I have made my selections for 1983. As ever, I have a much longer list of tracks I would include but I have left off the obvious metal, prog and AOR selections.
Brian Eno – “An Ending (Ascent)”
First up is a track that I don’t associate with 1983. I’m not sure when and where I first heard this track, but I instantly recognised it the first time I played the album Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks, which I guess I bought about 20 years ago, probably because the track in question is Eno’s most licensed piece of work. It is one of the most iconic ambient pieces ever recorded and possibly the most beautiful piece of music I have heard, with an onion peeling effect that is slightly disconcerting.
Co-created with Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno, it embodies Eno's ambient ideal: "ignorable as it is interesting." The track is a shimmering synth pad from Eno's Yamaha CS-80, layered with reverb, pitch-shifting, and his signature "shimmer" effect for an ascending, ethereal glow. In E minor modal loops, it swells from gentle waves to radiant peaks, evoking space's weightless awe, plaintive yet majestic and transcendent.
The Kinks – “Come Dancing”
Ray Davies has always been the great chronicler of ordinary lives, and with “Come Dancing” the lead single from The Kinks' 1983 album State of Confusion he delivers one of his most poignant tales, dressed up, almost mischievously, as a jaunty pop single.
Sung from a Cockney "barrow boy" perspective, on the surface, it’s all brass flourishes and ballroom bounce, a tune that could have been piped straight out of a faded East End dance hall. But listen closer and you hear the ache beneath the swing. Davies is writing not just about a lost Saturday night ritual, but about his sister René, who died young after a night out dancing. That personal grief is folded into the lyric with typical Davies subtlety: the nostalgia is warm, but the shadows are never far away.
The brilliance of “Come Dancing” lies in that tension. It’s a song that makes you smile even as it makes you wistful, a reminder that memory is always double-edged. The video, directed by Julien Temple, leans into the theatricality—Ray as the cheeky barrow boy, the dance hall as both playground and mausoleum—and in the MTV era, it gave The Kinks their biggest U.S. and U.K. hits in ages.
My favourite bit is when axe wielding brother Dave briefly gate crashes the party with the kind of arena rock power chords Ray was trying to escape with this song.
Bonnie Tyler – “Going Through the Motions”
One of the surprises of 1983 was the Welsh country songstress channelling Meat Loaf to deliver a fabulous and highly successful rock album Faster Than the Speed of Night under the aegis of producer Jim Steinman and aided and abetted by outstanding musicians, such as (Professor) Roy Bittan, (Mighty) Max Weinberg and Rick Derringer. I have not gone from the big hit single from the album but a deeper cut that is a cover of a song on Blue Öyster Cult’s 1977 Spectres album that was co-written by Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople) and Eric Bloom (BÖC).
Jim Steinman doesn’t do subtle, and here his Wagnerian arrangement blends Tyler’s gravelly rasp with Spectoresque Wall of Sound bombast: big drums, sweeping strings, and a quirky children's chorus that adds eerie innocence to the tale of romantic autopilot.
Michael Jackson – “Beat It”
The album Thriller became an absolute monster in 1983, and it undoubtedly got a helping hand on its ascent to the top of the all-time sales lists from its explosive third single’s crossover appeal.
Pop meets rock in a back-alley showdown, and everyone wins. Jackson sings of walking away from violence, but the track itself is a fight: stabbing synths and funky basslines squaring up to hard rock guitars; Quincy Jones’ production is razor-sharp and Eddie Van Halen’s solo slices through like a switchblade.
EVH was invited by Quincy Jones (via Toto's Steve Lukather) to contribute to the track as a favour - no pay, just beer. Ed arrived at Westlake Studios in 1982, sceptical after mistaking the call for a prank and hanging up four times. The session was pure chaos and genius in under 30 minutes. While Jackson worked on an E.T. kids' album next door, Van Halen heard the repetitive 16-bar chug (rhythm by Paul Jackson Jr.) and balked: "That's boring." He directed his own engineer Donn Landee to splice in the verse section via tape edits—chopping from breakdown to pre-chorus, chorus, and out—creating dynamic peaks for improv. Two takes later (second take nailed), Jackson burst in, heard the tweaks, and was delighted. The 30 seconds of guitar pyrotechnics including Van Halen’s signature two-hand tapping, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and whammy dives was the "scorching minimalism, that was too perfect for tweaks (even Jackson's touring guitarist Jennifer Batten played it note-for-note).
It’s a collision that shouldn’t work, yet it does - spectacularly. A Number One single, a Grammy winner, and a cultural ceasefire between genres. In 1983, this wasn’t just a hit record, it was a landmark.
