Billie Jean
1982 · From Thriller
That bassline, mixed and remixed until it gleamed, and the four minutes that integrated MTV.
★ 9.8
Browse by time · decade
1980s
1980 – 1989
Showing 1,213 works across all media from the 1980s
Raging Bull
Directed by Martin Scorsese
1980
Scorsese shot boxing as penance rather than sport, and audiences come out feeling bruised: De Niro's jealousy destroys everyone near him, in the blackest black and white imaginable.
★ 9.6
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1981
Every adventure film since is measured against it: Spielberg and Lucas built a machine of chases and near misses so efficient that forty years of imitation have not worn it out.
★ 9.5
Thriller
1982
Quincy Jones and Jackson remixed the whole record because the first version sounded thin, and Eddie Van Halen played his solo for free.
★ 9.5
The MessageGrandmaster Flash
The Message
1982
The record that proved hip hop could report and not just party, and the edge everyone's been close to since.
★ 9.5
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Directed by Irvin Kershner
1980
Everyone learned how to make a sequel from this: the pressure builds for two hours, the tone stays darker than anyone expected, and one line near the close rearranged a generation's childhood.
★ 9.4
Beloved
1987 · 360 pages
Sethe escaped slavery years ago and cannot escape the daughter she lost, who comes back to the house as a young woman. Morrison writes American history's worst chapter with unbearable tenderness.
★ 9.4
Beat It
1982 · From Thriller
Van Halen dropped in, played the solo for free, and Jackson made rock and pop the same building.
★ 9.2
Thriller
1982 · From Thriller
Vincent Price cackling over a disco-funk groove, and a fourteen-minute video that turned pop into event television.
★ 9.2
The Shining
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1980
Whole documentaries exist about what this film means: Kubrick threw out most of King's novel, sent a Steadicam gliding down those corridors, and left a dread nobody can explain away.
★ 9.2
Blade Runner
Directed by Ridley Scott
1982
It flopped, then quietly redesigned the future: every rainy neon city of the last forty years is borrowing from Ridley Scott, and the mood still outlasts the plot.
★ 9.2
Blood Meridian
1985 · 337 pages
Scalp hunters ride the Mexican border in 1849, among them a runaway Tennessee boy and the hairless giant Judge Holden. McCarthy writes the violence in Old Testament prose and never once looks away.
★ 9.1
Hounds of Love
1985
Bush built her own studio at home so nobody could interfere, then gave over an entire side to a woman drowning through one night.
★ 9.0
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
1988
The producers used sirens, squeals and feedback as rhythm instruments, which is why it sounds less like music than like an emergency.
★ 9.0
Once in a LifetimeTalking Heads
Once in a Lifetime
1980 · From Remain in Light
Byrne borrowed a preacher's cadence, Eno hummed the chorus melody, and the band looped its own jams like samplers.
★ 9.0
Fight the Power
1989 · From Fear of a Black Planet
Spike Lee asked for a defiant anthem, and the Bomb Squad answered with layered samples and Branford Marsalis's saxophone.
★ 9.0
Love Will Tear Us Apart
1980
The title flips Captain and Tennille into its opposite, and the single arrived a month after Curtis's death.
★ 8.9
Back to the Future
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
1985
Screenwriting teachers use it as the worked example: every joke and every prop planted early comes back later, and the whole machine runs without a single wasted second.
★ 8.8
Remain in Light
1980
Most of it is built on a single chord that never changes, with the interest coming entirely from layers of interlocking rhythm.
★ 8.8
Sign "O" the Times
1987
It was meant to be a triple album and the label refused. Some of it is sung by a sped-up alter ego called Camille.
★ 8.8
ET the Extra-Terrestrial
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1982
Highest grossing film in the world for a decade, and it earns every cent: Spielberg shot at child height so the adults are legs and voices, and wrecks entire cinemas.
★ 8.8
Straight Outta Compton
1988 · From Straight Outta Compton
Dre and Yella built it in a Torrance studio on almost no money, and Compton stopped being invisible.
