Rock music from 1984

I do not listen to a lot of rock music. A cursory glance at my Apple Music library suggests only about 5% of all my songs fall into that genre. But I do frequently enjoy what I have.

A recent article by Ultimate Classic Rock & Culture discussed 40 rock albums that were turning 40-years-old this year—songs, in other words, from 1984—and I was surprised to see how many more I could identify that I expected.

Foreigner’s “I want to know what love is” came out in 1984. A handful of others that make up my favourites also came out the same year, including Tina Turner’s Private Dancer and Prince and the Revolution’s Purple Rain. The Pretenders’ Learning to crawl is on the list (I frequently listen to “2000 miles”) as is Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA and Bryan Adams’s Reckless (how can one forget “Heaven”?).

Questions arose about the genre categorisation with some songs, such as one of my all-time favourites The Cars’ Heartbeat city—is there anything better than “Drive”?—But as I read the list I was wondering whether “Drive” even is a rock song? I had never considered it so.

There are others I found I knew and listened to but those were not songs from 1984 rather from later e.g. Bon Jovi (“Livin’ on a prayer”), Scorpions (“Wind of change”) and Chicago (“Will you still love me?”). All of them had works released in 1984 too, though. I also had no idea that Metallica, Iron Maiden and KISS had all also released albums in 1984. It must have been quite a year for enthusiasts of rock. UCR’s list is a great read if you enjoy music and music discovery.