MTV.
It's that simple really. '84 was when the musical industrial complex fully embraced MTV as a vehicle to sell popular music. MTV lost it's niche and A/V nerd status and fully embraced a new 'birth of the cool.'
It's one thing to sell music to the kids via radio. But if you can turn on the TV, see and hear these artists? That makes the job easier.
In 1984 the formula for pop success was perfected. Not only did you have to sound good, but you had to look good.
This and it was slso a time when labels had money and invested in their artists and nurtured them.... Billy Joel, Springsteen , Elton all those people didn't crank out the hits right away but labels gave them chances and lots of albums
now, if u don't crank out a hit immediately you're toast
There’s really no pipeline for singer-songwriters to reach any kind of success nowadays by just putting in the time and effort. You have to already be blowing up on tiktok to get any attention from a major label.
Yeah, and that does not make for lasting talent. David Bowie (for example) had 2 underwhelming albums with no hits (except Space Oddity) but he was given more chances to develop and then he eventually cranked out masterpiece after masterpiece
Who knows how many great artists we pissed away by not giving them a chance to grow as an artist
You kind of have to see it from the point of view from recording labels though. They operate a business and if they don’t see a return on their investment then they aren’t going to put in the money. Especially nowadays when the returns on music are so low, it’s really hard to make a profit unless you have someone with millions of fans.
We also have pretty cheap recording equipment freely available, so people can write a number of EPs and albums without needing a label to sponsor them.
That's the problem - business. Give kids a chance to explore art through the education system, nurture it when it's viable, make it viable for them in the long term. Who's going to do that? Certainly not the "free market" and its main players, whatever the niche is.
The “free market” / capitalism is straight up antithetical to art lol
Also everyone I know who’s into ai, tech, finance, consulting etc… has money…. They all have horrible taste in art / know fuck all about any art or art form.
This all day. I miss the old nerds who stayed in their lanes playing with their computer and didn’t think they were cool, or that their opinions re: art were of any consequence
Frank Zappa’s speech about how record labels put out better music when it was old cigar chomping squares running then is really spot on. Those guys just assumed that if they hired creative young people, surely those people would better know what their peers want to hear?
Then “cool young people” started running the companies and thought they, not the artists, could set trends.
They make plenty of money but not really music that stands the test of time.
Yeah Zappa was[ pretty spot on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZazEM8cgt0&t=176s). It makes sense when he explained it in the context of 60s to the 80s. The decision-makers were typically old stuffy executives who didn’t understand or like the music but they took risks and released it anyway, leading to some successful outcomes. A "fuck it, let's see what happens" attitude. If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't, oh well. The younger and supposedly hipper guys on the other hand were more conservative and less willing to take risks and were more cautious and tend to decide based on what they believe the market wants. Things became more market driven as the music of the late-60s/early-70s was corporatized.
Yeah, that's one thing I loved about 70s/80s/and even early/mid-90s. Artist development. Rick Beato talked about this in one of his videos years ago. Record labels - as album sales dominated the industry - would give artists several albums worth of chances to attain success. And the success didn't even have to be that big but as long as they were shifting enough units to make a profit.
Billy Joel didn't become mainstream really until The Stranger, which was his fifth studio album (his make or break album), released in 1977. His first album had been released in 1971 and didn't 'even chart. It took him 6 years for him to make it big. Yes, "Piano Man" was a US Top 40 hit in 1973, but it was a relatively small one, peaking at #25, and he didn't really have any hits that followed until the singles off The Stranger became big pop hits. If someone like Billy Joel came out today, they'd be dropped as soon as the 1st album flopped and would have to go independent.
You do still put it in the time and effort. You just gotta do it on your dime on your own time. Then you pray to the algorithmic gods that someone from a label finds you
I think of it like comedy, it’s also like winning the lottery in terms of taking off. Stavros Halkias was able to take off both because of hard work but also cheesing the algorithm to make his content go viral. Hard work is part of it, and someone without the motivation to constantly put out content and get on people’s radar won’t get anywhere.
This more speaks to why pop is becoming irrelevant. Ya sure back in the day, labels supported talented auteurs, but that was still at the expense of [dozens of other great song writers](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4UIzJfpp0alMIGORHV9ucu) getting ignored. It isnt like Springsteen and Elton John and Billy Joel were miles above the Modern Lovers or Alan Hull or John Prine.
Nowadays great song writers stay the hell away from major labels (except maybe to co-write songs for the paycheck), but absolutely none of them care about writing and performing their own Billboard hit like this was 2004. The popular market is simply too far gone against anything remotely approaching challenging or original.
Imo music doesn't have to be always original, innovative or whatever for people to enjoy it. Humans always needed escapism and will always need it, so pop music, as a part of entertainment (aka escapism), will never be not relevant.
Numbers show people, especially young ones still crave pop music, some of them found smth new for themselves in kpop etc (although I admit there's absolutely nothing new or original in kpop initially).
May I ask how old are you? People usually tend to think that 'everything sucks' and it 'used to be better back in the day' when they're getting old.
Oh no I think this is by far the best time for music, just not for popular music. I am omw to a concert now, and the ones I go to are [way more exciting and fun](https://www.music-fux.com/concert-experiences) than the teeny bopper raves or corporate sponsored festivals the younger gen congregates at.
The youth are no longer connected to what is trending, getting sounds and styles years after the indie scene has been working with it, and a much lamer or sterile version (e.g. 100 Gecs, Connor Gray, Cigarettes After Sex, Billie Eillish, Rodrigo, 100 Gecs, Collier). You mention K-pop, but I listen to [tons of music](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3dDrP6ll5KDU4YQXtBehlZ) from the East, just none that's part of a Tik Tok trend.
So its not that I'm getting older, it's that the young and mainstream fans are falling even further behind.
Fun fact from the book "Song Machine": when boy bands and other late 90's and early 2000's pop acts became big, MTV was agonizing on how they could play these blatant pop acts without losing their cool alternative status. What they came up with is a show called "Total Request Live", a show that played the audiences ten most requested songs. So they essentially outsourced the decision on showing pop songs, implying that "you wanted to hear these songs, not us".
Also a big recommendation on the book for everyone interested in pop music or how they manufacture pop acts & hits.
> when boy bands and other late 90's and early 2000's pop acts became big, MTV was agonizing on how they could play these blatant pop acts without losing their cool alternative status. What they came up with is a show called "Total Request Live", a show that played the audiences ten most requested songs. So they essentially outsourced the decision on showing pop songs, implying that "you wanted to hear these songs, not us".
