in the U.K. to get the attention of synth-pop duo Soft Cell and producer Mike Thorne. Their arrangement, which is somehow both more synthetic and more soulful than the original, makes their rendition of the song more of a reinvention than a cover. But it’s the simplest change they make to the song’s structure—that double down-beat of percussion that makes the verses even catchier than the chorus—that gave “Tainted Love” its iconic hook. Keefe


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43. Madonna, “Open Your Heart”

David Byrne once sang, “Watch out, with that attitude you might get what you want,” and it feels as if Madonna has made a career of realizing that ambition by any means possible. It’s funny to think that “Open Your Heart” could have ended up with someone other than the Material Girl. Yes, Cyndi Lauper might have spun something altogether more poignant from this unabashedly sincere and playfully metaphoric love song, but the conviction Madonna reveals throughout, as exhaustible as Patrick Leonard’s fluttering rock-dance bassline, finds her in a strikingly confessional light. As in the song’s polar opposite, 1993’s “Bye Bye Baby,” an anti-love song in which she coyly makes the man do the chasing, Madonna was and always will be credible only at her most naked. Gonzalez


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42. George Michael, “Father Figure”

Putting aside, for a moment, the eyebrow-arch-inducing juxtaposition of lyrics like “Sometimes love can be mistaken for a crime” with lines like “Greet me with the eyes of a child” and “I’ll be your daddy,” not to mention the curiosity of a singer-songwriter whose relationship with his own father was notably adversarial casting himself in the role of a proxy parent, George Michael’s “Father Figure” is nonetheless a sexy slice of blue-eyed soul and an expertly constructed pop ballad—ironic considering it was originally mixed as a dance song. And Michael’s reverb-drenched vocals are delivered with the kind of authority that could disarm even the most wary armchair psychologist. Cinquemani


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41. The Smiths, “This Charming Man”

It’s ironic that Manchester’s moodiest ensemble managed to produce one of the decade’s most buoyant and bubbly alternative-pop gems, with thanks in no small part going to Johnny Marr’s jangling guitar riffs. Morrissey does seem committed to raining on the parade, though, spinning a yarn of a sexual encounter that ends in—you guessed it—misery, though his misgivings on lust and trust are veiled well enough to keep “This Charming Man” in gleeful pop territory. And though it’s far from an emblematic Smiths song, this 1983 single will surely go down as one of their most fondly remembered. Jones


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40. U2, “With or Without You”

“With or Without You” is a deceptively simple song, but its structure is atypical and its lyrics ambiguous. Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton’s rhythm section builds quietly from the outset, providing a bed for the Edge’s baying, e-bow-style guitar notes and Bono’s plaintive ruminations on the tug of war between love and work. It’s not until close to two minutes into the song, which rivals “One” as U2’s best ballad, that Bono unleashes his signature falsetto croon and the Edge’s guitar likewise erupts into the skyward electric licks we’ve long grown accustomed to from Ireland’s most famous export. Cinquemani


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39. Talking Heads, “Burning Down the House”

There are points in “Burning Down the House” where David Byrne sounds positively nonsensical, like a snakehandler speaking in tongues. But such is the Talking Heads’ hallmark: a combination of supreme musicianship and controlled chaos. “Burning Down the House” is, perhaps, the quintessential Talking Heads track, brandishing all the quirks the band would come to be characterized by in the decades that have followed: animated percussion, fidgeting synths, and a host of trickling, percolating accompaniments acting in harmony with Byrne’s twitchy voice. “My house is out of the ordinary,” he assures us amid all the surrealist imagery, and considering how beautifully bizarre “Burning Down the House” plays, it’s hard not to believe him. Liedel


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38. R.E.M., “The One I Love”

So Michael Stipe finally starts to enunciate, and it somehow manages to make R.E.M.’s singles even less well understood. After mumbling his way through “Radio Free Europe” and “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville,” Stipe sneers, “A simple prop to occupy my time/This one goes out to the one I love,” and suddenly Casey Kasem starts playing “The One I Love” as a long-distance dedication. As one of the band’s first major crossover hits, “The One I Love” put R.E.M. on the path to global superstardom, even if a sizable chunk of their audience had no idea why or how. Keefe


