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Welcome to our list of the 200 best songs of the 1980s.

Complete is a box set released by British band The Smiths on 26 September 2011. Standard versions contain their four studio albums (The Smiths, Meat Is Murder, The Queen Is Dead and Strangeways, Here We Come), a live album (Rank) and three compilations (Hatful of Hollow, The World Won’t Listen and Louder Than Bombs) over 8 CDs. Oct 5, 2011 - The Smiths - Complete (Box Set, Original Recording Remastered) (2011) Release: 18 Oct. Release: 18 Oct 2011 Track: 70 (8CD) Format: MP3 VBR Kbps Size: 780 MB..

A great deal of today's music looks to the '80s for inspiration, but there are so many different ideas of what '80s' as a descriptor can mean. Here we return to the source material.

As we did for the 1960s, the 1990s, and the 2000s, as well as our 2010-2014 list, we polled our staff and contributing writers for their favorite songs of the era and tabulated the results. Every time we do one of these lists we learn something about how perceptions of decades change over time, and how the musical ideas from a given era filter through to later generations. For many selections, we provide some of our favorite related tracks for further exploration. Thanks for reading and listening.

• Egyptian Empire; 1984

• Egyptian Lover

'I Cry (Night After Night)'

The original 808s and heartbreak. 'I Cry (Night After Night)' might not be Egyptian Lover's most famous anthem (that would be 'Egypt Egypt'), but it remains one of Greg Broussard's most influential. Absent is the Egyptian iconography that situated the Californian DJ/producer/rapper/electro pioneer's early-'80s output squarely in the realm of Afrofuturism while also giving it the faintest whiff of novelty; in its place is the musical equivalent of crying into your pillow after eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's. With 'I Cry (Night After Night)', Egyptian Lover not only paved the way for the sad robot music that the likes of Kanye West and Future would go on to push farther and into weirder territory, he also helped establish a trope that rappers still employ to this day: the sad-sack confessional that humanizes their bulletproof tough-guy persona, or in Lover's case, his gift-to-womankind lothario status. True to form, he manages to retain a sliver of his egomania even in his darkest hour, claiming his 'Egyptian voice will hypnotize.' After three decades of being entranced by he of the magnificent bouffant, maybe it's time we concede the point. —Renato Pagnani

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• RGE; 1984

• Tom Zé

'Nave Maria'

In the late '60s, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil invited Tom Zé to join the Tropicálistas and light a fire under Brazil’s military dictatorship. Often, the movement’s musical element wed exuberant, traditionally Brazilian sounds with a rock'n'roll pose and jarring descriptions of political violence and social unrest; Zé, a firebrand among revolutionaries, was particularly concerned with the folly of 'globarbarization.' When Tropicália lost the war, Zé sojourned into experimentalism, and in 1984, six years after his previous full-length, he released a revelatory electric opus called Nave Maria. It sold like cold cakes, and the 48-year-old, either too broke or heartbroken to continue, made plans to work at his brother’s gas station.

Later that decade, David Byrne chanced upon Zé’s music and released a compilation on his Luaka Bop label. A spiky, wonderfully avant-garde highlight, Nave Maria’s title track makes literal Zé’s claim that he’s 'a composer of only one piece.' The components had already appeared on his 1976 album Estudando O Samba, but the recycled tune–rendered here with a serrated, quasi-metal guitar line–shows Zé’s deep yen to perfect his most madcap compositions, which other artists, were they bright enough to write them, would likely shelve in a moment of unwelcome sanity.

Anyone nonplussed need not translate the lyrics, which are pure dada. Gleefully lampooning the state’s Catholic orthodoxy, the tortured narrator embodies a foetal Jesus and dramatizes his birth as a gory, first-person womb bust-out. From that 'inverted orgasm,' Christ emerges with dismay into an unjust world. Thankfully, though that horror is keenly felt in Zé’s music, he harnesses it with such a manic sense of invention it feels like its own kind of deliverance. —Jazz Monroe

• Factory Benelux; 1980

• A Certain Ratio

'Shack Up'