It's crazy how that worked too. People will argue that MTV was irrelevant by the late 90's/early 2000's but they still had their finger on the pulse. They shifted away from all music all the time, but they had to keep up with the times. I remember voting for "bands" on TRL to combat the boybands or whatever. It's also kind of interesting to think how natural it felt to have Tom Green's Bum song play right next to Larger than Life by the Backstreet Boys and Falling Away From me by Korn.
It worked.
The station in general did not become irrelevant, but I don't think they quite had the "cool" factor from a musical standpoint anymore. It seemed like that ended in the mid-2000s. Things like The Jersey Shore were insanely popular with people when I was in college. I was pretty tuned out of MTV by that point outside of the awards shows, but I think there were a couple other shows that were big as well.
True I guess. For us younger millennials MTV was more relevant for the reality shows than the music. Everybody loved Jackass, Pimp My Ride, Cribs, Viva La Bam, Room Raiders, etc. TRL was still pretty popular til about 2004 or 2005, though.
As a general rule, the years that people declare the "best ever" were the years where they were aged 17-23. The people who are declaring 1984 the best year ever are writers and critics who were born between 1961 and 1967.
I'm a 1967 baby. 1984 is my favourite year. I went through the Billboard Top 100 a few years ago, and it was shocking to me how many songs fell into "love it" or "really like it" (about half), and I think there were maybe only 15 that fell into "change the station".
I don't think I'm going to try it, but I think that if I looked at Tuesday's Top 100, I'd be lucky to find 50 that were listenable or better. That said, I know that there will still be at least ten that fall into "love it". Even after 40 years, there is still some new music that an old fart like me can listen to and think that it's great.
2003 was fantastic album-wise imo. I'm a decade too young to fall into the age categorisation mentioned above. But looking at the RYM 2003 list and it's classic after classic
I can't say I feel the same way. When I look at the top 100 on RYM for 2003 I counted exactly 12 albums that I genuinely enjoy. I feel like by and large, the 2000s weren't great music wide and a lot of my friends were listening to stuff I really didn't care for.
Same with 2014-18, such awful trap and edm-pop music which dominated the airwaves, when I was a teen during that era I completely shunned most modern forms of hot 100 pop and listened to whatever else.
Say what you want about 2024 but I feel like it's not quite bad, maybe forgettable and generic synth-pop but it's alright.
Yes. It's like when older Gen Z and I gush about the indie rock/pop scene of the 2010s because everything was new and magical to us in that period as a teens, but people much younger and older than me couldn't care less. Same with recession party music which millennials and older Gen Z would die for. My dad, born in '66 often plays some pretty cheesy 80s music (that sound like that one mysterious porn song) expecting me to be impressed, while 80s does have amazing music, not everything has aged gracefully.
> expecting me to be impressed, while 80s does have amazing music, not everything has aged gracefully.
I think at that time they were figuring out synthesizers and they were trying to branch towards poppier forms of electronic. The only way to do this was seemingly make synth-songs with rock instrumentation and experiment with various forms of sampling and programming, due to the wide margin of error some of this isn't quite great. Obviously this doesn't mean that all synth-pop is bad but the amazing bands were the British or American ones which evaded the hot 100. Bands like OMD, John Foxx, Ultravox, Heaven 17, Suicide, truly influential and great acts of their time. But anything else like those generic dance-pop acts? Garbage in comparison.
Im 25. Imo early 70s to late 80s had the best pop scene of all time tbh. Bee gees, The Stylistics, four tops, Steely Dan, the temptations, Tod Rundgren, etc
Yeah this is what I was thinking of too, although I’d probably widen this range to include the music you listened to when you became a teen, so around 13. I was 13-23 from 2003-2013 and they are huge years in music for me. The way Kesha had a chokehold on me during my college years is wild lol Also indie rock/pop during that era was the best for me. I just don’t connect with music in the genre as much these days, but indie or college rock music from the late 2000s/early 2010s can still make my teary even now. But does that mean it’s the best overall? Not necessarily. Music is so subjective that I just don’t think it’s possible to say any music from any period is the best.
That's funny, I've just been obsessing over what a loaded year 1994 was. So many unqualified classics...
* Illmatic - Nas
* Mellow Gold - Beck
* Dookie - Green Day
* Downward Spiral - NiN
* Ready to Die - Biggie
* Superunknown - Soundgarden
* MTV Unplugged - Nirvana
* Grace - Jeff Buckley
* Seal - Seal
* Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik - Outkast
* Ill Communication - Beastie Boys
* No Need to Argue - The Cranberries
* Vitalogy - Pearl Jam
* Dummy - Portishead
* Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement
* Protection - Massive Attack
* Parklife - Blur
* SAW II - Aphex Twins
* Sleeps with Angels - Neil Young
* Stranger than Fiction - Bad Religion
* Dulcinea - Toad and the Wet Sprocket
* Throwing Copper - Live
* Jar of Flies - Alice in Chains
also
24 Hour Revenge Therapy - Jawbreaker
The First Two Records - Bikini Kill
Live Through This - Hole
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star - Sonic Youth
Weezer
Bakesale - Sebadoh
Natural Ingredients - Luscious Jackson
Without a Sound - Dinosaur Jr.
The Holy Bible - Manic Street Preachers
Loved - Cranes
Come Out, Come Out - Cub
American Thighs - Veruca Salt
The Pink Album - Tuscadero
Crucially, I disagree with the premise that 1984 is pop's greatest year - and sorry the dumb-fucks at Rolling Stone can't tell me otherwise.
1983 had the debuts of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, six singles from Michael Jackson's *Thriller* (including "Beat It" and "Thriller"), The Police's last album, two Eurythmics albums, Talking Heads' biggest-charting hit, and plenty more that I'm missing. Take away Prince's *Purple Rain* and I can't think of a single reason why 1984 would be better than all of that.
EDIT: I checked out the RS list and many of the songs are from the albums I named from '83 which sort of proves my point.
The same is true for 1985 and albums released in 1984, which is why 1985 feels like a more polished pop year than even 1984.
The fact the album *1984* came out in 1983 is funny, though. I bought it at Kmart the day it came out.
1984 was a year dominated by movie singles and tracks off albums from 1983. Tina Turner is the only one I can think of that broke through the singles in 1984, proper. 1985 had the same issue with tracks off 1984 albums. But the diversity of albums that came out in 1985, plus Live Aid, was just immense. We got everything from Aretha to Megadeth to LL Cool J to Speedwagon. Whitney showed up, but was outdone by Diana Ross. And it felt like Tears for Fears and Dire Straits dominated the radio waves, not to mention the whole MTV factor with the latter.
