The Los Angeles Olympics, the Apple Mackintosh Super Bowl commercial, Reagan’s landslide reelection and Clara “Where’s The Beef?!” Peller–1984 only lived up to George Orwell’s dystopian novel of the same name depending on where one stood with such (no matter how dubious) cultural touchstones. As for the year in music, given Purple Rain, Born In The USA, Private Dancer, Make It Big, Let It Be (Replacements, not The Beatles, naturally) and This Is Spinal Tap (which I couldn’t resist including a track from here), I don’t need to further the argument for 1984 being a bit special. Even beyond those LPs, the year was flush with classic hit singles, from Chaka Khan’s transformative Prince cover to the beginning of Madonna’s world-conquering run to era-defining anthems by Thompson Twins and General Public to, well, “Weird Al” Yankovic capturing the zeitgeist with his so-obvious-it’s-almost-brilliant Michael Jackson parody.

As with any year, the stuff that missed the Billboard Top 40 but lingered on in the collective unconscious is just as noteworthy. Nine years old at the time, I didn’t even hear these selections from The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, Bronski Beat, The Nails and Hoodoo Gurus until at least a decade later when I was a college student and the local Alternative Rock station aired their daily “Retro Flashback Lunch” hour dedicated to post-punk new wave gems.

However, it’s in the margins where ’84 truly fascinates. Billy Bragg’s electric but spare folk music sits next to Kirsty MacColl’s big pop cover of one of his songs. Rubber Rodeo reinterprets the Pretenders’ jumpy rock with a western twang. Cocteau Twins seem to beam out from their own planet with a sugary wall of sound and pleasantly indecipherable vocals. Everything But The Girl (and to a lesser extent, Sade) subsist on their own jazz-and-bossa-nova-suffused plane. XTC continues to craft perfect pop music while defying nearly everything about it the rest of the world describes as such.

“Sexcrime (1984)” by the Eurythmics obviously sums up the year (and when else but in ’84 would one soundtrack an adaptation of Orwell’s novel with this?); slightly less on-the-nose, however, is a sweet techno-pop movie theme (about a love triangle between a man, a woman and a computer voiced by Bud Cort from Harold and Maude!) from the lead singer of The Human League and the electronic music pioneer whom seven years before gave us Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”.

1984: Love Never Ends

1. Chaka Khan, “I Feel For You”
2. Alison Moyet, “Love Resurrection”
3. Bananarama, “Robert De Niro’s Waiting”
4. Kirsty MacColl, “A New England”
5. Billy Bragg, “Between The Wars”
6. XTC, “Wake Up”
7. R.E.M., “Harborcoat”
8. The Go-Betweens, “Bachelor Kisses”
9. The Psychedelic Furs, “The Ghost In You”
10. The Replacements, “I Will Dare”
11. Bronski Beat, “Smalltown Boy”
12. Cocteau Twins, “Lorelei”
13. The Smiths, “What Difference Does It Make?”
14. Prince, “Take Me With U”
15. Spinal Tap, “Big Bottom”
16. Madonna, “Material Girl”
17. Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder, “Together In Electric Dreams”
18. Echo & The Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”
19. Cristina, “Smile”
20. General Public, “Tenderness”
21. Rubber Rodeo, “Anywhere With You”
22. Everything But The Girl, “Fascination”
23. Sade, “Hang On To Your Love”
24. Tina Turner, “Better Be Good To Me”
25. INXS, “Original Sin”
26. Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”
27. The Nails, “88 Lines About 44 Women”
28. Eurythmics, “Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)”
29. The Go-Go’s, “Head Over Heels”
30. “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Eat It”
31. Wham!, “Freedom”
32. The Style Council, “My Ever Changing Moods”
33. Thompson Twins, “Hold Me Now”
34. Hoodoo Gurus, “I Want You Back”
35. The Icicle Works, “Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)”
36. The Specials, “Nelson Mandela”