Manchester’s A Certain Ratio followed the post-punk dictum of finding common ground between contrasting styles. On 'Shack Up', they landed on a magnetic three-way split between funk, old soul, and the long-raincoat gloom of their hometown labelmates Joy Division. Originally released on the Factory Benelux offshoot partly formed by Ian Curtis’s girlfriend Annik Honoré, 'Shack Up' came out in the same year (1980) as Dexys Midnight Runners’ 'Geno' and resembles the bloodless flip side to Kevin Rowland’s unwavering passion. ACR singer Simon Topping emotes in a gray monotone, similar to Ian Curtis, while drummer Donald Johnson, who had arrived the previous year, brings a funky danceability to the song that Factory would explore even further with the emergence of the Happy Mondays later in the decade. But what makes 'Shack Up' a classic is its ultra-sparse atmosphere, making it feel like ACR were stripping something to its core principles, in the process burrowing to the very core of what makes certain styles tick. —Nick Neyland

See also: Liquid Liquid: 'Cavern'

• Elektra/Asylum; 1981

• Donald Byrd / 125th Street, N.Y.C.

'Love Has Come Around'

Arriving after the disco bubble had already popped, Donald Byrd & 125th Street, N.Y.C.’s 'Love Has Come Around' is as optimistic as they come. By the '80s, Byrd, an accomplished jazz/funk trumpeter who also taught at North Carolina Central University, had moved to Elektra after a long run on Blue Note and formed a new band that included students from his classes. The group’s second album, 1981’s Love Byrd, saw them teaming up with producer Isaac Hayes, who offered slick production chops as well as his quartet of backup singers, Hot Buttered Soul Unlimited. Hayes turned the band’s well-oiled grooves into one of the loveliest singles of the late-disco period, building a plush arrangement of piano, layered harmonies, moody bass, and Byrd’s own effervescent trumpet detailing. Decried at the time by jazz purists as a cheap bid for popular relevance, 'Love Has Come Around' today sounds like a perfect bridge between classic soul and the last gasps of lavishly arranged dance music, soon to be eclipsed by house’s love affair with turntables and drum machines. —Abigail Garnett

See also: David Joseph: 'You Can't Hide Your Love' / Imagination: 'Music and Lights'

• Sleeping Bag; 1986

• Dinosaur L

'Go Bang! #5 (Francois K Mix)'

Arthur Russell saw no reason to erect a barrier between the music he performed on his cello at the Kitchen, an artsy downtown performance space, and his records that got played at discotheques like the Gallery and the Paradise Garage. He was hardly alone in wanting to eradicate the boundaries between fine art and pop art; that was a principal belief in the 1980s, particularly within New York's avant-garde milieu of musicians and video artists and graffiti writers and experimental poets. But while noise and classical minimalism were deemed acceptable bedfellows, few downtown types extended that open-mindedness to the city's discotheques, where a mostly gay crowd, many of them black and Latino, were conducting their own experiments in repetition, extreme duration, and altered states.

It says something about the open-mindedness of those dancers that Russell got away with some truly weird shit on his 'disco' records. 'Go Bang! #5', recorded in June, 1979 and released in 1981 on the album 24→24 Music, under his Dinosaur L alias, is proof of just how far out he could go. Assembling a wide array of musicians from the funk, jazz, and avant-garde scenes, Russell crafted a rippling funk cut driven by liquid bass and some of the hissingest hi-hats that have ever been put to tape, stretched into four dimensions by Julius Eastman and Jimmy Ingram's dueling organ and electric piano. But it was François Kevorkian, a French immigrant and former progressive-rock DJ who learned about disco from playing live percussion alongside Walter Gibbons at the Galaxy 21 nightclub, who would deliver the coup de grace. Kevorkian's mix, released on 12-inch in 1982, used dub delay like a wedge, opening up the track's guts and letting all the pieces fall out to land where they may. The results were as radical as anything to touch vinyl that year; a technically complex amalgam of sound absolutely soaked in pleasure. —Philip Sherburne

• Warlock; 1988

• Jungle Brothers

'Straight Out the Jungle'

By the late '80s, rap was thinking big, entering a golden age that produced maximalist, sample-dense classics like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 3 Feet High and Rising, Paul’s Boutique, and Tougher Than Leather. Each of those records was risky and expensive, the product of artists not only with ambitious visions but also the budget to realize them. The Jungle Brothers didn’t have those kinds of resources, though, when they recorded their debut Straight Out the Jungle, released in 1988 on the no-profile independent label Warlock Records. It was the first true masterpiece of the jazz-rap movement, but compared to some of the more sophisticated albums that followed in its footsteps, it’s almost crude.