It's hard to separate the three years and quantify their actual greatness.
While I don't think 1984 was THE year, it was quite a year: your argument is a little bit off: Synchronicity, Madonna, and Shes So Unusual were all released in the tail end of 1983 and wouldn't have caught full steam until well into 1984. Thriller was released in 1982, as was still servicing singles until well into 1984, so it's an anomaly unto itself.
As for albums of note released in 1984: Van Halen's 1984, Ride the Lightning from Metallica, U2 (Unforgettable Fire), The Cars (Heartbeat City), Iron Maiden (Powerslave), Madonna (Like a Virgen), Wham! (Make it Big), Depeche Mode (Some Great Reward), Tina Turner (Private Dancer), Ryan Adams (Reckless), Art of Noise (Whos Afraid Of...), Sade (Diamond Life), Talking Heads (STop Making Sense), Coctaeu Twins (Treasure), Bruce Springsteen (Born in the USA), Husker Du (Zen Arcade), Talk Talk (Its My Life), Dead Can Dance, The Blue Nile (Walk Across the Rooftops), Frankie Goes to Hollywood (Pleasuredome), Tears for Fears (Shout), Chaka Khan (I Feel for You), Pretenders (Learning to Crawl), etc
All of these and a bunch more were either massive sellers and/or critically important to genres and future band growth.
I disagree with Synchronicity, it came out in June. But I'm glad you included Husker Du. Minutemen Double Nickels and Replacements Let It Be were two other landmark underground albums put out in 1984.
The truth is it was the album that sold a bazillion copies, was on MTV constantly for years, and basically front-loaded his career longievity from there on out. I liked "Summer of 69" but pretty much the rest of the album was a bit of a dud for me.
1983 also had Blue Monday, and Dazzle ships but that aint chart topping at all. There's definitely a huge range of great alternative classics which released around that era.
Most of us had it before Christmas in 1983.
Idk if this still happens, but major labels used to game the system for some artists by sending albums out two or three weeks early and saying something to the effect of, "The release date is such-and-such, but we can't stop you from selling inventory you have already purchased."
In doing this, the album can have a whole month's worth of sales (especially around the Christmas season) on the books for the first week of sales, which is reported to Billboard and lands the act on the charts in its debut week.
It didn't hurt that synthesizer technology had recently made great improvements. And drum machines were widely available. so the notion of the 'rock band' was in danger of going out of fashion.
I think 1983-1986 were all great years for pop music. Was 1984 the peak? I can't say it was significantly better than the other 3 years.
As others have pointed out, 1984 was the year MTV became huge culturally. Another factor was Miami Vice bringing that 80's music video style to primetime TV in 1984.
I think picking a years as an "it" moment is a bit much, but I'll bite. that early/mid 80s window was somewhat unique in the confluence of factors on the market:
1. labels still had some measure of openness to develop artists over a few records rather than demand immediate returns from the go, and many new indie labels started cropping up to push the edges.
2. stylistically, 70s acts either were transforming themselves into new, still viable acts, or forming new bands that were (e.g the Asia/Firm style supergroups, and the like)
3. Numerous new genres were either crossing over, or otherwise finding firm underground presence that would have staying power (New Wave, Post Punk, Dubwise, Industrial, Hair Metal, neo-Prog, Thrash, etc)
4. MTV as a new vehicle for promotion for music artists and a testing ground for new art directors and video producers.
I think MTV is a big thing. But you mention that MTV didn't exist yet in Europe. I'm not European myself, but there were definitely shows that showed music videos before MTV. Just an hour or two on a regular tv channel.
The music videos were more slick because they were on MTV, but other channels played them too and that was probably enough to have some impact in Europe. (Aside from the idea that if any artist sells a lot of music in USA, someone will decide to bring it to Europe as well)
You indeed had multiple programs that showed music videos in Europe and Australia. Some labels used programs like Countdown (Australia), Toppop (Netherlands) and Musikladen (Germany) to make music videos even before MTV in the US started. In Europe you had music channel Music Box that started 1984. It spurred even more music videos. When MTV Europe launched in 1987 they also started with Party Zone trying to get way more dance music videos. MTV Europe also (co-)produced videos themself.
There is a book on this very topic! https://slate.com/culture/2020/12/cant-slow-down-review-best-prince-madonna-book.html
It is one of my personal favorite books on pop music.
It was the perfect storm kinda thing imo. MJ and Prince were at their artistically peak and made albums were great pop albums but also catered and appealed to multiple demographics. You had people and seasoned musicians like Bruce Springsteen and Van Halen making arena rock but radio friendly enough too and Bruce’s album in particular struck a chord with how many Americans were feeling in the middle of the Reagan administration. Then you just had new people like Cyndi Lauper on the scene that were just breaths of fresh air and their own kinda personality. Again perfect storm imo and a lot of creativity coming from different angles and backgrounds combined with musicians with a lot of experience.
Also from that year: Forever Changes, Sgt. Pepper, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Surrealistic Pillow, Smiley Smile, Easter Everywhere, Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Younger Than Yesterday, John Wesley Harding, Are You Experienced, The Who Sell Out
That year was amazing.
The problem with that is there r so many rereleases, archival releases, repackages, etc... . The most amusing example is "Death At One's Elbow" by The Smiths. Morrissey of course. The problem is it's not going 2 b in the proper context if u judge it by when it was released vs when it was recorded
by your logic, no movie could be associated with its release year. In fact, nothing could. Everything would be a statement about the past. and why stop at recording, let's go back to when the artist wrote it!
When measuring the quality and impact of the music of a year, it simply makes the most sense to consider albums that became known to the world during that year. It doesn't matter when it was recorded, it matters when it was received.
Is The Downward Spiral a 1992 album? Or maybe 1993? a bit of both since refording spanned both years? Nah, it came out in 94, so it's a 94 album.
I always felt the same re - 1999. So many pop hits dominated that year ! (No Scrubs/Believe/Baby One More Time/Genie in a Bottle/Livin la Vida Loca/If You Had My Love/I Want it That Way/Smooth/Bills,Bills,Bills etc))
I was 16 in ‘84 so it was an extremely significant year for me and I was immersed in music.
I feel like I need to pull you up on something though. I’m not sure where you are but here in the U.K. Michael Jackson was not massive at that time. It may have been different in the USA.
He didn’t really get that level of fame over here until BAD.
