Was it “pop music’s best year ever?"
That’s how rock critic and journalist Alan Light remembers 1984 — and a new exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame makes the case. The installation, open this week, looks back four decades to the year of Prince, Madonna, “Jump” and “Footloose.”
“I do think there's something magical about '84," said Rock Hall CEO Greg Harris. "It's the convergence of technology, the convergence of diverse music coming together, but coming through the same platforms. You could see Springsteen, the Talking Heads, Run-D.M.C., and Chaka Khan all on MTV. We're now very narrow. In '84, it was a bigger melting pot."
The artifacts on view even include items from slightly before 1984, but which were still pivotal to the sound and feel of that year: Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” jacket and a replica of Eddie Van Halen’s “Frankenstein” guitar. Established artists like Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Hall & Oates and Tina Turner had some of the biggest hits of their careers in 1984. That year, Harris was a freshman in college. He remembered moving away from the mainstream.
"I was starting to go the other way with punk rock and alternative music, and it was a great era for that as well," he said. “That's the moment when suddenly R.E.M. became massive. U2 started getting big. The Replacements were an important band to us in that era. It was the passing of the torch, but it was also a moment when it all coexisted."
That was both on radio and also television — music television. MTV launched Aug. 1, 1981 and was flourishing by 1984 thanks to the deregulation and proliferation of cable television, as well as the abolishment of the network's unspoken color line.
"It's been well documented that MTV wasn't playing artists of color the way they should and David Bowie is the one that really called them out," Harris said. "They needed to be called out. And then you get the explosion of Michael Jackson and Prince and others that really take off and dominate their airwaves in a very positive way."