Thankfully, music this kinetic doesn’t need polish. All the elements that would drive the Native Tongues movement were laid out on the opening title track, which stitches samples on top of samples. A stark James Brown groove gives way to jazzy horns that sound like they’ve been dubbed onto the track by a cassette deck; the bridge pastes harmonies from African funk great Manu Dibango’s 'Weya' over the chorus of 'The Message', the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five classic that lent the Jungle Brothers their name. Of course, the JBs’ urban jungle was even more merciless than Flash’s. 'The animals, the cannibals will do you in,' Mike G raps. 'Cut your throat, stab you in the back/ The untamed animal just don't know how to act.' The Jungle Brothers hit on the same truth that gangsta rappers on the other side of the country were discovering at the same time: Sometimes the rawer the music, the higher the stakes. —Evan Rytlewski
See also: Jungle Brothers: 'What 'U' Waitin' 4'

• Dangerous/Jive/RCA; 1987

• Too $hort

'Freaky Tales'

For a supposedly delicate art form, people get haiku poetry confused. It’s not all dragonflies on blades of grass: many of the earliest haikus were dick puns and otherwise crude wandering-poet bro humor. It was juvenile, maybe, but not for its own sake—it complemented the reality-grounded, borderline mundane writing style. All the power lies within the extreme, barely-editorialized brevity, capturing and presenting a real life moment with the purest, most direct translation possible. On 'Freaky Tales', the centerpiece of East Bay icon Too $hort’s major label debut Born to Mack, the 22-year-old coasted through the nearly 10-minute marathon powered by the same plainspoken and often vulgar realism. He leisurely pimp-steps into the pocket of the stripped-down funk loop; it’s an exercise in minimalism, aside from the litany of 38 women Too $hort summarily bangs with varying degrees of misadventure. But these brief, unfiltered snapshots, delivered with purposeful directness, had an elegance to them, despite the twin-sister threesomes and ill-advised bus sex—entire stories condensed into two simple, vivid lines, delivered with unmistakable confidence. It wasn’t that Too $hort wasn’t capable of going deep; he knew he didn’t need to. —Meaghan Garvey
See also: Ice-T: 'Girls L.G.B.N.A.F.'

• Emergency; 1980

• Kano

'I'm Ready'

Not so much a band as a production outfit, the Italian trio Kano were formative to the emergence of Italo Disco, which added a mechanical pulse to dance music via the use of drum machines and synthesizers. Released in 1980, their song 'I’m Ready' splices a human rhythm section and a pulsing sequenced bassline. The singers trade verses with heavily vocoded vocals, creating a sort of man vs. machine call and response. Even if you don’t recognize the song by name, you’ve probably heard it. A minor hit at the time, a sample of 'I’m Ready' also forms the backbone of an even more ubiquitous tune: Tag Team’s 1993 hit, 'Whoomp! (There It Is)'.

From a commercial standpoint Kano were not a smash, but the group's work has had an enduring presence in underground dance music. And as dance music has returned to the mainstream, Kano's sound has become even more present. When Daft Punk released Random Access Memories in 2013, the French duo praised the dance music of the '70s and early '80s for its use of session players, who added an un-gridded feel and tangible humanity that would later be expunged as pop music came to rely more heavily on programmed and extensive computer editing. 'I’m Ready' is a perfect example of that sound—organic, yet futuristic. Music that maintains a steady trance-like pulse, but still swings. —Aaron Leitko
See also: Casco: 'Cybernetic Love' / Visage: 'Fade to Grey'

• Willfilms; 1983

• William Onyeabor

'Good Name'

There’s a tense moment in the 2014 William Onyeabor documentary, Fantastic Man, when the Nigerian musician’s former distributor Obinna Obi reluctantly discloses 'an incident that made people get scared of him.' In the story, a boy visits the enigmatic superstar to chase royalties; Onyeabor responds by chasing him off his property with a pistol. When the kid returns with police they fail to find evidence, and he’s arrested for false accusation. 'That image, and air of a bully, was floating in the air,' says Obi.