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37. Michael Jackson, “ Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”

Have you ever seen a crowded room jump to their feet in the space of 0.6 seconds? Watch what happens when those three synthetic rimshots kick off “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” Though in a ‘90s interview Michael Jackson himself wrote off the song as being less successful than what he originally envisioned, he’d find few fans willing to agree with his reservations. The track is a six-minute monster of stripped-down pop perfection. Just as almost every recipe in baking starts out with the same essentials, you could derive the ingredients that go into every pop hit by picking apart this track’s tapestry of hooks. Henderson


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36. Bananarama, “Cruel Summer”

That plucky, sweet kalimba melody dances around one of pop music’s most oppressive and menacing basslines ever, instantly setting the steamy, discontented scene in Bananarama’s classic summer anti-anthem. What’s a girl to do with classes out, friends all away with their families on July retreats, and all the time in the world to contemplate the boy who just dumped her? Get one with the city’s steam heat, obviously. And likely find a whole lot of trouble. Both merciless and sympathetic, much like John Hughes reimagining Do the Right Thing’s hottest day of the year, “Cruel Summer” is heavy pop fluff served with steely conviction. Escapism never took so wrong a turn. Henderson


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35. Salt-N-Pepa, “Push It”

Even as an awkward pre-teen, I knew exactly what Salt-N-Pepa was getting at with “Push It,” but lest there’s any lingering doubt, the song’s raunchy beat and readymade club melody hammer home their ultimate goal: getting into listeners’ pants. As the carefree, playful cousin to “Let’s Talk About Sex,” “Push It” finds the Queens trio reveling in the dance-as-sex metaphors, from the pelvis-thrusting syncopation of its opening to its MCs’ libido-drenched directive to “pump hard” The sweaty romp ultimately earned the group their first Grammy nomination—not bad for a song initially regulated to B-side status. Liedel


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34. Grace Jones, “Slave to the Rhythm”

By 1985, anyone with any cultural sentience at all knew that 1979 didn’t really signal the end of disco, but instead only served as a catalyst for splintering it down into its vital ingredients, which in turn nourished any number of satellite dance music genres. Grace Jones’s masterpiece took stock of this neo-Underground Railroad and repositioned the form’s indefatigable resilience as a form of deeper cultural resistance; the rhythm that drives her and all who listen to her is the same rhythm that accompanied the building of the pyramids and the attempted destruction of racial identities. The simultaneously fierce and regal “Slave to the Rhythm” is maybe Jones’s boldest act of reclamation. Henderson


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33. Cyndi Lauper, “All Through the Night”

A majority of the hits off of Cyndi Lauper’s debut, She’s So Unusual, were cover songs, and all of them improved on the originals, including this poppy redo of Jules Shear’s Dylan-esque “All Through the Night” Lauper and producer Rick Chertoff transformed the song from a bouncy, folk-rock ditty into a resplendent pop ballad notable for the hypnotic sequencer melody that opens the track as well as Lauper’s transposition of the original harmonic melody into the main hook. Lauper gives the song a newfound poignancy, but her version also makes a humble nod to Shear’s quirky original with an eccentric synth solo. Cinquemani


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32. R.E.M., “Radio Free Europe”

“Radio Free Europe” can be a frustrating single. Every note that Michael Stipe hits here is wonderful, of course, but his plaintive everyman croon encourages listeners to sing along without knowing what the hell it is they’re singing along to. By Stipe’s own admission, the lyrics to Murmur’s lead single consist of “complete babbling” And if that’s indeed the case, you’d be strapped to find a more utterly brilliant exercise in tuneful babbling. Moreover, with Peter Buck’s jangly guitar and Mike Mills’s nimble basslines, “Radio Free Europe” is one of R.E.M.’s foremost toe-tappers, a truly timeless song that sounds as fresh now as it did when the band made their breakthrough some 30 years ago. Jones


