Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - What’s 1984 Got to Do with It Edition Part 1
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Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2024
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A decade ago, Rolling Stone magazine called 1984 “Pop’s Greatest Year.” A bold statement…but a lot of critics agree. A confluence of factors—the comeback of dance music, the peak of MTV, the Second British Invasion and the emergence of metal and hip-hop—made the radio a great place to be.
It was a year of fearless genre crossover…cinematic hits…veterans reinventing themselves…ballads that became standards…a newcomer named Madonna…and a movie star who called himself The Kid and made doves cry.
Join Chris Molanphy as he dissects eight reasons why 1984 was awesome for pop fans and walks through all 20 of the year’s No. 1 hits: from “Jump” to “Hello,” “Karma Chameleon” to “Caribbean Queen,” “Let’s Go Crazy” to “Like a Virgin.” This is what it sounds like when pop’s fly.
Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, hit parade listeners, what you're about to hear is part one of this episode. |
| 0:06.3 | Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. |
| 0:10.2 | Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? |
| 0:14.0 | Sign up for Slate Plus. |
| 0:16.0 | It supports not only this show but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. |
| 0:22.0 | Just go to Slate.com slash hit parade plus. |
| 0:26.0 | You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full |
| 0:30.0 | the day it arrives. |
| 0:31.0 | Plus, hit parade, the bridge, |
| 0:33.7 | our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, |
| 0:36.8 | deeper dives on our episode topics, |
| 0:39.3 | and pop chart trivia. |
| 0:41.1 | Once again, to join, that's Slate.com slash Hit Parade Plus. Thanks. And now, please enjoy |
| 0:49.1 | part one of this hit parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from |
| 1:09.7 | Coast to Coast. I'm Chris Malamphi, Chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slates Why Is This Song Number One series. |
| 1:17.6 | On today's show, 40 years ago, this week, this was the number one song in America, an improbable comeback by a regal statuesque singer |
| 1:29.3 | who'd fought hard to return to the center of the pop conversation. For the woman who came to be known as |
| 1:37.1 | the Queen of Rock and Roll, the late summer of 84 gave her the first and only Hot 100 chart-topper of her career. |
| 1:48.0 | Tina Turner with What's Love got to do with it? Here's love got to do got to do with it. |
| 1:57.0 | Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? Here's a question you maybe haven't considered in all the dozens of times you've probably heard what's love got to do with it. What is this song? How would you |
| 2:16.4 | classify it? Given Tina Turner's background, you might call it |
| 2:21.1 | rhythm and blues, but Turner preferred to call herself a rock singer. |
... |
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