The dubious status of Onyeabor’s good name lends a shade of mystique to this 12”, released at the peak of his ascension from Afrobeat bandleader to pioneering, one-man funk magician. The song’s mantra–'I have a good name, I have a good name/ And no money, no money, no money, no money, no money can buy good name'–is complicated by his backstory; Onyeabor was known for extravagant displays of wealth (notably his cutting-edge studio, pictured on the Atomic Bomb sleeve), and in his exaltation of reputability there's a note of remorse, a hint of desperation. That the music is so anthemic, propelled by a party groove that throws together P-Funk, Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaataa, makes the song's conflicts all the more compelling. —Jazz Monroe
See also: William Onyeabor: 'Body and Soul' / William Onyeabor: 'Atomic Bomb'

• Impulse!; 1982

• Alice Coltrane

'Jagadishwar'

Beginning in the late '60s, Alice Coltrane released a brilliant run of spiritually rich records that blended Eastern instrumentation with experimental jazz. But by the end of the next decade, Coltrane—a harpist, pianist, composer and widow to jazz legend John Coltrane—had mostly gone quiet. Rather than performing or recording, she withdrew from the secular world, taking the name Turiyasangitananda and concentrating fully on spiritual life.
'Jagdishwar' comes from Turiya Sings, a cassette that Coltrane released via her Ashram’s Avatar Book Institute imprint in 1982, four years after her last major label recording. The song has a very different character from her full band work on Impulse! Where that music was often dense, percussive, and alive with improvisational interplay, 'Jagdishwar' is more stripped down and solemn. Coltrane’s trademark harp runs are replaced by a wall of luminous synthesizer pads and moody strings. Over top, she chants devotional verses and the shaky, naked sound of her voice pairs strangely with the song’s woozy analog gospel chords.
Turiya Sings was not particularly well known or well distributed at the time of its release. However, in recent years the music has found another life and a larger audience through YouTube bootlegs, blogs, and file sharing services. In 1982, 'Jagdishwar' might have been written off as new age glop. Heard now, it sounds weirdly in harmony with any number of contemporary artists—from R&B singers to experimental musicians. Much like Arthur Russell's World of Echo, it's music that sounds like it was beamed in from a private universe, an artifact that's from the past, but not of it. Written yesterday, but meant for our ears. —Aaron Leitko

• African Museum/Island; 1982

• Gregory Isaacs

'Night Nurse'

If there was an award for most creative metaphor for marijuana then Gregory Isaacs would take it for his soulful lament, 'Night Nurse'. It’s a rootsy interpolation of American R&B, guised as a vulnerable lover’s rock anthem ostensibly about a doting romantic partner. A closer read would suggest that 'Night Nurse' alludes to the prolific Jamaican singer’s dependency to herb. 'I don’t want to see no doc/ I need attendance from my nurse 'round the clock/ 'Cause there is no prescription for me.' Isaacs’ relatively edgy repose stood in contrast to the peppy glam of countryman Bob Marley, garnering him the nickname the Cool Ruler. There’s a direct line between Isaacs’ addled troubadour and the Weeknd’s anesthetized analogies. Drug narratives in pop culture are often demonized for glamorizing usage, but Isaacs and his transcendent, lonely howl convey how complex, and necessary, stories of dependency and addiction can be in the right hands. —Anupa Mistry
See also: Gregory Isaacs: 'Cool Down the Pace' / John Holt: 'Police in Helicopter'

• Priority; 1988

• EPMD

'You Gots to Chill'