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31. Indeep, “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life”

Not everyone gets head in the club. Not everyone gets dumped in a club. In other words, hyperbole aside, most of us neither have our lives saved or in need of saving by just the right 12 inches. But the rest of us appreciate the kindness of the DJ all the same. That’s why Indeep’s brilliant boogie track is maybe the most name-checked song ever among disco and post-disco aficionados, the crowd who will forever frame their musical tastes around mixmaster tastemakers like Larry Levan, David Mancuso, Tom Moulton, Frankie Knuckles, Nicky Siano, and the rest. When that phone rings, everyone on the floor answers. Henderson


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30. The Smiths, “How Soon Is Now?”

Question marks still remain over what meaning exists beneath the thoughtful and poetic prose of “How Soon Is Now?” Is it indeed an earnest cry for help from one of indie’s most joylessly enigmatic frontmen, or is it a tongue-in-cheek jibe at those who are striving to fit in? And while Morrissey’s flippant lyrics may suggest the latter, Johnny Marr’s dense and endlessly layered guitar parts afford the track such gravity and such a grand scale that you might believe the former to be true. Deconstruction and deciphering aside, this is a belter, a song which sounds as perfect on a jam-packed dance floor as it does soundtracking a journey home through some dilapidated subway station. Jones


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29. INXS, “Need You Tonight”

Though it could be said of many singles from the video-centric ‘80s, it’s difficult to separate “Need You Tonight” from the stark, erotic imagery of its music video, where frontman Michael Hutchence looks like a younger Jim Morrison doing his best Prince impression. Musically, however, “Need You Tonight” remains INXS’s most blatant dabbling in new wave. The song is a slithery exercise in syncopation and dance beats that is, of course, wonderfully accented by that hum-it-in-your-sleep guitar riff. Perhaps most important of all is that the seductive nature of the looping backdrop provides the perfect fodder for Hutchence’s leather-clad come-on, forever cementing his dual status as ‘80s sex symbol and rock god. Liedel


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28. Madonna, “Live to Tell”

Madonna’s first and, arguably, most dramatic reinvention was scored by the spare and haunting ballad “Live to Tell,” which wasn’t just a daringly demure introduction to her third album, but also posed a challenge to pop-radio programmers keen on instant gratification: The song begins with almost a full minute of music before the singer starts to tell her tale, and includes abrupt key changes and a half-minute midsection in which nearly all of the music drops out. Of course, it worked like a charm, and “Live to Tell” launched a fruitful professional relationship between Madge and producer Patrick Leonard that would last for more than two decades, and set the stage for the fearlessly autobiographical material to come. The song features one of Madonna’s richest vocal performances, full of soul, yearning, and hurt, with lyrics that can surely resonate with anyone who’s ever endured a detention of silence—self-imposed or otherwise. Cinquemani


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27. David Bowie, “Ashes to Ashes”

When musicians can afford the luxury of referencing their own body of work with a knowing nod and a wink, it’s a sure sign that they’ve reached iconic status. And for what could well be his magnum opus, Bowie revisits fictional astronaut Major Tom from 1969’s “Space Oddity” for a literal continuation of his tale as well as an introspective look at the singer’s own life and career amid the trappings of fame. “Ashes to Ashes” is perhaps the most melancholic number of Bowie’s 1980s output, and also one of his most sophisticated, marrying a fantastically funky bassline with eerie synths and deadpan drones. Jones


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26. Madonna, “Into the Groove”

Leave it to Madonna to make the campy, throwaway, opening lines of a B-side into a career-defining mission statement. She’s at her most coy as she speaks, “You can dance, for inspiration,” over the first few bars of “Into the Groove,” the theme from Desperately Seeking Susan and, somewhat inexplicably, the B-side of the considerably less brilliant “Angel” But who cares that one of Billboard’s technicalities kept the song from charting on the Hot 100: Madonna’s never come up with a more apt assessment of how her music works best. Whenever she’s lost her way artistically, she’s headed back to the dance floor to get her head right. Keefe


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25. Prince, “Little Red Corvette”