★ 8.8
Born in the USA
1984 · From Born in the USA
Take four, April 1982, a Yamaha synth from Roy Bittan, and the most misheard chorus in American rock.
★ 8.7
Appetite for Destruction
1987
It sold almost nothing for a year until MTV agreed to play Welcome to the Jungle once, at four in the morning. Then it never stopped.
★ 8.7
Life and Fate
1980 · 896 pages
During the siege of Stalingrad, a Soviet physicist receives his mother's last letter from a Nazi ghetto. Grossman wrote the war at Tolstoy's scale and said plainly that both tyrannies were one thing.
★ 8.7
Sweet Child O' Mine
1987 · From Appetite for Destruction
Slash was goofing through a warm-up he called a circus melody; an hour later the band had this.
★ 8.7
Midnight's Children
1981 · 560 pages
Saleem Sinai is born at the exact midnight India becomes independent, which gives him telepathy and welds his life to the country's. Sixty years of history arrive as one unreliable, delighted confession.
★ 8.7
Ran
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1985 · Japan
Kurosawa was seventy-five and his eyesight was failing when he made it: King Lear moved to feudal Japan, with a great battle that plays to music and nothing else.
★ 8.7
Fuck tha PoliceNWA
Fuck tha Police
1988 · From Straight Outta Compton
Structured as a mock trial with Dre presiding, and it drew a warning letter from an FBI assistant director.
★ 8.6
Back in Black
1980
Their singer had died five months earlier. They hired Brian Johnson, put out a record in an all-black sleeve, and sold fifty million.
★ 8.6
Born in the USA
1984
Reagan's campaign tried to borrow the title song, which is sung by a veteran who cannot get a job. Seven singles went top ten.
★ 8.6
Back in Black
1980 · From Back in Black
Johnson was told the Bon Scott tribute could not be morbid, so he wrote a celebration over Angus Young's riff.
★ 8.6
Aliens
Directed by James Cameron
1986
Almost no sequel changes genre and survives it: Cameron turned Scott's haunted house into a war picture, and an action performance drew a rare Academy Award nomination.
★ 8.6
Come and See
Directed by Elem Klimov
1985 · Russia
No other war film can follow it: Klimov put a boy's face through the destruction of Belarus and let it age visibly, and nobody watches it twice lightly.
★ 8.6
Redemption SongBob Marley and the Wailers
Redemption Song
1980 · From Uprising
A single voice and acoustic guitar close Uprising, with a line lifted from Marcus Garvey and Marley already ill.
★ 8.5
Paul's Boutique
1989
It uses well over a hundred samples, which would be unaffordable to clear today, and it sold so badly the label gave up on them.
★ 8.5
Purple Rain
1984
When Doves Cry has no bass on it at all, which Prince did deliberately. Several tracks were taped live at a Minneapolis club.
★ 8.5
Like a Prayer
1989 · From Like a Prayer
Patrick Leonard co-wrote it, Prince played the intro guitar, and Pepsi pulled its five million dollar ad but paid anyway.
★ 8.5
Straight Outta Compton
1988
The FBI wrote to their record label objecting to one of the songs, which did more for sales than any advertising could.
★ 8.5
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back · 1980
The Joshua Tree
1987
Where the Streets Have No Name took so long to record that Brian Eno considered wiping the tape to force them to start again.
★ 8.4
Welcome to the Jungle
1987 · From Appetite for Destruction
Slash's riff, McKagan's breakdown recycled from his old punk band, and roughly three hours from nothing to finished song.
★ 8.4
The Queen is Dead
1986
The band were in a legal fight with their label while making it, and the title track opens with a clip from a 1962 British film.
★ 8.4
Where the Streets Have No Name
1987 · From The Joshua Tree
Eno reckoned half the album's sessions went into it and nearly wiped the tape; the Edge's delay does the rest.
★ 8.4
Grave of the Fireflies
Directed by Isao Takahata
1988 · Japan
Nobody recommends this one lightly: Takahata put two children through the last months of the war in Japan, and being animated makes it harder to bear, not easier.