EPMD weren't the first group to sample Zapp's 'More Bounce to the Ounce', but they certainly helped usher it into the hip-hop mainstream. Ice Cube, Public Enemy, and Biggie (famously on 'Going Back to Cali') are among the many artist who followed Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith's lead in lifting from the 1980 funk track. The futuristic, laidback sound (Zapp's robotic vocals sound like proto-Daft Punk) lent itself well to EPMD's early, unhurried swagger rap. 'You Gots to Chill' stands out for the coolness of its insistence on its own greatness. Other rappers could claim their spot as the best, but lines like, 'To the average MC, I'm known as the Terminator/ Funky beat maker, new jack exterminator,' delivered without heat, demonstrated the duo were more than capable—not just a couple of cocky rappers. Sermon and Smith didn't have time for any biting sucker MC's, calmly instructing them to step off: 'You gots to chill.' —Matthew Strauss

• Mirage/WEA; 1982

• Carly Simon

'Why'

In Nile Rodgers’ excellent 2011 memoir Le Freak, the Chic producer shares the golden rule that made him such a prolific songwriter: 'Every song had to have Deep Hidden Meaning… We felt that audiences would be more receptive to multilevel messages, just as long as they liked the groove.' The formula has legs, as the recent success of Daft Punk’s 'Get Lucky', which Rodgers co-wrote with Pharrell, suggests. But in 1982, Rodgers and his partner Bernard Edwards used it to develop a post-disco pop song performed by Carly Simon, 'Why'. The cheery, memorable 'La-di-da-di-da' on the pre-chorus stood in contrast to Simon’s sensual, melancholy thesis: 'Why does your love hurt so much?' This was the two-pronged message Rodgers and Edwards delivered over delicate percussion and a sticky, guitar-led dub groove; DHM at work. 'Why' did well on the charts, particularly overseas, but the song’s slinky gait meant that its legacy was secured in the club. Simon’s name is on the track but Rodgers and Edwards’ finesse has kept production nerds agog for decades: the extended mix was remastered and reissued as a 12' in 2011. —Anupa Mistry

See also: Chic: 'Soup for One' / Nile Rodgers: 'Yum-Yum'

• Epic; 1983

• Mtume

'Juicy Fruit'

Long before the Notorious B.I.G. sampled 'Juicy Fruit' for his debut single, it was the lead track off the New York R&B group Mtume’s 1983 third album, Juicy Fruit. It’s since been sampled by everyone from Warren G to Montell Jordan, but when it was released, 'Juicy Fruit' was a hit that made its way to roller skating rinks and nightclubs courtesy of a nocturnal groove tailored for summertime cookouts. The group’s bandleader James Mtume was the son of jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath and had played and toured with Miles Davis for a few years in the '70s. 'I was experimenting with how to take less and make it sound more,' he explained of the track. 'If you listen to something like ‘Juicy Fruit’, there’s only four or five instruments played. And that was a whole new thing. Also, there was no reverb on nothing. So it sounded like you could have played it in your basement.' Mtume has also said the label didn’t want to release the song because it was too slow; instead, they serviced it to nighttime radio, and it became a daytime hit. —Marcus J. Moore

• CBS/Epic; 1982

• The Clash

'Rock the Casbah'

The Clash had pissed off the punks by going hard rock, stymied the rockers by embracing folk and reggae tradition, alienated traditionalists by turning into dub-funk experimentalists, and then, in 1982, shocked everyone by becoming pop stars. The band’s lone stateside Top 10 single, 'Rock the Casbah' is the Clash’s entire conflicted, contradictory history streamlined into three minutes and 43 seconds, retrofitting the anti-authoritarian protest of their incendiary early singles for the discotheque, sculpting the genre-blurring sprawl of Sandinista! into military trim and upgrading their tommy guns to jet-fired laserbeams.

