1984: The Year that Changed Music Forever w/ Michaelangelo Matos
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, music writer Michaelangelo Matos joins Bob and Ben to discuss why 1984 was a pivotal year in music history. Michaelangelo also shares why he loves books about a single year.
Michaelangelos' book, Can't Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop's Blockbuster Year (Hachette Books) was selected as a Rolling Stone-Kirkus Best Music Book of 2020. You can follow him on substack at @michaelangelomatos.
Love a good trivia night? Want to support The Road to Now? You can do both at the same time by joining us for RTN Patreon Trivia! The next round will be in the last full week of June so let us know your availability by Fri. June 7 and then look for the schedule on our Patreon page on Monday, June 10. We look forward to seeing you there!
This episode is a rebroadcast of RTN #230, which originally aired on April 11, 2022. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:08.7 | Today we are sharing an episode that really shaped the way Bob and I talked about music history after this. |
| 0:15.4 | It's a conversation with Michelangelo Matos. He is the author of Can't Slow Down, |
| 0:20.0 | how 1984 became Pop's Blockbuster |
| 0:22.8 | Year from Hatchet Books, which was selected as a Rolling Stone Kirkus Best Music Book of 2020. |
| 0:28.6 | We get into the technology, the changing tastes, the way they actually gauge sales. It's fantastic. |
| 0:35.9 | And just a little interesting fact here, 84, the first year |
| 0:38.7 | the cassette tapes actually outsold vinyl. So all kinds of changes happening here. We recorded |
| 0:45.5 | this a little over two years ago. We're sharing it again now because it's great. And also, |
| 0:50.9 | hey, it's the 40th anniversary of 1984. |
| 0:58.3 | Speaking of timing, patrons, you guys are awesome. |
| 1:02.9 | I put out a call last week to see if anybody was interested in getting together for a trivia night like we used to do during the pandemic. |
| 1:05.3 | And we got a great response. |
| 1:07.1 | So if you guys are following us on Patreon, supporting us there, thank you. |
| 1:44.3 | Right now, you can go fill out a poll. I've got some times and dates there available to pick. It'll just be me. Bob, you know, some co-hosts on this podcast decided to release an album and they're very busy. So it'll just be me and hopefully a lot of you. And we do breakout rooms. These are so much fun. If you weren't here back a couple years ago when we did these semi regularly, it's fun. It's all interactive. Zoom breakout rooms. I love doing these. So if you want to go there, go to our Patreon page. That's patreon.com slash the road to now. You can join us. It's not too late. If you're not a patron now and you want to get involved uh we'd love to have you but those you guys who are already patrons you can |
| 1:49.1 | just go to the link rtnpoddm e slash trivia 624 it has to be all lowercase trivia 624 |
| 1:57.2 | and that'll send you right there so please go sign up for that by this Friday. |
| 2:02.8 | That will be June 7th. |
| 2:04.3 | If you're listening now, if you didn't make it in time, most of these dates are at the end of June. |
| 2:09.1 | So if you're listening a little bit later on, you can go see when it is and maybe join us. |
| 2:13.1 | That's patreon.com slash the road to now. |
| 2:15.4 | Thank you, patrons, you keep us going. Now without further ado, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Benjamin Sawyer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Benjamin Sawyer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.