★ 8.4
Blue Monday
1983
A die-cut sleeve modelled on a floppy disk, an Oberheim drum machine, and the best-selling twelve-inch single ever pressed.
★ 8.4
The Book of Disquiet
1982 · 468 pages
Pessoa invented an assistant bookkeeper in Lisbon and gave him hundreds of fragments on being alive in a rented room. Open the book anywhere and someone is already thinking your thoughts.
★ 8.4
Love in the Time of Cholera
1985 · 348 pages
Turned down as a young man, Florentino Ariza waits fifty-one years for the woman he loves to be widowed. García Márquez makes old age more erotic than youth.
★ 8.4
Under PressureDavid Bowie
Under Pressure
David Bowie and Queen
1981 · From Hot Space
Bowie lived near Mountain Studios, dropped in, and one evening's jam became a UK number one with a disputed bassline.
★ 8.4
He Stopped Loving Her Today
1980
Jones thought nobody would play something so morbid; Sherrill spent eighteen months coaxing the vocal onto tape.
★ 8.3
There is a Light that Never Goes OutThe Smiths
There is a Light that Never Goes Out
1986 · From The Queen is Dead
Marr faked the strings on an Emulator, credited them to the Hated Salford Ensemble, and Britain waited six years.
★ 8.3
Full Metal Jacket
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1987
The first half is the most quoted boot camp ever filmed: Kubrick found a real Marine drill instructor, let him write half his own material, and made basic training terrifying.
★ 8.3
3 Feet High and Rising
1989
They sampled so freely that the Turtles sued them, and the case helped make sample clearance the expensive business it has been ever since.
★ 8.2
Planet RockAfrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force
Planet Rock
1982
Bambaataa welded Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express to a Roland 808, and Tommy Boy paid Kraftwerk a dollar per record.
★ 8.2
My Neighbor Totoro
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
1988 · Japan
Children's films almost never dare to have no villain: Miyazaki made eighty minutes of pure safety out of two sisters and a forest spirit, and it became Ghibli's emblem.
★ 8.2
Every Breath You Take
1983 · From Synchronicity
Sting woke at Fleming's Goldeneye with the melody; Summers cut that arpeggio in one take and made surveillance sound tender.
★ 8.2
Do the Right Thing
Directed by Spike Lee
1989
No American film has been braver about refusing to resolve: one Brooklyn block on the hottest day of the year, and Lee will not tell you who was right.
★ 8.2
Graceland
1986
Simon recorded with South African musicians in defiance of the cultural boycott and was condemned for it. Bakithi Kumalo's fretless bass runs through everything.
★ 8.1
How Soon is Now?The Smiths
How Soon is Now?
1985 · From Meat Is Murder
Marr's shudder came from four Fender Twins with their tremolos fighting, and Morrissey put a lonely man in a nightclub.
★ 8.1
Fanny & Alexander
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
1982 · Sweden
Bergman meant it as his farewell to cinema and made it the warmest thing he ever did: five hours in its full version, of Christmas light, ghosts, cruelty and childhood.
★ 8.1
Das Boot
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
1981 · Germany
No war film has ever been this claustrophobic: Petersen ran a camera the length of a U-boat again and again until the steel walls start pressing in on you.
★ 8.1
Master of Puppets
1986
No singles and no videos, and it sold millions anyway. Bassist Cliff Burton was killed when the tour bus crashed in Sweden months later.
★ 8.0
Die Hard
Directed by John McTiernan
1988
Hollywood spent the next decade pitching films as Die Hard on a boat, a bus, a plane: McTiernan built the action machine everyone has been copying since 1988.
★ 8.0
So
1986
The Sledgehammer video was shot frame by frame with Gabriel lying under glass for sixteen hours. Youssou N'Dour sings the end of In Your Eyes.
★ 8.0
With or Without YouU2
With or Without You
1987 · From The Joshua Tree
The Edge was sent a prototype Infinite Guitar by Michael Brook, and U2 had their first American number one.