“Little Red Corvette” isn’t the first pop song to draw an explicit parallel between a woman and a car, but no one’s ever made that metaphor quite so, well, explicit as Prince does on one of his most rock-infused singles. It’s an anatomy lesson in thinly veiled code, and Prince has never backed his sex talk with such masturbatory, show-offy instrumentation as he does here. “Little Red Corvette” is all about unrivaled prowess, knowing how to make both a Telecaster and a woman scream in ecstasy just from the touch of his nimble hands. Keefe


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24. R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”

It’s hard to conceive of the fact that “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” came out nearly two years before Billy Joel’s similarly logorrheic “We Didn’t Start the Fire” Maybe it’s because of the way the portents and doomsaying of R.E.M.’s song became so inextricably connected to late-‘90s millennial dread, or maybe it’s the fact that Joel’s self-congratulatory boomer paean already sounds hopelessly dated, while this one remains fresh. Whatever the case, its cascading web of references begs for the kind of analysis normally saved for Bob Dylan songs, all while instilling a sense of manic glee into its gloomy proceedings. Cataldo


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23. The Clash, “Rock the Casbah”

If punk’s most lasting accomplishment was to demolish the deadly self-seriousness of ‘70s rock, a song like this one stands out as a banner for what the genre achieved, distilling current affairs, region-confused loan words, and spiky guitar into one irreverently relevant song. Swatting at oppressive forces with a vision of populist solidarity, the Clash imagines a simplified world where oppression can be defeated by some misbehaving fighter pilots grooving to in-cockpit radios, a concept that’s about as wholesome as rock narratives come. It’s a further reminder that a movement famous for swastikas and overdoses also produced its share of goofiness. Cataldo


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22. Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

It’s baffling to think that this boisterous little pep rally for girls the world over was once written from a male point of view. Robert Christgau best understood Cyndi Lauper’s slyness, the way she “fools boys into believing she can be fooled with” It’s in her indelible desire to have fun, which will only seems frivolous to those who would deny her the things she really wants. Lauper understands the lot she’s been handed (“Oh, mother dear, we’re not the fortunate ones”), and dances until the day comes that she can rise above it. That bippity boppity bopping xylophone is impossibly infectious, but don’t forget that you’re listening to the impatiently tapping fingers of a girl waiting for her day in the sun. And her conviction is such that when she says she wants to walk in it, you’re convinced that she absolutely will. Gonzalez


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21. Queen & David Bowie, “Under Pressure”

With its scat-singing and deliberately minimal arrangement, “Under Pressure” sounds so little like signature Queen and so little like vintage Bowie, yet it’s the finest standalone single either act released during the ‘80s. And it’s all thanks to a maddeningly simple but unforgettable bassline. It’s no wonder both Bowie and Queen’s bassist, John Deacon, have spent decades quibbling about who actually wrote the riff that forms the song’s hook: A decade later, a sample of that bassline even made Vanilla Ice sound far better than he ever had the right to. Keefe


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20. Beastie Boys, “(You Gotta) Fight for your Right (To Party)”

Rebelling against prudish parents for the freedom to smoke, drink, and ogle pornography is a staple of the 1980s: Films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Weird Science, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High all drew on teenagers’ urges to let loose and indulge in drunken debauchery. And with “Fight for Your Right,” there was an anthem tailor-made to roar from the boomboxes and speakers of these parties. Mike D, Ad-Rock, and MCA set their rowdy call to arms to an unashamedly boisterous guitar riff, and keep their tongue-twisting vernacular plain and punchy enough to broadcast their message loud and clear. Jones


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19. A-ha, “Take on Me”

Accompanied by a famously groundbreaking music video, A-ha’s debut single—effectively a cover of their own song, which was a hit in the trio’s native Norway a year earlier—is a quintessential example of how the early proliferation of MTV could produce hits nearly all on its own. Video killed the radio star, indeed. But “Take on Me” transcended its visual trappings not just by embodying another ‘80s trend (just as the Steve Barron-directed video mixes disparate media, the song itself combines both synthetic and acoustic instruments—a drum machine paired with live percussion, and an iconic melody composed with both analogue and digital synthesizers), but by being a damn good pop song. Cinquemani


