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
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1984
Showing 118 works across all media from 1984
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Pride (In the Name of Love)
1984 · From The Unforgettable Fire
The Edge's chords came out of a soundcheck in Japan; Bono fixed the third verse's timeline on record only in 2023.
★ 7.3
The Karate Kid · 1984
The Boys of SummerDon Henley
The Boys of Summer
1984
Campbell built the track on a LinnDrum, Petty passed, and Henley wrote middle age onto somebody else's demo.
★ 7.3
Time After Time
1984
Lauper lifted the title from a TV Guide film listing, and Rob Hyman's harmony makes the chorus ache.
★ 7.2
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
1984
Marr's melody came from a New York hotel room, the title from Sandie Shaw, and misery never sounded so cheerful.
★ 7.2
Ghostbusters
Directed by Ivan Reitman
1984
It should not work at all and it works completely: three academics start a small business catching ghosts in New York, and Murray ad-libs freely on top of the script.
★ 7.1
Double Nickels on the Dime
1984
Forty-five songs, most under two minutes, and the title is a joke about obeying the speed limit. D. Boon was dead within eighteen months.
★ 7.0
Let it Be
1984
They called it Let It Be mostly to annoy people. The songs run from a joke about answering machines to Westerberg howling that he is unsatisfied.
★ 6.9
The Lover
1984 · 117 pages
Crossing the Mekong by ferry in 1929, a French girl of fifteen meets the Chinese man who becomes her lover. Duras writes it in fragments that refuse both romance and pity.
★ 6.8
The Smiths
1984
Johnny Marr knocked on Morrissey's door with a friend to propose the band. Morrissey had been writing letters to the music papers for years.
★ 6.7
The Killing Fields
Directed by Roland Joffe
1984 · United Kingdom
Haing Ngor had never acted in his life and won an Academy Award for this: Roland Joffe films the fall of Phnom Penh through an American reporter and the Cambodian colleague beside him.
★ 6.4
Legend
1984
Put together three years after Marley died, and it has essentially never left the American catalogue charts in the forty years since.
★ 6.4
Money
A Suicide Note
1984 · 368 pages
John Self drinks and spends himself toward ruin between London and New York while his first film falls apart. Amis gave the decade's greed a voice English comic fiction spent years imitating.
★ 6.4
It's My Life (Talk Talk)
1984
A Tim Pope video with no lip-syncing, BBC wildlife footage, and Talk Talk's only American top forty.
★ 6.3
Everything She Wants
1984
Michael programmed the LinnDrum in an evening, wrote the vocal next morning, and turned marital dread into a groove.
★ 6.1
Address to Democratic National Convention, 1988 · 1984
I Want to Break Free
1984 · From Greatest Hits
Deacon's song, Fred Mandel's Jupiter-8 solo in a single take, and a video of Queen in Coronation Street drag.
★ 6.0
Summer of 69
1984
A twelve-string riff swapped for six and doubled for thickness, then a chorus about a summer Adams never actually had.
★ 5.9
Hello
1984
Richie thought the opening line corny until Carmichael told him to finish it; six weeks at UK number one followed.
★ 5.9
The Unforgettable Fire
1984
The title comes from an exhibition of paintings by Hiroshima survivors that the band saw in Chicago. They recorded much of it in a castle.
★ 5.8
You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)
1984
Seventeen weeks climbing to a UK number one, the first for Stock Aitken Waterman, and Burns devours it.
★ 5.8
HighwaymanWillie Nelson
Highwayman
1984 · From Highwayman
Jimmy Webb woke from a dream with four verses about one soul; Nelson, Kristofferson, Jennings and Cash took one each.
★ 5.8
Forever Young (Alphaville)Alphaville
Forever Young (Alphaville)
1984
Two days on a dance version, scrapped for synth pads and a Cold War fear of growing old.
★ 5.7
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
1984
Ridgeley scrawled a note to his parents, doubled a word by mistake, and George Michael built a number one on it.
★ 5.7
The Longest Time
1984 · From An Innocent Man
Every voice on the record is Joel's, stacked over Doug Stegmeyer's bass; doo-wop rebuilt by one man.
★ 5.6
I Want to Know What Love Is
1984
Jones wrote it alone at three in the morning, and the New Jersey Mass Choir carries the final chorus skyward.
★ 5.6