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September 1982: Prince stacks three drum machines at once - LinnDrum, Oberheim DMX and TR-808 - with a three-vocalist trade-off. 8M singles and the idiom “party like it's 1999” entering English.
May 1984: Andrew Ridgeley accidentally writes “up up before you go go” twice on a fridge note. George Michael turns it into a song. UK #1 for 2 weeks, Billboard #1 for 3 weeks, #1 Netherlands for 8 weeks. Five days at Sarm West, Michael producing. Hamnett's “CHOOSE LIFE” T-shirts sold a million in six months.
3 August 1983: Prince and The Revolution play a charity show at First Avenue. 24-track recording; the live “Purple Rain” runs 13:45. In October at Sunset Sound, Prince adds 24 strings and trims it to 8:41. Originally written as a duet with Stevie Nicks, who passed. Album 13M US copies.
October 1981: a modest #9 Billboard at release. 10 June 2007: HBO puts it in the Sopranos finale, then cuts to black. The song re-enters the iTunes top-10 after 26 years. By 2024 - 4.7B streams, the best-selling rock song of the digital era. The chorus arrives at 3:22.
March 1989: Madonna drops the single alongside a $5M Pepsi deal. Mary Lambert's video with burning crosses and the Andraé Crouch Singers - the Vatican calls it blasphemy; Pepsi pulls the ad in a week, Madonna keeps the money. #1 Billboard for 3 weeks, album 15M copies.
Summer 1983: 8 weeks at Billboard #1. Sting wrote the lyric in 5 minutes at 3am in Ian Fleming's former Goldeneye house in Jamaica, after his divorce - it's a stalking song, not a love song. Cut at AIR Montserrat with Hugh Padgham, 20M+ copies, 1984 Song of the Year Grammy.
January 1981: Collins's solo debut. Engineer Hugh Padgham accidentally invents gated reverb through an SSL talkback mic. Three minutes of quiet, then an eight-second drum break - pop's most recognised fill. UK #2, US #19, 6M copies. The drowning-man myth is fiction: it's about Collins's divorce from Bertorelli.
October 1984: Bohlen and Anders launch Modern Talking at Hansa Tonstudio. The single flopped in week one; the German #1 came after their January 1985 Musikladen TV spot. 6 weeks at #1, #1 in three neighbouring countries, 8M copies. Chorus secret: Bohlen sang the falsetto, not Anders. In 1987 Moscow's Olimpiysky sold 18,000 tickets in four hours.
September 1983: Cyndi Lauper rewrites Robert Hazard's 1979 original from male gaze into first-person feminist manifesto. Billboard #2 (behind Van Halen's “Jump”), #1 in three countries. Eric Bazilian's mandolin, video shot in Lauper's mother's Queens flat. Video of the Year MTV VMA 1984.
March 1983: Giorgio Moroder, Keith Forsey and Irene Cara write the chorus in a car between Paramount and Hotel Sunset. #1 Billboard 6 weeks, #1 France and Italy. 1984 Best Original Song Oscar - first African-American woman in the category. LinnDrum, Moog Source, 6M copies.
May 1980: Steven Greenberg of Minneapolis under the alias Lipps Inc. #1 Billboard for 4 weeks and #1 in 28 countries - a single's world record until 1984. Vocal: Cynthia Johnson (Miss Black Minnesota 1976), Oberheim OB-X, EMS Vocoder 2000, $8,000 budget.
August 1982: Laura Branigan reworks Umberto Tozzi's 1979 Italian hit with a fully rewritten Trevor Veitch lyric. #2 Billboard 3 weeks, 36 weeks on Hot 100 (matching “Hey Jude”), 8M copies. Branigan died of an aneurysm in 2004; in 2019 her “Gloria” became the St. Louis Blues anthem.
February 1990: lead single from Violator. UK #6, US #8. Martin Gore wrote it as an acoustic ballad in Tenerife 1988; Alan Wilder insisted on 112 BPM. Violator sold 15M copies, the band's best-seller. Anton Corbijn's video with Gahan as a wandering king took MTV VMA 1990.
February 1983: Bonnie Tyler with Jim Steinman. The track had first been offered to Streisand, Donna Summer, Tina Turner - all declined. Tyler's husky post-1976 surgery voice over Steinman's Wagnerian production, 17 hours of vocal across 8 days. #1 Billboard 4 weeks, UK #1 2 weeks, #1 in 14 countries, 6M copies.
July 1984: 21-year-old George Michael wrote “Careless Whisper” aged 17 at a bus stop. Five studios, three years, $250,000 budget. Steve Gregory's sax solo on the 10th take for £350 with no royalties. #1 UK and Billboard, 6M copies.
February 1983: the third Thriller single. Billboard #1 for 3 weeks. Eddie Van Halen's solo cut in 30 minutes for free - two takes for a beer. Bob Giraldi's $150,000 video with 80 real Crips and Bloods.
November 1984: the 26-year-old Madonna with producer Nile Rodgers; songwriters Steinberg+Kelly. Six weeks at Billboard #1 - her longest. Album 21M copies - the best-selling female album to date. The track had been offered to 20 artists (Tina Turner, Sting) before her - all passed. Venice video with a live lion.
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