But on top of being their most popular song, 'Rock the Casbah' is—true to its power-to-the-people message—also the Clash’s most audibly democratic. In contrast to Joe Strummer and Mick Jones’ traditionally stratified vocal turns, 'Rock the Casbah' complements Strummer’s on-the-ground reporting with Jones’ and Paul Simonon's broadcasted chorus; and, even while in the throes of a heroin addiction that would soon get him ousted from the band, drummer Topper Headon supplies the song’s signature piano hook and its proto-house pulse. Even if Middle Eastern geopolitics have become way too complicated over the ensuing three decades for anyone to suggest that Western rock music could topple caliphates, the unifying potential of 'Rock the Casbah' remains undiminished. —Stuart Berman

See also: The Clash: 'Should I Stay or Should I Go'

• Sleeping Bag; 1983

• Class Action

'Weekend'

The brains behind Class Action didn’t constitute a band so much as a single idea, and 'Weekend' was its perfect distillation. So perfect, in fact, that although it became its makers’ only hit together, it did so twice–once in 1978, and again five years later. Driving both conquests was Larry Levan, who'd made Phreek’s original a fixture of his disco temple Paradise Garage. By 1983, the meticulous arrangement had finally exhausted itself, so engineer Bob Blank hustled the old lineup back to the studio to record a post-disco revamp.

The sonic overhaul was revelatory, a glimmering network of teasing bass pops, crisp programmed beats, deep-freeze synth zaps. Where the original was all groove, riding a low-key funk bounce, the revamp surges like a chemical rush. It’s a classic in the genre of dancefloor hits that venerate the pre-dancefloor anticipation, thus opening a feedback loop between the desire and its gratification. To boot, it’s a sublime document of sexual liberation. Christine Wiltshire delivers a fiery, taunting sermon on the topic of how to leave one’s man, seasoned with some deliciously cruel scene-setting: As he’s left at home with the kids, Wiltshire steps into the night for a no-strings fling in paradise. —Jazz Monroe

See also: Thelma Houston: 'You Used to Hold Me So Tight' / NYC Peech Boys: 'Don't Make Me Wait'

• Jammy's/Greensleeves; 1985

• Wayne Smith

'Under Me Sleng Teng'

In much the same way that New Orleans R&B transmitted across the Caribbean to influence Jamaican music in the '50s and '60s, it’s fitting that 'Under Me Sleng Teng', the seismic 1985 single from Wayne Smith, also had roots in old American rock’n’roll. In late 1984, Smith and a friend had gotten hold of a Casiotone MT40 keyboard and played around with the machine’s rock’n’roll preset, which sputtered out a fast and dinky version of Eddie Cochran’s 1959 rockabilly song, 'Somethin’ Else'. Over the delirious beat, Smith voiced his love for spliffs and his distrust of cocaine, taking lines from Barrington Levy's 'Under Mi Sensi' and Yellowman's 'Under Me Fat Ting'.
They took it to producer Prince Jammy, who slowed the synthesized track down to a more acceptable reggae tempo. A few days later, he deployed it at a soundclash against the Black Scorpio Soundsystem and crushed them with the track. Like an earthquake, the revolutionary 'Sleng Teng' riddim changed the Jamaican music industry overnight, introducing dancehall to the world. Going forward, riddims would be rendered via keyboards and drum machines rather than session musicians and 'Sleng Teng' became the most ubiquitous riddim, manifesting nearly 400 times to date. Jammy’s digital productions became ascendant on the isle, and when King Tubby was tragically murdered a few years on, Jammy was crowned King. And Smith’s track also pushed Jamaica’s sound closer to that of early hip-hop, starting a cross-fertilization that continues to this day. —Andy Beta
See also: Black Uhuru: 'Sponji Reggae'

• West End; 1980

• Loose Joints

'Is It All Over My Face'

The transformation of Arthur Russell from cult favorite into widely praised figurehead is one of the great upsets of pop music history. Russell, a polyglot composer who made odd, personal music, was far likelier to end up a footnote, or sample fodder, than as the subject of documentaries and biographies, to see his archives mined for scraps of magic. But Russell's pensive solo works have always appealed to underground music fans, and a renewed interest in disco and post-disco—spearheaded by labels like DFA—has helped keep his dance productions in rotation. 'Is It All Over My Face', produced with Steve D'Aquisto under his and Russell's Loose Joints alias, is the finest of those tracks, a collision of disco's pop and exploratory impulses.