★ 8.0
Blue Velvet
Directed by David Lynch
1986
Lynch invented his own genre here and the word Lynchian dates from it: a severed ear in a field leads into the underside of an ordinary American town.
★ 8.0
Synchronicity
1983
The three of them recorded in separate rooms because they could no longer stand each other, and then made the biggest album of the year.
★ 7.9
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
1983
Recorded on a secondhand eight-track in a Chalk Farm attic, and an American number one by September.
★ 7.9
Once Upon a Time in America
Directed by Sergio Leone
1984
American distributors cut ninety minutes out of it and destroyed the reviews: restored to full length, Leone's fifty-year gangster elegy drifts between decades like an opium dream.
★ 7.9
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
1987 · 838 pages
At a London crossing in 1933 a physicist grasps how a chain reaction could work. Rhodes follows the idea to Los Alamos and Hiroshima, making the physics clear and the human cost unbearable.
★ 7.9
The Terminator
Directed by James Cameron
1984
Cameron made it for six million dollars and launched two careers and a franchise: a machine that cannot be bargained with, cannot be reasoned with, and absolutely will not stop.
★ 7.9
Battle Cry of Freedom
1988 · 952 pages
McPherson carries the whole Civil War in one volume, from the fights over slavery in the 1840s through Antietam to the surrender at Appomattox, and it reads like dispatches filed the same day.
★ 7.9
Amadeus
Directed by Milos Forman
1984
It sent a whole generation out to buy Mozart records: Salieri narrates his own jealousy from an asylum, and the music keeps making his case better than he can.
★ 7.8
Airplane!
Directed by David Zucker and Jim Abrahams
1980
It fires jokes at a rate almost nothing before it attempted and lands most of them: the trick was casting dramatic actors and telling them to play everything straight.
★ 7.8
This Charming Man
1983
Marr stacked roughly fifteen guitar tracks and dropped a knife on the strings; Morrissey lifted a line from Sleuth.
★ 7.8
Fast CarTracy Chapman
Fast Car
1988 · From Tracy Chapman
Stevie Wonder's gear failed at the Mandela tribute, Chapman went on with a guitar, and the record went top ten.
★ 7.8
No. Try not. Do...or do not. There is no try.
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back · 1980
Sexual Healing
1982 · From Midnight Love
Gaye programmed the TR-808 himself in a Belgian studio, and it finally won him the first Grammys of his career.
★ 7.8
Paradise City
1987 · From Appetite for Destruction
Written in a rental van home from San Francisco, and the final two minutes simply double the tempo.
★ 7.8
The Name of the Rose
1980 · 579 pages
Monks are dying at an Italian abbey in 1327, the library is a labyrinth no one may enter, and a Franciscan detective and his novice go in. Eco made medieval theology a thriller.
★ 7.7
You Shook Me All Night Long
1980 · From Back in Black
Recorded at Compass Point in Nassau with Mutt Lange, Johnson's first single, and a riff that swings rather than pounds.
★ 7.7
In The Air Tonight
1981
Padgham's talkback-microphone accident on Peter Gabriel's third album, a Roland CR-78 pattern, and pop's most anticipated drum entrance.
★ 7.7
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1984 · 320 pages
Kundera puts a Prague surgeon who cannot stop having affairs, the woman who loves him, and the Soviet tanks of 1968 together, then asks whether a life lived once can weigh anything.
★ 7.7
Just Like Heaven
1987 · From Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Smith traced it to a day at Beachy Head with Mary Poole; Williams sped the tempo, adding the opening fill.
★ 7.7
The Remains of the Day
1989 · 245 pages
Driving across England in 1956 to see the housekeeper he worked beside, a butler remembers the Nazi sympathizer he served with pride. What he cannot bring himself to say is the whole novel.
★ 7.7
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
1983
Robert Hazard wrote it in 1979 from a man's point of view, and Lauper flipped it into female solidarity.
