5 Nearly Perfect '80s Songs That Almost Everyone Agrees On

It's hard to build a consensus around anything these days, so let's celebrate it where we can: The diverse, experimental, energetic music scene of the 1980s gave the radio repertoire some of its most crowd-pleasing bangers. A few of them are so popular they approach "universal favorite" status. Yes, there's always some killjoy or another who will "well, actually" any song on the radio. This list is not for them. This list is for people who like music more than they like winning arguments at the jukebox.

The songs we've chosen all had heavy airplay in their day and remain widely listened to today, with all topping 100 million views of the official video on YouTube and two cracking 1 billion. Beyond that, they've all got something special, be it a dedicated art installation, a truly wild video, or an introductory musical phrase that lets everyone know that greatness, once more, is about to enter the chat.

There's something about Toto's "Africa." The lyrics don't make all that much sense: Why are these dudes blessing rains, and how is that going to help their girl problems? Furthermore, check the map, bud: Kilimanjaro does not, in fact, rise above the Serengeti. They're both in Tanzania, but 400 kilometers and a number of other peaks separate the two. You can tell that the songwriters had never been to the continent when they wrote it.

And yet. Even with its geographical inaccuracies and outsider's perspective, "Africa" speaks to the soul in a way few other soft rock bangers can. The official YouTube video has over 1.2 billion plays. Weezer covered it (in a version not all that different from the original) and topped the charts. "Africa" may even outlive us all: Namibian-German artist Max Siedentopf erected "Toto Forever," a secret installation in the Namib desert, designed to play the iconic track indefinitely. That means that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, "Africa" is playing. In a rough and uncertain world, that's a true comfort.

1984's "Careless Whisper" was George Michael's first solo single, and what a single it was. Its chart-topping success hurried his promotion from "one of the guys from Wham!" to a solo star in his own right and goosed his rise to one of the most heavily moussed sex symbols of the mid-to-late 1980s. The official video has 1.5 billion hits on YouTube.

But as much as Michael's breathy-yet-assured vocals give to "Careless Whisper," it's that saxophone lick that we all remember. Saxophones are seductive. Whether science will ever uncover why is an open question. But something about that smooth, low-brass croon turns human thoughts in one direction, and it's not toward the instrument's small but memorable repertoire of classical concert pieces. Saxophones make you think of a glass of wine, mood lighting, musky cologne, and that one number you swore never to dial again. A lot of people born in early to mid-1985 have this tune to thank for their arrival.

The jokes about Cher's longevity — she and the roaches will be the only things left after a nuclear war, etc. — obscure the fact that to love her is to have decades of material to enjoy. If someone asks you to name your favorite song of hers, hit them with "Which decade?" Because Cher is a spectrum. But if they ask your favorite '80s Cher tune, the answer is probably the big-voiced anthem "If I Could Turn Back Time." For sheer "everyone in the bar is singing" memorableness and triumph, this is the track to beat across the singer's career and across the 1989 charts.

Plus ... the official music video was shot on board the USS Missouri. As in, a warship. The Navy even provided 200 sailors to serve as enthusiastic extras. (Imagine that phone exchange: "Cher needs 200 sailors." "Is it ... her birthday?") Cher's revealing costume shocked the kind of people who are shocked by such things, but the shoot went through, giving her a victory over the prudes and one of the wildest music videos of the decade.

Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" is only an '80s song because it came out during the 1980s. It is, by any metric, timeless, both in the captivating story of difficulty and hope its lyrics tell and in the simplicity of its musicianship. Chapman's guitar carries a deceptively simple tune, and her vocals, well controlled with just a little gravel for authenticity, deliver the lyrics convincingly and grippingly without a shred of pathos.

"Fast Car" is so good it won major awards in separate decades. Chapman's original version, from her self-titled 1988 debut album, won her a piece of hardware for best female pop vocals. In 2023, country artist Luke Combs covered it, even performing the song together with Chapman at the Grammy Awards the following year in her first live performance in several years. The renewed attention on her immortal song won it and the singer a Country Music Award for song of the year — a first for a Black songwriter. Combs' excellent version helped her reach this surprise late-career triumph, but even so, the original, with all the genius of the young Chapman, is still the champion.

The best camp is camp that still works as art, and a great example of this phenomenon is the late-disco immortal track "It's Raining Men." It's silly, of course — a slightly overproduced dance song that, despite its female vocalists and references to single women in the lyrics, was born for gay clubs. It's a goofy, rowdy, sing-along, shout-along ride, and a harsh judgment would call it the natural end of disco: An unserious, winking mess, more product than music.

And yet. When those famous few notes start playing in the bar, you know who's ready to have fun. People who don't know the rest of the lyrics brace themselves to scream "It's raining men!" when the phrase comes past them, happy to be on the bandwagon of a crowdpleaser. Izora Rhodes and Martha Wash both have good and, above all, powerful voices, belting with the best of them. They also play together well, clearly enjoying themselves — their banter in the beginning of the song is one of its highlights, along with the tear-your-shirt-off key change late in the song. "It's Raining Men" isn't serious, but it takes its duty to entertain seriously, and there it succeeds.