Featuring famed Philadelphia session musicians the Ingram brothers and released on disco stalwart West End Records, 'Is It All Over My Face' was not a homespun lark. Still, it was not aimed at the charts, recorded with amateur vocalists exclusively under full moons. The track was meant to encompass the flowing, friendly vibes of David Mancuso's Loft parties, though it never became a mainstay there. 'Is It All Over My Face' exists in two wildly different forms. Russell's own cut is jammier and features a cadre of mumbling male vocalists; it sold poorly. Paradise Garage resident Larry Levan's more celebrated version highlights Melvina Woods' warbly, off-key vocals; it was a Garage smash and did time on the Billboard dance chart.

The track is about dancing, or guilt, or—covertly, funnily—blowjobs. Russell was a gay man attending largely gay dance parties—he served the base, so to speak. But the unusual singsong cadences in which Woods et al. enunciate the song's little koans leave room for interpretation; it's like a group of non-English speakers singing the phrases off of flash cards. Russell compulsively injected oddities like this into his disco. That he made it all work was his genius; that we're still dancing to and celebrating these songs is a triumph of strange. —Andrew Gaerig
See also: Shirley Lites: 'Heat You Up (Melt You Down)'

• Jus Born; 1984

• Strafe

'Set It Off'

Nominally, Chris Rock’s Top Five is about a cocktail party topic: who are your five favorite rappers? And while the soundtrack featured old school tracks from Slick Rick and LL Cool J, one pivotal scene features the boom-tick of an 808 and the shout: 'Y’all want this party started, right? Y’all want this party started quickly, right?' At the time of its release in 1984, Strafe’s 'Set It Off' was at the nexus of New York City’s underground street musics: hip-hop, electro, and boogie, when the borders separating each genre were permeable. The work of Steve Standard (who as legend has it, borrowed the 808 from his friend Cozmo D of Newcleus, who had recently deployed the drum machine for 'Jam on It'), it came to the attention of retired disco DJ Walter Gibbons. Gibbons had remixed the likes of Gladys Knight and the Salsoul Orchestra (and would soon make iconic work with Arthur Russell) and started his own label so as to put out the song. It soon became the hottest track in New York, soundtracking moves by Paradise Garage dancers and breaking b-boys alike. That shout continues to be echoed by everyone from C+C Music Factory to 50 Cent, an old-school party-starter nearly three decades later. —Andy Beta
See also: A Number of Names: 'Shari Vari' / B.W.H.: 'Stop'

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• Island; 1988

• Womack & Womack

'Teardrops'

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Four years on from Wham!’s 'Careless Whisper', 1988’s 'Teardrops' provided not only the decade’s other, superior take on the pitfalls of infidelity, but also its best argument for pop powered by restraint rather than excess. The underlying message may be the same—guilty feet ain’t got no rhythm—but 'Teardrops' swaps desperation for quiet resignation, and impassioned chest-beating for melancholy understatement and resilience; the music may no longer feel the same, but Linda Womack tries to keep dancing. 'Nothing that I do or feel ever feels like I felt it with you,' she announces with such understated dignity that her sadness feels more real, more intimate than almost any other vision of heartbreak in pop’s archives.
Womack & Womack had already proved themselves expert in mining these spaces in between breakups and make-ups, intermingling love and loss so expertly and so effortlessly that the sadness becomes soothing, a crutch you can’t throw away, a lover you can’t leave no matter how badly you fight. If 1983’s Love Wars is the duo’s finest album-length expression of this mission, then 'Teardrops' is the ultimate single-shot, a simmering soul number of such polite, warm accommodation that it raises the notion of 'background music' to the level of art, demanding not to be turned up, but that we turn the sound of life down in order to hear it better.
Linda takes care to fill only so much space as she needs to vocalize her bittersweet nostalgia, while the arrangement shrugs off her despond with a brisk yet comfortable groove that remembers the ease and familiarity of romance lost in the moment, taking for granted the spontaneous joy now forever denied to its singer. In wistful instrumental stretches the song slides into an extended keyboard solo of unexpected (even for Womack & Womack) minimalism and economy, a slow jazzstep in zero gravity. Its radical uneventfulness captures better than words the song’s fond evocation of love’s smallest scenes of domestic harmony: burnt toast or unmade beds or footsteps on the dancefloor. —Tim Finney
See also: Womack & Womack: 'Baby I'm Scared of You'