Whether 1985 qualifies as Peak ‘80s is a matter of personal taste (personally, I’d lean towards ’86 or ’87), but mid-decade is by design an ideal place to assess how we think of its music as a whole. This playlist’s run from the greatest up-tempo Madonna single of her imperial phase to the least overplayed of three massive Tears For Fears hits (along with Aretha’s tailor-made driving anthem and Murray Head’s musical-project-written-by-Benny-and-Bjorn-from-Abba oddity (which I remember it sounding like nothing else on syndicated TV series Solid Gold at the time) exhibits the lofty heights mainstream radio could then ascend to.

Sade and Prince also scored pretty neat leftfield ’85 hits too as did (with considerable help from the latter) Sheila E., undoubtedly scanning as Top 40 while reinterpreting the very notion of such in ways that were beyond, say, Phil Collins, REO Speedwagon or Dire Straits. Not as much as Kate Bush, of course—her sole top 40 hit in the US still startles, not least because it doesn’t dilute one whit of her otherness. “Although built almost entirely on era-specific synthetics, it somehow sounds as out of time now as it ever did,” is something I wrote in 2021, a year before its surprise revival in Stranger Things proved me right and the song became the massive worldwide hit it was always meant to be (reaching a new peak of #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, even.)

In addition to Tears For Fears, punchy singles from New Order, Big Audio Dynamite, The Cure and OMD would suggest 1985 was the year of Brit postpunk bands making big pop moves; however, I detect a more novel trend in guise of a cool, crisp, slightly jazzy subgenre dubbed Sophisti-Pop: Sade for sure, but also Prefab Sprout, Everything But The Girl, Fine Young Cannibals (to a lesser extent) and even a few old(er) souls like Bryan Ferry and Leonard Cohen (transforming his sound from monochrome folk to Casio keyboard pastels.) I’ve also slotted in some Sci-Fi Sophisti-Pop: The Rah Band’s daffy but strange and charming “Clouds Across The Moon”, a UK top ten hit I’d never heard of until a few years ago.

If the sublime INXS album track doesn’t particularly sound like 1985 while the Oingo Boingo one couldn’t possibly come from any other time, the late, great Kirsty MacColl’s “He’s On The Beach” splits the difference—while steeped in era-specific production, its sun-kissed yet melancholic view of an ex-lover from afar is, like nearly everything else the British singer-songwriter recorded, the most perfect pop song you’ve likely never heard. It was released as a stand-alone single that year and it didn’t seem to chart anywhere; it deserves some “Running Up That Hill”-like rediscovery.

1985: So Far Out Of Reach

1. Prefab Sprout, “Bonny”
2. Sade, “The Sweetest Taboo”
3. Kirsty MacColl, “He’s On The Beach”
4. Suzanne Vega, “Marlene On The Wall”
5. Fine Young Cannibals, “Johnny Come Home”
6. Everything But The Girl, “When All’s Well”
7. Tom Waits, “Clap Hands”
8. Felt, “Primitive Painters”
9. Madonna, “Into The Groove”
10. Aretha Franklin, “Freeway of Love”
11. Murray Head, “One Night In Bangkok”
12. Tears For Fears, “Head Over Heels”
13. Oingo Boingo, “Dead Man’s Party”
14. Camper Van Beethoven, “Take The Skinheads Bowling”
15. Prince, “Raspberry Beret”
16. R.E.M., “Driver 8”
17. Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)”
18. Big Audio Dynamite, “The Bottom Line”
19. Echo & The Bunnymen, “Bring On The Dancing Horses”
20. New Order, “Love Vigilantes”
21. Leonard Cohen, “The Law”
22. INXS, “Shine Like It Does”
23. Grace Jones, “Slave To The Rhythm”
24. Bryan Ferry, “Slave To Love”
25. Commodores, “Nightshift”
26. The Jesus and Mary Chain, “Just Like Honey”
27. Talking Heads, “Road To Nowhere”
28. The Smiths, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”
29. The Cure, “A Night Like This”
30. OMD, “So In Love”
31. Sheila E., “A Love Bizarre – Pt. 1”
32. The Rah Band, “Clouds Across The Moon”
33. Mekons, “Last Dance”