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18. Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love”

Tina’s the girl on the dance floor wiping coke from her nose. Her boyfriend, Chris, doesn’t tell her she’s got a tit exposed, laughing instead, but she doesn’t get mad because he’s got a huge cock. And that, except for the tit part, is right there in the song, an insanely ebullient fusion of dub, rock, and reggae that’s become one of the most sampled songs in hip-hop. Maybe that’s because the track is an indelible reminder of Tom Tom Club’s canny gift for transmuting exotic sounds without whitening out their essence. Or it could be the foot-stompin’ beat by the irrepressible Compass Point All Stars. Or maybe it’s just that it set the bar so high for shouting out to one’s homies, their names sung as hooks, that folks are still struggling to reach it. Gonzalez


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17. Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”

Protest is only productive when there’s a captive audience for the message, and “Fight the Power” proves that Public Enemy knew better than any rap artists before them how to command attention. Insult Elvis and John Wayne and a lot of white people are, at the very least, going to arch an eyebrow in your direction. But Public Enemy were never just about empty provocation, and “Fight the Power” rails against issues of unexamined privilege, as exemplified by the public perceptions of the Duke and the King, that still inform so many political disputes. Keefe


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16. Madonna, “Express Yourself”

It was David Fincher’s music video for this smash from Like a Prayer that introduced us to Shep Pettibone’s remix, which, aside from the lethargic come-and-git-it cowbell that intermittently takes Madonna from the church steeple and straight onto the prairie, matches in its uptempo the soulful fervor of the singer’s call to arms. But MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore, and when I’m listening to this song on my iTunes, it’s the original album version I prefer, as it evokes something altogether more subversive: Fritz Lang’s robot Maria hanging out inside a Detroit dance hall, forcing men to their knees as the big-band sound rocks the house. He has it coming in both versions, but in Stephen Bray’s original Madonna comes fearlessly out of nowhere. Gonzalez


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15. Prince and the Revolution, “I Would Die 4 U”

Whether “I Would Die 4 U,” one of Purple Rain’s final singles, is one big Jesus metaphor or not seems less important than how effortlessly anthemic the song is. It’s ‘80s pop pathos at its best, the urgency of its shimmying, echo-drenched beat and arching refrains matched only by Prince’s distressed eroticism. At one point, he practically screeches, “Darling, if you want me to,” in equal parts agony and orgasm, his usual foreplay cast aside in favor of something far more desperate, visceral, and genuine. Which makes “I Would Die 4 U” one of those rare moments where we can catch a glimpse of the anxious humanity beneath Prince’s sex-soaked strut. Liedel


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14. Echo & the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”

The presentation favored by Echo & the Bunnymen is so arch and affected that it probably shouldn’t work, and definitely wouldn’t if the band didn’t take themselves so seriously. It’s this fastidiousness that produces grand tracks like “The Killing Moon,” a sinister cousin to the typical torch song, draped in spooky atmospherics, open-tuned guitar, and orchestral touches. Bound by the heady elegance of singer Ian McCulloch’s characteristic croon, the track builds to an impressive concoction of gothic style and new-romantic idealism, with the band obsessing over love while depicting it as a dismal act of surrender. Cataldo


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13. Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill”

The best Kate Bush songs work off a dizzying sense of momentum, building steadily toward long, drawn-out climaxes. “Running Up That Hill” has this energy, and needs it; the opening track from Hounds of Love, it sets the tone for an album where pure pop simplicity routinely clashes with prog excess. Nearly half of the duration here is build up, a chugging ascension that feels both expectant and tentative, with a static drum machine pattern that plays off gentle synths. The chorus finally breaks in at the two-minute mark, exploding with the tenacious force of sunshine bursting through the clouds. Cataldo


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12. Shannon, “Let the Music Play”