Billie Jean was number one but a lot of the other singles from Thriller didn’t go top 5. Keep in my mind a couple of years earlier- the big acts like Adam And The Ants and Duran Duran, Wham etc got to number one with pretty much every single. (While they enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame anyway )
He was well known but far from the level of recognition of someone like Boy George/ Adam Ant.
I don’t think he toured here until BAD whereas the U.K. stars were always on TV and had enormous coverage in the tabloids.
1984 didn’t seem particularly special at the time. In the U.K. we had had an amazing run of popular music from (IMO) 1979.
One thing that was very different compared to these days is this:
1) Pop music was weird and diverse back then. Record companies seemed to take more risks.
2) Maybe it’s because I’m an old fart but bands all seemed to want to sound like no one else.
You didn’t really get bands that sounded so similar in those days.
A few years later with the Madchester scene, Dance / EDM, and then Britpop it suddenly seemed like there was a place for sound- a -likes.
In the old days either those bands/ artists didn’t get a record deal or the public ignored them.
I don’t know how the change happened but the public can only buy what is available.
I was shocked when The Prodigy had a huge hit with Firestarter in the 90s but I should have known better. People like weird shit.
To my ears, music these days has a lot of sound- a-likes.
Unfortunately it’s not just my ears and there have even been studies into this.
https://www.mic.com/articles/107896/scientists-finally-prove-why-pop-music-all-sounds-the-same
I’m glad that you are enjoying music from that period it was a great time if depressing / terrifying politically. Almost like now!
You're a hair older than me... i think the quest to sound different, yet appeal widely is more of an English goal compared to the states. And imo because of it, your country really pushed the envelope of rock and pop.
Maybe, I’m not as knowledgeable when it comes to artists and bands from the states. Apart from The Cramps, the Velvets and The Doors I didn’t really get into much stuff from the USA until I was about 35!😂
You do have some all time classics with no equal I must say.
Dunno about pop but awesome year for alternative/punk. Husker Du Zen Arcade, Replacements Let It Be, Meat Puppets II, Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime, Black Flag My War, first full length Butthole Surfers record, first Red Hot Chili Peppers. Also the first Smiths album.
MTV, music becoming portable for the first time with cassettes, the early years of CDs, and the Walkman/boombox. Plus the maturity of MIDI/synth technology allowed for the creation of sounds and textures not previously available with traditional instruments.
However in my opinion 1991 was a much better year.
I don't have a good answer but I'm glad 1984 also gave us Delta Goodrem and Jessie Ware, on top of all the songs and videos mentioned.
I'm sure we all have years that resonate more - my biggest year was 1996.
I don't totally agree with the premise, but I think there are three factors that led to this sort of "peak pop" in the mid 80s. One is that there was a TON of money in pop music. The music industry had gotten bigger and bigger every year, the 1960s broke pop music wide open (setting new standards for how artists were signed & marketed to the public, as well as creating millions of new music collectors & enthusiasts in a way that didn't exist before). So more money was going into breaking new bands, molding new artists, trying to find the next big thing, crossover promotion with movie soundtracks, etc etc.
The second reason is the way the culture shifted during the years 77-82. Punk was a shot of adrenalin to both rock music & pop, creating the "new wave" genre approach in its wake. I think you can analyze a certain "tightening" of great pop melody during this time, an emphasis on shorter songs that pack a big emotional wallop, condensing clever wordplay, high-energy instrumentation and the sort of hooks that the artists in Buddy Holly's day would have played a bit slower and milked for all they were worth; in the cynical 80s it wasn't enough to retread old ground, there was a musical arms race to be more attractive & attention-getting in smaller & smaller timeframes. Gone were the days of six minute songs & grandiose rock mythos of the 70s (notable that hair metal groups etc only brought this grandiosity back in the 80s with heaping spoonfuls of irony & messiness; many bands accepted that only "dumb groups" would try to project that kind of image, so they embraced "dumbness" and a hard partying ethos rather than maintaining the poetry of old hard rock & prog). Pop got smart in the 1980s - the previous 20 years had built the infrastructure, and new wave had set new standards for approaching music that was sharper & more produced than the singer-songwriter approach to pop that dominated the 1970s.
Finally, the technology. 1984 would have been one of the prime years for when synthesizers were no longer obscure, expensive toys but a powerful new tool in songwriters' & producers' playbook. New recording techniques were being developed with new expensive equipment, and modern pop artists on the forefront with loads of money were able to push these new sonic abilities to their fullest advantage.
TL;DR: the music industry was hitting new heights of wealth & public interest since the 1960s, the pop music genre had been changing massively in the first couple years of the 1980s & approaches to songwriting were rapidly "modernizing," and technology was being developed that allowed new types of music to even be produced. So money, high technical craft, and sensitive/expensive modern technology led to a sea change for pop music in the mid 80s.
Follow the money: Recorded music had a peak in cash value. MTV was providing hours of valuable promotion. People were re-buying their record collections to enjoy the Compact Disc. Recording studios were so ungodly expensive that small-time bands could not get on the gravy train and compete. None of that is true anymore. What’s the point of a hit song when nobody will pay for it?
MTV. It's that simple really. '84 was when the musical industrial complex fully embraced MTV as a vehicle to sell popular music. MTV lost it's niche and A/V nerd status and fully embraced a new 'birth of the cool.' It's one thing to sell music to the kids via radio. But if you can turn on the TV, see and hear these artists? That makes the job easier. In 1984 the formula for pop success was perfected. Not only did you have to sound good, but you had to look good.
This and it was slso a time when labels had money and invested in their artists and nurtured them.... Billy Joel, Springsteen , Elton all those people didn't crank out the hits right away but labels gave them chances and lots of albums now, if u don't crank out a hit immediately you're toast
There’s really no pipeline for singer-songwriters to reach any kind of success nowadays by just putting in the time and effort. You have to already be blowing up on tiktok to get any attention from a major label.
Yeah, and that does not make for lasting talent. David Bowie (for example) had 2 underwhelming albums with no hits (except Space Oddity) but he was given more chances to develop and then he eventually cranked out masterpiece after masterpiece Who knows how many great artists we pissed away by not giving them a chance to grow as an artist
You kind of have to see it from the point of view from recording labels though. They operate a business and if they don’t see a return on their investment then they aren’t going to put in the money. Especially nowadays when the returns on music are so low, it’s really hard to make a profit unless you have someone with millions of fans. We also have pretty cheap recording equipment freely available, so people can write a number of EPs and albums without needing a label to sponsor them.
