The 200 Best Songs of The 1980s – from Rolling Stone Magazine
The 200 Best Songs of The 1980s
Excerpts (only excerpts! I won’t reproduce the entire 200 song list):
The greatest hits of music’s wildest decade–hip-hop, synth-pop, indie rock, metal, Chicago house, Miami freestyle, ska, goth, reggae, acid house, and more
BY ROB SHEFFIELD
November 23, 2023
WELCOME TO THE jungle. We got fun and games. The Eighties are one of the weirdest eras ever for music. It’s a decade of excess. It’s also a decade of INXS. It’s got big hair, big drums, big shoulder pads.
Not to mention massive stars: Prince, Madonna, Michael, Bruce, Janet, Sade, Cher. New sounds and beats explode everywhere. Hip-hop takes over as the voice of young America. Glam-metal rocks the Sunset Strip. New Romantic synth-pop invades MTV. Thriller becomes history’s biggest hit. Music gets louder, crazier, messier. Do you know where you are? You’re in the Eighties, baby. 
So let’s break it down: the 200 best songs of the Eighties, music’s most insane decade. The hits, the deep cuts, the fan favorites. A mix tape of pop classics, rockers, rappers, soul divas, new wavers, disco jams, country twangers, punk ragers, dance-floor anthems, smooth operators, and karaoke room-clearers. There’s all-time legends and one-hit wonders. …
#199 – Nena, ’99 Luftballons’ – 1983
A German girl sings about nuclear apocalypse, in a perky New Wave bop about the end of the world. Yet it’s also a doomy teen romance, at a time when half the hits on the radio were about the end of the world. The English version “99 Red Balloons” still rules the karaoke bars. But Nena sounds even harsher and cooler in German—oh, the way she snarls “Kriegminister.”
#164 – Dexy’s Midnight Runners, ‘Come On Eileen’ – 1983 
Kevin Rowland and crew trotted out of the U.K. to score this Celtsploitation banger, with Irish fiddles blazing and “too-rye-aye” chants.
They went right to one-hit-wonder heaven in the U.S. Great line: “At this moment, you mean everything.”
#155 – Billy Idol, ‘White Wedding’ – 1982
Billy Idol lets it rip in “White Wedding,” rebel-yelling about sex and religion and shotguns. 
This was the summer-of-‘82 hit that established Billy as one of the Eighties’ great rock & roll fame sluts, and he sure had some stiff competition.
#150 – Young MC, ‘Bust A Move’ – 1989
You want it, baby, you got it. “Bust a Move” sums up that brief moment in the late Eighties when hip-hop was taking over the pop world, and absolutely nobody was mad about it—The Source loved “Bust a Move” as much as Downtown Julie Brown did.
Young M.C.’s rhymes like “you say neato, take your libido, go to the church in your new tuxedo” were too clever to resist, over a slamming Delicious Vinyl beat as Flea wilds out on his bass. Anybody know how long his best friend Harry’s brother Larry’s marriage lasted?
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The steaming giant captioned the incredible image, ‘He’s back. Axel Foley returns in 2024!’
The new movie, from Sony Pictures, director Jonathan Entwistle and writer Rob Lieber, will premiere in theaters on Dec. 13, 2024. Karen Rosenfelt is producing.
The Post has reached out to Rose’s spokesperson and attorney for comment.
Running from October 24 to January 1 2023, the exhibition will also sell limited-edition prints of the images, with 10% of each sale donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital’s charity GOSH.
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