In the beginning, there was disco. And undiscriminating as disco was, she and her Italian cuginos brought hi-NRG and electro-funk together in one place: some papi chulo’s house in Harlem. And disco said, let there be freestyle. And her name was Shannon, who looked as fearlessly toward the past as she did toward the future, past even what Company B, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Steve B, Sweet Sensation, and Lisette Melendez would ever dream up. So lush in its influences, so intensely malleable in its production, this gold standard of a genre as divisive as my Aunt Mabel’s hair was circa 1985 takes you anywhere you want because it sounds as if it’s been pieced together from everything that’s ever existed. Yesterday it took me to a coffee shop in Little Havana. Tomorrow it will show me Jesus breakdancing on a cloud. Today, though, I’m chilling with Dario Argento inside a Spanish villa. Wherever, whenever, it’s magic from the start. Gonzalez


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11. Eurythmics, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”

There’s a reason Marilyn Manson and countless others have covered “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”: Its dread is timeless. There’s no substitute for the original’s pounding inevitability, however, nor for the foreboding Annie Lennox, who seems to be delivering all of her lyrical warnings with the crooked smile of a knowing villainess. Her tales of yearning and worldly ills are punctuated with perhaps one of the most famous synth lines to come out of the ‘80s: a gyrating, churning snake of broken electro-brass that, with its looping melody, seems to eternally spiral toward doom. Never have sweet dreams sounded so nightmarish. Liedel


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10. Michael Jackson, “Beat It”

If one had to justify why Thriller is so often lauded for its appeal across generational and racial lines, “Beat It” would be the ideal place to start: An unrepentant marriage of funk and rock, the single bursts open with Eddie Van Halen’s screaming, elastic guitar riff. Almost immediately, listeners are seemingly destined for a violent confrontation, and like the famed dance-fight choreography in the music video, the music duels with Jackson’s vocals, stabbing back at the King of Pop’s agitation and desperation. For MJ, the emotions might be more than just showmanship: Rumors that the song was a commentary on his experience with child abuse ultimately lends “Beat It” an element of despair to go along with all the multi-genre energy. Liedel


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9. New Order, “Blue Monday”

By 1983, Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, and Stephen Morris were very different people (and, particularly, very different musicians) as those that emerged from the ashes of Joy Division to form New Order at the turn of the decade, and “Blue Monday,” the best-selling 12” in history, is their seven-minute testament to just that. With its syncopated house drum samples, marauding basslines, and kaleidoscopic synth flourishes, the song encapsulates the quintessential ‘80s-pop sound with aplomb. Rumors propose the song was written as a happy accident while the band was testing their new Oberheim DMX, and an even queerer tale suggests the song was to be used as an encore they could simply hit play and leave the stage for. Still, even if these rumors detract from the song’s purity and mysticism, they do nothing to dilute its unquestionable impact. Jones


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8. Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”

A suitcase of memories, “Time After Time” was, surprisingly, one of only two songs co-written by Cyndi Lauper on her 1983 debut, the music artfully orchestrated by producer Rick Chertoff and keyboard player Rob Hyman to reflect every pang of the fading pictures in the singer’s mind. Pitch-shifted guitars lend the song a hazy, nostalgic quality, like memories emerging and receding, while a synthesized saltshaker and syncopated drum machine subtly mimic the sound of time swiftly ticking by. What could have become hammy in the hands of a less skilled vocalist and producer, especially in the more-is-more ‘80s, is delicate yet powerful, and just the right amount of poignant. Cinquemani


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7. Madonna, “Like a Prayer”

With an atypical structure in which the drums drop out completely during each verse and the chorus is all but abandoned halfway through the song in favor of ad libs, what’s now considered a perfect pop song seemed more fit for a church than Top 40 radio at the time. Though she’d evoked religion before, most notably with heaps of rosary beads dangling between her décolleté, it was, perhaps, inevitable that with a name like Madonna, the so-called Material Girl would more seriously explore the faith with which she was so strictly raised. But while there have been about as many interpretations of the song’s lyrics as there are remixes (she’s singing about God, she’s singing about giving a blowjob, she’s singing about giving God a blowjob), “Like a Prayer” begs for a more refined reading than a brainy conflation of spiritual and sexual ecstasy: It’s a song about love. Cinquemani


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6. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, “The Message”

Hip-hop officially arrived when the Sugarhill Gang waxed lyrical on the “rhythm of the boogie” and other such nonsense in 1979, but things got unmistakably serious three years later with this austere social commentary on life in the ghetto. The beat has since become infamous, sampled and remixed to within an inch of its life for the last 30 years. The lyrics, too, have been cited and quoted countless times over, with the “Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge” refrain surfacing in tracks from 2Pac, Mos Def, Common, and Talib Kweli, just to name a few. Make no mistake: Socially conscious hip-hop started here, an unflinching portrait of inner-city life that provided the stark contrast that party rap was crying out for. Jones


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5. Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”

As the leadoff single from Remain in Light, “Once in a Lifetime” was listeners’ first taste of Talking Heads’ rebirth as a cohesive band, and the group’s fascination with worldbeat rhythms are nothing less than revelatory. The track bubbles with the fruits of the transformative process, a drunk and dizzy mosaic of African folk, synth-pop, and jazz-flavored improvisation led by the manic preaching of its vocalist. Indeed, it’s Byrne that lends “Once in a Lifetime” its sermonic power, barking like an enrapt clergyman to his swaying congregation. “Let the water hold me down,” he sings, fully realizing that, for both the Talking Heads and listeners, “Once in a Lifetime” is practically baptismal. Liedel


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4. Prince and the Revolution, “When Doves Cry”

Prince’s songs are always caught up in the throes of eccentricity, but masterpieces like “When Doves Cry” take on a sense of warped grandiosity that approaches madness. Built around a curiously inane central image (the sound of birds weeping) with a low-key chorus and a heavy amount of repetition, the track works because Prince is so adamant in selling it. Piling on shrieks, yelps, moans, and several other forms of nonverbal cues, he guides the song through nearly six minutes of formless experimentation and garbled synth doodles, riding out on one of his signature masturbatory guitar solos. Cataldo


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3. Blondie, “Call Me”

Written, recorded, and released painfully close to Ian Curtis’s suicide, it’s difficult to separate Joy Division’s magnum opus from the tragic events that surround it. The lyrics even offer a cryptic insight into Curtis’s clearly troubled mindset, with the late singer bewailing the fractures and fissures of his floundering marriage to Deborah Curtis. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is as much a suicide note and it is a tombstone, a song birthed from utter despair and a harrowing sense of disillusionment, which in turn births one of the most intense and excruciatingly emotive moments in musical history. Jones


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2. Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

Written, recorded, and released painfully close to Ian Curtis’s suicide, it’s difficult to separate Joy Division’s magnum opus from the tragic events that surround it. The lyrics even offer a cryptic insight into Curtis’s clearly troubled mindset, with the late singer bewailing the fractures and fissures of his floundering marriage to Deborah Curtis. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is as much a suicide note and it is a tombstone, a song birthed from utter despair and a harrowing sense of disillusionment, which in turn births one of the most intense and excruciatingly emotive moments in musical history. Jones


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1. Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”

If, 30 years later, it seems almost quaint that producer Quincy Jones infamously balked at the idea of releasing “Billie Jean” as a single due to its subject matter, that’s because the song set the precedent for how former teen idols are allowed to turn into hot-blooded adults. The grown-up narrative rings with first-person authenticity, with Jackson drawing inspiration from the countless paternity suits leveled against him and his brothers during the heyday of the Jackson 5. And then there’s Jones, lending real credibility to Jackson’s bid to be taken at face value as an adult and whose work has, arguably, never been better. From the bassline that struts into the song’s opening few bars to the signature synth figure, “Billie Jean” is as flawlessly constructed a single as anything in pop history, its melodic and lyrical hooks stacked back-to-back-to-back. But for all of the desperation in Jackson’s he-said-she-said cautionary tale and torrid vocal turn, “Billie Jean” works because it never takes its eyes from where all its trouble started: the dance floor. Keefe

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