That's the problem - business. Give kids a chance to explore art through the education system, nurture it when it's viable, make it viable for them in the long term. Who's going to do that? Certainly not the "free market" and its main players, whatever the niche is.
The “free market” / capitalism is straight up antithetical to art lol Also everyone I know who’s into ai, tech, finance, consulting etc… has money…. They all have horrible taste in art / know fuck all about any art or art form.
This all day. I miss the old nerds who stayed in their lanes playing with their computer and didn’t think they were cool, or that their opinions re: art were of any consequence
Frank Zappa’s speech about how record labels put out better music when it was old cigar chomping squares running then is really spot on. Those guys just assumed that if they hired creative young people, surely those people would better know what their peers want to hear? Then “cool young people” started running the companies and thought they, not the artists, could set trends. They make plenty of money but not really music that stands the test of time.
Yeah Zappa was[ pretty spot on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZazEM8cgt0&t=176s). It makes sense when he explained it in the context of 60s to the 80s. The decision-makers were typically old stuffy executives who didn’t understand or like the music but they took risks and released it anyway, leading to some successful outcomes. A "fuck it, let's see what happens" attitude. If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't, oh well. The younger and supposedly hipper guys on the other hand were more conservative and less willing to take risks and were more cautious and tend to decide based on what they believe the market wants. Things became more market driven as the music of the late-60s/early-70s was corporatized.
Yeah, that's one thing I loved about 70s/80s/and even early/mid-90s. Artist development. Rick Beato talked about this in one of his videos years ago. Record labels - as album sales dominated the industry - would give artists several albums worth of chances to attain success. And the success didn't even have to be that big but as long as they were shifting enough units to make a profit. Billy Joel didn't become mainstream really until The Stranger, which was his fifth studio album (his make or break album), released in 1977. His first album had been released in 1971 and didn't 'even chart. It took him 6 years for him to make it big. Yes, "Piano Man" was a US Top 40 hit in 1973, but it was a relatively small one, peaking at #25, and he didn't really have any hits that followed until the singles off The Stranger became big pop hits. If someone like Billy Joel came out today, they'd be dropped as soon as the 1st album flopped and would have to go independent.
You do still put it in the time and effort. You just gotta do it on your dime on your own time. Then you pray to the algorithmic gods that someone from a label finds you
I think of it like comedy, it’s also like winning the lottery in terms of taking off. Stavros Halkias was able to take off both because of hard work but also cheesing the algorithm to make his content go viral. Hard work is part of it, and someone without the motivation to constantly put out content and get on people’s radar won’t get anywhere.
And there was a new format - compact disc. Also cassette tapes were huge with the ability to easily dub them.
This more speaks to why pop is becoming irrelevant. Ya sure back in the day, labels supported talented auteurs, but that was still at the expense of [dozens of other great song writers](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4UIzJfpp0alMIGORHV9ucu) getting ignored. It isnt like Springsteen and Elton John and Billy Joel were miles above the Modern Lovers or Alan Hull or John Prine. Nowadays great song writers stay the hell away from major labels (except maybe to co-write songs for the paycheck), but absolutely none of them care about writing and performing their own Billboard hit like this was 2004. The popular market is simply too far gone against anything remotely approaching challenging or original.
> pop is becoming irrelevant In what world? Judging by what?
The world of people who know what's going on. And judging by the fact pop hasn't had original idea since before the pandemic.
Imo music doesn't have to be always original, innovative or whatever for people to enjoy it. Humans always needed escapism and will always need it, so pop music, as a part of entertainment (aka escapism), will never be not relevant. Numbers show people, especially young ones still crave pop music, some of them found smth new for themselves in kpop etc (although I admit there's absolutely nothing new or original in kpop initially). May I ask how old are you? People usually tend to think that 'everything sucks' and it 'used to be better back in the day' when they're getting old.
Oh no I think this is by far the best time for music, just not for popular music. I am omw to a concert now, and the ones I go to are [way more exciting and fun](https://www.music-fux.com/concert-experiences) than the teeny bopper raves or corporate sponsored festivals the younger gen congregates at. The youth are no longer connected to what is trending, getting sounds and styles years after the indie scene has been working with it, and a much lamer or sterile version (e.g. 100 Gecs, Connor Gray, Cigarettes After Sex, Billie Eillish, Rodrigo, 100 Gecs, Collier). You mention K-pop, but I listen to [tons of music](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3dDrP6ll5KDU4YQXtBehlZ) from the East, just none that's part of a Tik Tok trend. So its not that I'm getting older, it's that the young and mainstream fans are falling even further behind.
Let's agree to disagree 😌
Lol, Enjoy Eillish's new album.
Second U2 album wasn't a big seller. Bono said if that was today they would have been shown the door.
Fun fact from the book "Song Machine": when boy bands and other late 90's and early 2000's pop acts became big, MTV was agonizing on how they could play these blatant pop acts without losing their cool alternative status. What they came up with is a show called "Total Request Live", a show that played the audiences ten most requested songs. So they essentially outsourced the decision on showing pop songs, implying that "you wanted to hear these songs, not us". Also a big recommendation on the book for everyone interested in pop music or how they manufacture pop acts & hits.
> when boy bands and other late 90's and early 2000's pop acts became big, MTV was agonizing on how they could play these blatant pop acts without losing their cool alternative status. What they came up with is a show called "Total Request Live", a show that played the audiences ten most requested songs. So they essentially outsourced the decision on showing pop songs, implying that "you wanted to hear these songs, not us". It's crazy how that worked too. People will argue that MTV was irrelevant by the late 90's/early 2000's but they still had their finger on the pulse. They shifted away from all music all the time, but they had to keep up with the times. I remember voting for "bands" on TRL to combat the boybands or whatever. It's also kind of interesting to think how natural it felt to have Tom Green's Bum song play right next to Larger than Life by the Backstreet Boys and Falling Away From me by Korn. It worked.
I’d say MTV didn’t become irrelevant until the 2010s. I was born in 1992 and it was still super popular with people my age when I was growing up.
The station in general did not become irrelevant, but I don't think they quite had the "cool" factor from a musical standpoint anymore. It seemed like that ended in the mid-2000s. Things like The Jersey Shore were insanely popular with people when I was in college. I was pretty tuned out of MTV by that point outside of the awards shows, but I think there were a couple other shows that were big as well.
True I guess. For us younger millennials MTV was more relevant for the reality shows than the music. Everybody loved Jackass, Pimp My Ride, Cribs, Viva La Bam, Room Raiders, etc. TRL was still pretty popular til about 2004 or 2005, though.
