Flashbacks to 1983

Surfing the net this past week, I came across some items about that monumental year in pop music, 1983. That year has always been a favorite of mine, and considering the happenings occurring in the music scene that year, it has claim to being one of the most eventful years in rock and pop history. It was, after all, the year of Thriller, of the Second British Invasion, and the year when MTV surged forward as a cutting edge music medium.

This article in the Toledo Free Press gives us a flashback to a memory from that era regarding one of the most popular groups of the decade The Police, and their great 1983 album, Synchronicity:

At 17, I was at the zenith of my love for record collecting, 

but I would walk past the new releases to check the torn-out 

Billboard pages tacked over the singles bin. I had been raised 

on country-western music; other than my mom’s Beatles LPs, I 

did not know much about pop. During a swim party at a friend’s 

in the spring of 1979, I heard the slashing guitars and 

hysterical pleadings of “Roxanne,” and I never again settled 

for steel guitars and Nashville slickness. I followed 

The Police through their exponentially successful rise of 

“Message in a Bottle,” “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and 

“Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.” 

When “Every Breath You Take” exploded in the summer of 1983, I 

followed its chart progress like a sports fan rooting for a 

team’s pennant chase. I still remember the numbers: A debut at 

No. 36, a jump to No. 24, a leap to No. 12, a move to No. 5, 

then an eight-week run at No. 1 that, as a longtime fan 

of the band, made me feel as triumphant as if I had 

written the song myself.

No song dominates the memory like a summer song, and to                          this day, hearing the pistol-shot opening of “Every Breath                         You Take” takes me back to the summer of 1983.

The '80s blog Rediscover the '80s, had a post recently about another 1983 group and album, Huey Lewis and The News' Sports. Here's some memories from that post:

Once I was able to save up and buy my own music 

in the mid-late 80s, I remember acquiring Sports on 

cassette. I loved it. I also remember it still being one I 

listened to in the car when I first learned how to drive in 

the early 90s. It's one of those albums that I never used 

the fast forward button on (maybe rewind.)  . . .

The music blog All Music encapsulates the spirit of 1983 this way:

If any year captured the heady rush of the early '80s, it was 1983, 

the year Michael Jackson's Thriller became a phenomenon and, not 

coincidentally, the year of MTV's prime. The cable network debuted two 

years earlier but '83 was when music videos took over, popping up on 

cable channels and network TV, and along with videos came a glorious 

period of hit singles by one-hit wonders, new invaders from 

Britain, and veterans who now mastered synths and drum machines, 

the latter inexplicably led by grizzled, hairy blues-rockers ZZ Top and 

the visionary jazz-fusion keyboardist Herbie Hancock. Underneath all 

this televised glitz were some major debuts: the first albums from 

Madonna, Metallica, R.E.M., and Hüsker Dü, and the first singles from 

the Smiths and Run-D.M.C. And there were the mammoth hits -- yes, 

Thriller, but also Def Leppard's Pyromania and the Police's Synchronicity, 

all giving us more than enough reason to love 1983.

Here's one of my own fave memories from 1983: