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Ten Songs That Surely Cannot Really Be Turning 40 This Year
My God…I’m old
Some surprising things happened in America 40 years ago this year: Ronald Reagan was re-elected in the largest electoral vote landslide in history (525 to 13), a purple dwarf from Minneapolis kept Bruce Springsteen’s highest-charting song from reaching #1, and I graduated from high school. There was a musical surprise as well, with 1984 becoming the first (and so far only) year in the history of the Billboard charts that there were only five number one albums in a calendar year: Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the Footloose Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Huey Lewis and the News’ Sports, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Born in the U.S.A., and Prince and the Revolution’s from Purple Rain.
In 1984, I was 18 years old and about to begin my life as an honest-to-God adult, never dreaming that in 2024 I would be writing about the songs of that year turning 40 years old. Had I known then that I would live this long (we just knew the Soviets would nuke us by ’86), I would have taken better care of myself. Regardless, I am setting aside both that and the existential crisis this look back is causing me to give you ten songs that somehow turn 40 this year. Buddy Gott (who also graduated in ’84) did a story with 40 songs from 1984, but he’s always been an overachiever.