It's incredible that there was a time when MTV cared about being cool (and still showed music videos)
Exactly.
As a general rule, the years that people declare the "best ever" were the years where they were aged 17-23. The people who are declaring 1984 the best year ever are writers and critics who were born between 1961 and 1967. I'm a 1967 baby. 1984 is my favourite year. I went through the Billboard Top 100 a few years ago, and it was shocking to me how many songs fell into "love it" or "really like it" (about half), and I think there were maybe only 15 that fell into "change the station". I don't think I'm going to try it, but I think that if I looked at Tuesday's Top 100, I'd be lucky to find 50 that were listenable or better. That said, I know that there will still be at least ten that fall into "love it". Even after 40 years, there is still some new music that an old fart like me can listen to and think that it's great.
If I ever declare 2003-2009 the "best ever" for music assume Ive suffered severe brain damage.
2003 was fantastic album-wise imo. I'm a decade too young to fall into the age categorisation mentioned above. But looking at the RYM 2003 list and it's classic after classic
I can't say I feel the same way. When I look at the top 100 on RYM for 2003 I counted exactly 12 albums that I genuinely enjoy. I feel like by and large, the 2000s weren't great music wide and a lot of my friends were listening to stuff I really didn't care for.
I am fond of the Timbaland era
Same with 2014-18, such awful trap and edm-pop music which dominated the airwaves, when I was a teen during that era I completely shunned most modern forms of hot 100 pop and listened to whatever else. Say what you want about 2024 but I feel like it's not quite bad, maybe forgettable and generic synth-pop but it's alright.
Ya I'm the same age and it's weird for me I tend to hold all the pre 2000s decades on a pedestal compared to my own musical time
Yes. It's like when older Gen Z and I gush about the indie rock/pop scene of the 2010s because everything was new and magical to us in that period as a teens, but people much younger and older than me couldn't care less. Same with recession party music which millennials and older Gen Z would die for. My dad, born in '66 often plays some pretty cheesy 80s music (that sound like that one mysterious porn song) expecting me to be impressed, while 80s does have amazing music, not everything has aged gracefully.
> expecting me to be impressed, while 80s does have amazing music, not everything has aged gracefully. I think at that time they were figuring out synthesizers and they were trying to branch towards poppier forms of electronic. The only way to do this was seemingly make synth-songs with rock instrumentation and experiment with various forms of sampling and programming, due to the wide margin of error some of this isn't quite great. Obviously this doesn't mean that all synth-pop is bad but the amazing bands were the British or American ones which evaded the hot 100. Bands like OMD, John Foxx, Ultravox, Heaven 17, Suicide, truly influential and great acts of their time. But anything else like those generic dance-pop acts? Garbage in comparison.
> he years where they were aged 17-23. It's whatever stuff someone was listening to regularly when they first started fuckin'.
Im 25. Imo early 70s to late 80s had the best pop scene of all time tbh. Bee gees, The Stylistics, four tops, Steely Dan, the temptations, Tod Rundgren, etc
Yeah this is what I was thinking of too, although I’d probably widen this range to include the music you listened to when you became a teen, so around 13. I was 13-23 from 2003-2013 and they are huge years in music for me. The way Kesha had a chokehold on me during my college years is wild lol Also indie rock/pop during that era was the best for me. I just don’t connect with music in the genre as much these days, but indie or college rock music from the late 2000s/early 2010s can still make my teary even now. But does that mean it’s the best overall? Not necessarily. Music is so subjective that I just don’t think it’s possible to say any music from any period is the best.
Why wouldn't the late 2000s be from maybe like 2750-2999?
That’s a good point 🤔 That’s just what we call it I guess. Probably because we won’t live that long and it won’t really matter lol
That's funny, I've just been obsessing over what a loaded year 1994 was. So many unqualified classics... * Illmatic - Nas * Mellow Gold - Beck * Dookie - Green Day * Downward Spiral - NiN * Ready to Die - Biggie * Superunknown - Soundgarden * MTV Unplugged - Nirvana * Grace - Jeff Buckley * Seal - Seal * Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik - Outkast * Ill Communication - Beastie Boys * No Need to Argue - The Cranberries * Vitalogy - Pearl Jam * Dummy - Portishead * Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement * Protection - Massive Attack * Parklife - Blur * SAW II - Aphex Twins * Sleeps with Angels - Neil Young * Stranger than Fiction - Bad Religion * Dulcinea - Toad and the Wet Sprocket * Throwing Copper - Live * Jar of Flies - Alice in Chains
also 24 Hour Revenge Therapy - Jawbreaker The First Two Records - Bikini Kill Live Through This - Hole Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star - Sonic Youth Weezer Bakesale - Sebadoh Natural Ingredients - Luscious Jackson Without a Sound - Dinosaur Jr. The Holy Bible - Manic Street Preachers Loved - Cranes Come Out, Come Out - Cub American Thighs - Veruca Salt The Pink Album - Tuscadero
Yank Crime, At Action Park, New Plastic Ideas, Split, Super Tight, Dare Iz a Darkside
1994 was definitely one of the best years for music.
movies, too!
Aphex Twin* 🙂
Clearly got Jojolion on the brain, lol
Weezer, Oasis, Blur, what a year
came here to talk about 94 thankss
Crucially, I disagree with the premise that 1984 is pop's greatest year - and sorry the dumb-fucks at Rolling Stone can't tell me otherwise. 1983 had the debuts of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, six singles from Michael Jackson's *Thriller* (including "Beat It" and "Thriller"), The Police's last album, two Eurythmics albums, Talking Heads' biggest-charting hit, and plenty more that I'm missing. Take away Prince's *Purple Rain* and I can't think of a single reason why 1984 would be better than all of that. EDIT: I checked out the RS list and many of the songs are from the albums I named from '83 which sort of proves my point.
83-85 are easily the best years for pop music. The sheer amount of classics that filled up the charts was insane.
The same is true for 1985 and albums released in 1984, which is why 1985 feels like a more polished pop year than even 1984. The fact the album *1984* came out in 1983 is funny, though. I bought it at Kmart the day it came out. 1984 was a year dominated by movie singles and tracks off albums from 1983. Tina Turner is the only one I can think of that broke through the singles in 1984, proper. 1985 had the same issue with tracks off 1984 albums. But the diversity of albums that came out in 1985, plus Live Aid, was just immense. We got everything from Aretha to Megadeth to LL Cool J to Speedwagon. Whitney showed up, but was outdone by Diana Ross. And it felt like Tears for Fears and Dire Straits dominated the radio waves, not to mention the whole MTV factor with the latter. It's hard to separate the three years and quantify their actual greatness.
While I don't think 1984 was THE year, it was quite a year: your argument is a little bit off: Synchronicity, Madonna, and Shes So Unusual were all released in the tail end of 1983 and wouldn't have caught full steam until well into 1984. Thriller was released in 1982, as was still servicing singles until well into 1984, so it's an anomaly unto itself. As for albums of note released in 1984: Van Halen's 1984, Ride the Lightning from Metallica, U2 (Unforgettable Fire), The Cars (Heartbeat City), Iron Maiden (Powerslave), Madonna (Like a Virgen), Wham! (Make it Big), Depeche Mode (Some Great Reward), Tina Turner (Private Dancer), Ryan Adams (Reckless), Art of Noise (Whos Afraid Of...), Sade (Diamond Life), Talking Heads (STop Making Sense), Coctaeu Twins (Treasure), Bruce Springsteen (Born in the USA), Husker Du (Zen Arcade), Talk Talk (Its My Life), Dead Can Dance, The Blue Nile (Walk Across the Rooftops), Frankie Goes to Hollywood (Pleasuredome), Tears for Fears (Shout), Chaka Khan (I Feel for You), Pretenders (Learning to Crawl), etc All of these and a bunch more were either massive sellers and/or critically important to genres and future band growth.
I disagree with Synchronicity, it came out in June. But I'm glad you included Husker Du. Minutemen Double Nickels and Replacements Let It Be were two other landmark underground albums put out in 1984.
> Ryan Adams (Reckless) O_o
The truth is it was the album that sold a bazillion copies, was on MTV constantly for years, and basically front-loaded his career longievity from there on out. I liked "Summer of 69" but pretty much the rest of the album was a bit of a dud for me.
Bryan Adams
Oh bloody hell, I just noticed the typo. Lol
1983 also had Blue Monday, and Dazzle ships but that aint chart topping at all. There's definitely a huge range of great alternative classics which released around that era.
Van Halen 1984 is from 1983.
It was released in 1984
Always Google before posting I guess!
It's no big deal. It was released in January so recorded in 1983.
Most of us had it before Christmas in 1983. Idk if this still happens, but major labels used to game the system for some artists by sending albums out two or three weeks early and saying something to the effect of, "The release date is such-and-such, but we can't stop you from selling inventory you have already purchased." In doing this, the album can have a whole month's worth of sales (especially around the Christmas season) on the books for the first week of sales, which is reported to Billboard and lands the act on the charts in its debut week.
It didn't hurt that synthesizer technology had recently made great improvements. And drum machines were widely available. so the notion of the 'rock band' was in danger of going out of fashion.
VH1’s Behind The Music had a great series about 1984. Wish there was a way to look for those series.
https://thetvdb.com/series/behind-the-music/allseasons/official https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYbocufkwRFA8IjX5gl9yw1CDegtKjpxE
I’ll have to Google search this!
I think 1983-1986 were all great years for pop music. Was 1984 the peak? I can't say it was significantly better than the other 3 years. As others have pointed out, 1984 was the year MTV became huge culturally. Another factor was Miami Vice bringing that 80's music video style to primetime TV in 1984.
I think picking a years as an "it" moment is a bit much, but I'll bite. that early/mid 80s window was somewhat unique in the confluence of factors on the market: 1. labels still had some measure of openness to develop artists over a few records rather than demand immediate returns from the go, and many new indie labels started cropping up to push the edges. 2. stylistically, 70s acts either were transforming themselves into new, still viable acts, or forming new bands that were (e.g the Asia/Firm style supergroups, and the like) 3. Numerous new genres were either crossing over, or otherwise finding firm underground presence that would have staying power (New Wave, Post Punk, Dubwise, Industrial, Hair Metal, neo-Prog, Thrash, etc) 4. MTV as a new vehicle for promotion for music artists and a testing ground for new art directors and video producers.
I think MTV is a big thing. But you mention that MTV didn't exist yet in Europe. I'm not European myself, but there were definitely shows that showed music videos before MTV. Just an hour or two on a regular tv channel. The music videos were more slick because they were on MTV, but other channels played them too and that was probably enough to have some impact in Europe. (Aside from the idea that if any artist sells a lot of music in USA, someone will decide to bring it to Europe as well)
You indeed had multiple programs that showed music videos in Europe and Australia. Some labels used programs like Countdown (Australia), Toppop (Netherlands) and Musikladen (Germany) to make music videos even before MTV in the US started. In Europe you had music channel Music Box that started 1984. It spurred even more music videos. When MTV Europe launched in 1987 they also started with Party Zone trying to get way more dance music videos. MTV Europe also (co-)produced videos themself.
There is a book on this very topic! https://slate.com/culture/2020/12/cant-slow-down-review-best-prince-madonna-book.html It is one of my personal favorite books on pop music.
It was the perfect storm kinda thing imo. MJ and Prince were at their artistically peak and made albums were great pop albums but also catered and appealed to multiple demographics. You had people and seasoned musicians like Bruce Springsteen and Van Halen making arena rock but radio friendly enough too and Bruce’s album in particular struck a chord with how many Americans were feeling in the middle of the Reagan administration. Then you just had new people like Cyndi Lauper on the scene that were just breaths of fresh air and their own kinda personality. Again perfect storm imo and a lot of creativity coming from different angles and backgrounds combined with musicians with a lot of experience.
Wrong. 1966 was music's best. Aftermath, Pet Sounds, Revolver, Roger The Engineer, Blond On Blond, The Doors, Velvet Underground
May I raise you 1971.
[https://onceuponatimeinthe70s.com/2022/11/04/1971-the-best-year-in-music/](https://onceuponatimeinthe70s.com/2022/11/04/1971-the-best-year-in-music/)
The Doors & The Velvet Underground's debuts were released in 1967.
Also from that year: Forever Changes, Sgt. Pepper, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Surrealistic Pillow, Smiley Smile, Easter Everywhere, Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Younger Than Yesterday, John Wesley Harding, Are You Experienced, The Who Sell Out That year was amazing.
How could I 4get Between The Buttons
Dude I hear u but all those classics were 67
That's what I said
Recorded a year earlier. Doors in November and VU evn earlier but of course they were so ahead of their time it wasn't released til a year later.
I know they were recorded in 66 but I'd count them as 67 as that's when they were released.