★ 7.7
Like a Virgin
1984 · From Like a Virgin
A Steinberg and Kelly demo Rodgers disliked at first, six weeks at number one, and a seventeen-foot wedding cake.
★ 7.7
The Handmaid's Tale
1985 · 336 pages
In the theocracy that replaced the United States, fertile women are assigned to powerful men to bear their children. Atwood put nothing in it that had not already happened somewhere.
★ 7.7
Bad
1987
Prince was supposed to sing the title track with Jackson and turned it down. Five singles from it went to number one anyway.
★ 7.7
Another One Bites the Dust
1980 · From Greatest Hits
Deacon's bassline owes Chic, Michael Jackson talked them into releasing it, and Queen landed their biggest-selling single.
★ 7.7
Let's Dance
1983 · From Let's Dance
Nile Rodgers on rhythm guitar, an unknown Stevie Ray Vaughan on lead, and Bowie's biggest-selling single by a distance.
★ 7.7
Fairytale of New York
1987
Two years in the making, with MacColl finally singing the woman's part, and it still stalled at number two.
★ 7.7
Where Is My Mind?
1988 · From Surfer Rosa
Francis traced the lyric to a fish that followed him diving; Albini taped Deal's vocal in a bathroom.
★ 7.7
Daydream Nation
1988
A Gerhard Richter candle painting on the sleeve, a double album made on almost no money, and the last thing before they signed to a major.
★ 7.7
What's Love Got To Do With It
1984 · From Private Dancer
Cliff Richard turned it down, Bucks Fizz shelved it, and Turner at forty-four took it to number one.
★ 7.7
Disintegration
1989
Robert Smith turned thirty, decided he was finished, and made the biggest record of the band's life about it.
★ 7.7
Don't You Want Me
1981 · From Dare
Oakey thought it the weakest thing on Dare; it became Britain's best-selling single of 1981 and Christmas number one.
★ 7.6
La Di Da DiSlick Rick
La Di Da Di
1985
Two voices and no instruments at all: Doug E. Fresh's beatbox under Slick Rick's storytelling, sampled ever since.
★ 7.6
Walk This Way
1986 · From Raising Hell
Rubin had to talk Run-DMC into it; Tyler smashed through the video's wall and Aerosmith got a career back.
★ 7.6
Bring the Noise
1987 · From It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
First released on the Less Than Zero soundtrack, it opens with Malcolm X and never stops arguing rap's case.
★ 7.6
Sucker MC's
1983 · From Run-D.M.C.
An Oberheim drum machine, a few scratches, and two voices. Everything before it suddenly sounded old school.
★ 7.6
Personal Jesus
1989 · From Violator
Priscilla Presley's memoir gave Gore the idea, Flood cut it in Milan, and Cash later called it evangelical.
★ 7.6
Smooth Criminal
1987 · From Bad
Jackson took the chorus line from a CPR dummy named Annie, and the anti-gravity lean later earned a patent.
★ 7.6
Free Fallin'
1989 · From Full Moon Fever
Two days of writing with Jeff Lynne, Mike Campbell's twelve-string, and Ventura Boulevard turned into the whole San Fernando Valley.
★ 7.6
Sunday Bloody Sunday
1983 · From War
Mullen's marching snare was cut at the foot of a Windmill Lane stairwell, and Bono insisted it was no rebel song.
★ 7.6
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
1987 · From The Joshua Tree
A jam demoed under the title The Weather Girls became a gospel hymn about doubt, and U2's second American number one.
★ 7.6
West End GirlsPet Shop Boys
West End Girls
1985
Cut twice, once for Bobby Orlando and again with Stephen Hague, Tennant half-rapping London class anxiety to number one.
★ 7.5
9 to 5
1980 · From 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs
Parton played the typewriter part on her acrylic fingernails, credited on the album, then took it to number one.
★ 7.5
I Wanna Dance with Somebody
1987 · From Whitney
Walden thought the demo too country, funked it up, and Houston cut it while shaking off a bronchial infection.