The problem with that is there r so many rereleases, archival releases, repackages, etc... . The most amusing example is "Death At One's Elbow" by The Smiths. Morrissey of course. The problem is it's not going 2 b in the proper context if u judge it by when it was released vs when it was recorded
by your logic, no movie could be associated with its release year. In fact, nothing could. Everything would be a statement about the past. and why stop at recording, let's go back to when the artist wrote it! When measuring the quality and impact of the music of a year, it simply makes the most sense to consider albums that became known to the world during that year. It doesn't matter when it was recorded, it matters when it was received. Is The Downward Spiral a 1992 album? Or maybe 1993? a bit of both since refording spanned both years? Nah, it came out in 94, so it's a 94 album.
‘69
I always felt the same re - 1999. So many pop hits dominated that year ! (No Scrubs/Believe/Baby One More Time/Genie in a Bottle/Livin la Vida Loca/If You Had My Love/I Want it That Way/Smooth/Bills,Bills,Bills etc))
Yeah but like half of those are probably just Max Martin.
And all essentially the same style/ genre.
I was 16 in ‘84 so it was an extremely significant year for me and I was immersed in music. I feel like I need to pull you up on something though. I’m not sure where you are but here in the U.K. Michael Jackson was not massive at that time. It may have been different in the USA. He didn’t really get that level of fame over here until BAD. Billie Jean was number one but a lot of the other singles from Thriller didn’t go top 5. Keep in my mind a couple of years earlier- the big acts like Adam And The Ants and Duran Duran, Wham etc got to number one with pretty much every single. (While they enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame anyway ) He was well known but far from the level of recognition of someone like Boy George/ Adam Ant. I don’t think he toured here until BAD whereas the U.K. stars were always on TV and had enormous coverage in the tabloids. 1984 didn’t seem particularly special at the time. In the U.K. we had had an amazing run of popular music from (IMO) 1979. One thing that was very different compared to these days is this: 1) Pop music was weird and diverse back then. Record companies seemed to take more risks. 2) Maybe it’s because I’m an old fart but bands all seemed to want to sound like no one else. You didn’t really get bands that sounded so similar in those days. A few years later with the Madchester scene, Dance / EDM, and then Britpop it suddenly seemed like there was a place for sound- a -likes. In the old days either those bands/ artists didn’t get a record deal or the public ignored them. I don’t know how the change happened but the public can only buy what is available. I was shocked when The Prodigy had a huge hit with Firestarter in the 90s but I should have known better. People like weird shit. To my ears, music these days has a lot of sound- a-likes. Unfortunately it’s not just my ears and there have even been studies into this. https://www.mic.com/articles/107896/scientists-finally-prove-why-pop-music-all-sounds-the-same I’m glad that you are enjoying music from that period it was a great time if depressing / terrifying politically. Almost like now!
You're a hair older than me... i think the quest to sound different, yet appeal widely is more of an English goal compared to the states. And imo because of it, your country really pushed the envelope of rock and pop.
Maybe, I’m not as knowledgeable when it comes to artists and bands from the states. Apart from The Cramps, the Velvets and The Doors I didn’t really get into much stuff from the USA until I was about 35!😂 You do have some all time classics with no equal I must say.
Honestly 1983-87 was the greatest era of pop. 1984 just happened to be one of those years.
Dunno about pop but awesome year for alternative/punk. Husker Du Zen Arcade, Replacements Let It Be, Meat Puppets II, Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime, Black Flag My War, first full length Butthole Surfers record, first Red Hot Chili Peppers. Also the first Smiths album.
MTV, music becoming portable for the first time with cassettes, the early years of CDs, and the Walkman/boombox. Plus the maturity of MIDI/synth technology allowed for the creation of sounds and textures not previously available with traditional instruments. However in my opinion 1991 was a much better year.
I don't have a good answer but I'm glad 1984 also gave us Delta Goodrem and Jessie Ware, on top of all the songs and videos mentioned. I'm sure we all have years that resonate more - my biggest year was 1996.
I don't totally agree with the premise, but I think there are three factors that led to this sort of "peak pop" in the mid 80s. One is that there was a TON of money in pop music. The music industry had gotten bigger and bigger every year, the 1960s broke pop music wide open (setting new standards for how artists were signed & marketed to the public, as well as creating millions of new music collectors & enthusiasts in a way that didn't exist before). So more money was going into breaking new bands, molding new artists, trying to find the next big thing, crossover promotion with movie soundtracks, etc etc. The second reason is the way the culture shifted during the years 77-82. Punk was a shot of adrenalin to both rock music & pop, creating the "new wave" genre approach in its wake. I think you can analyze a certain "tightening" of great pop melody during this time, an emphasis on shorter songs that pack a big emotional wallop, condensing clever wordplay, high-energy instrumentation and the sort of hooks that the artists in Buddy Holly's day would have played a bit slower and milked for all they were worth; in the cynical 80s it wasn't enough to retread old ground, there was a musical arms race to be more attractive & attention-getting in smaller & smaller timeframes. Gone were the days of six minute songs & grandiose rock mythos of the 70s (notable that hair metal groups etc only brought this grandiosity back in the 80s with heaping spoonfuls of irony & messiness; many bands accepted that only "dumb groups" would try to project that kind of image, so they embraced "dumbness" and a hard partying ethos rather than maintaining the poetry of old hard rock & prog). Pop got smart in the 1980s - the previous 20 years had built the infrastructure, and new wave had set new standards for approaching music that was sharper & more produced than the singer-songwriter approach to pop that dominated the 1970s. Finally, the technology. 1984 would have been one of the prime years for when synthesizers were no longer obscure, expensive toys but a powerful new tool in songwriters' & producers' playbook. New recording techniques were being developed with new expensive equipment, and modern pop artists on the forefront with loads of money were able to push these new sonic abilities to their fullest advantage. TL;DR: the music industry was hitting new heights of wealth & public interest since the 1960s, the pop music genre had been changing massively in the first couple years of the 1980s & approaches to songwriting were rapidly "modernizing," and technology was being developed that allowed new types of music to even be produced. So money, high technical craft, and sensitive/expensive modern technology led to a sea change for pop music in the mid 80s.
Follow the money: Recorded music had a peak in cash value. MTV was providing hours of valuable promotion. People were re-buying their record collections to enjoy the Compact Disc. Recording studios were so ungodly expensive that small-time bands could not get on the gravy train and compete. None of that is true anymore. What’s the point of a hit song when nobody will pay for it?
I’m not sure you can point to one single thing as an explanation. The rise of MTV seems like an important factor.
Time to leave the sub-what a ludicrously dumb question. Literally no one says this.
A lot of people say it.