★ 7.5
Rockin' in the Free World
1989 · From Freedom
Sampedro joked about the free world after a Soviet tour collapsed, and Young debuted the song in Seattle unrehearsed.
★ 7.5
Nebraska
1982
He taped it alone on a four-track in his bedroom, carried the cassette around in his pocket, and it ended up released as it was.
★ 7.5
Murmur
1983
Stipe's words are deliberately buried in the mix, and nobody could work them out. Rolling Stone still named it album of the year over Thriller.
★ 7.5
I Love Rock 'N Roll
1982
The Runaways passed, so Jett recorded it twice herself; the second version spent seven weeks at number one.
★ 7.5
Sledgehammer
1986 · From So
Gabriel wanted real brass, hired the Memphis Horns' Wayne Jackson, then knocked his old band Genesis off number one.
★ 7.5
Radio Free Europe
1981 · From Murmur
Hib-Tone pressed about a thousand copies in 1981, and Stipe mumbled lyrics he hadn't finished writing.
★ 7.5
Paid in Full
1987 · From Paid in Full
Coldcut took 700 pounds for the remix, added Ofra Haza, and Rakim's minute-long verse reset how rappers rhymed.
★ 7.5
Take On Me
1985
Two releases flopped before the third one broke, Furuholmen's Juno-60 riff intact and a video rotoscoped over sixteen weeks.
★ 7.5
Wings of Desire
Directed by Wim Wenders
1987 · Germany
Wenders filmed a divided Berlin two years before the Wall came down and caught something nobody could stage again: angels listening in on what the people below are thinking.
★ 7.5
Rain Dogs
1985
Waits had Marc Ribot play guitar as though he had never been taught, and Keith Richards turns up on three tracks.
★ 7.5
The Princess Bride
Directed by Rob Reiner
1987
It barely registered in cinemas and built its whole following on video: pirates, giants, a six-fingered man, and a grandfather reading to a boy who does not want the story.
★ 7.5
The Winner Takes All
1980 · From Gold: Greatest Hits
Ulvaeus wrote it in an hour over whisky; the video came ten days after his divorce from Fältskog was final.
★ 7.5
Careless Whisper
George Michael and Wham!
1984
Written at seventeen on a bus, scrapped at Muscle Shoals, saved by Steve Gregory's saxophone in one breath.
★ 7.5
Bizarre Love Triangle
1985
It missed the UK top forty, all Fairlight sequencing except Hook's bass, and now every indie disco needs it.
★ 7.5
Tainted LoveSoft Cell
Tainted Love
1981
A Northern soul flop from 1964 rebuilt on synthesizers at Advision, Marc Almond's first vocal take kept intact.
★ 7.4
Money for Nothing
1985 · From Brothers in Arms
Knopfler borrowed a pen in a New York appliance store to copy down a delivery man's complaints about MTV.
★ 7.4
Bad
1987 · From Bad
Scorsese shot eighteen minutes in a Brooklyn subway station, and the brass hits point straight back at James Brown.
★ 7.4
FaithGeorge Michael
Faith
1987
A church organ quoting Wham!'s Freedom, then Hugh Burns's Bo Diddley rhythm, and four weeks at number one.
★ 7.4
Rock the Casbah
1982 · From Combat Rock
Topper Headon cut the drums, piano and bass himself, and Strummer finished the lyrics in the studio bathroom.
★ 7.4
Into the Groove
1985
Written for another singer, rebuilt with Stephen Bray for a Desperately Seeking Susan dance scene, then buried on a B-side.
★ 7.4
Brazil
Directed by Terry Gilliam
1985
The bleakest comedy ever made about paperwork: Gilliam imagined a state that tortures you politely and misfiles the forms afterward, and had to fight his own studio to release it.
★ 7.4
The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel
1981
Three turntables, two mixers, ten to fifteen takes, and a record built entirely out of ten other records.
★ 7.4
This is Spinal Tap
Directed by Rob Reiner
1984
Real musicians find it painful to watch because everything in it has happened to them: Reiner and his cast improvised almost the entire film from a bare outline.
★ 7.4