200 Most-Streamed Songs from the ’80s

Few songs are as recognisable—or smile-inducing—as Toto’s 1982 instant classic “Africa”. And as this playlist confirms, its sheen has hardly dissipated in the four decades since its release. Here, we’re celebrating the 200 hits from the 1980s that we’re still listening to most—and “Africa” comes out on top, a song as beloved by those who made it a worldwide smash back then as by the younger generations discovering it for the first time now. The songs that follow it are just as indelible, including Whitney Houston’s champagne-popping “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and some of the era’s most enduring rock hits: Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”—which has enjoyed a second coming thanks in part to its moment in the Glee and Sopranos limelight—and AC/DC’s “Back in Black”, a song (alongside the 1980 album of the same name) that propelled the band to become one of the world’s biggest. Fleetwood Mac’s glittering “Everywhere” is alongside all of those, the band’s prominence across these 200 tracks a sign of just how timeless their sound is. It is, too, being unearthed by a younger TikTok generation thanks to moment-meeting viral videos soundtracked by Fleetwood Mac hits. Many of the names that rose up during the ’80s became global phenomenons who changed music forever—and this playlist reveals those with the greatest staying power. Here, you’ll find Madonna and Prince, two of pop’s most powerful forces who exploded amid the game-changing arrival of MTV in 1981; George Michael and Wham! (Michael’s death in 2016 undoubtedly prompted a revived love of his back catalogue); Elton John and Queen (whose repeat appearances in this playlist have surely been driven by recent high-profile biopics); Kate Bush; and Davie Bowie, who enjoyed his most commercially successful music during this decade. As for a classic album we can’t get enough of? The Stone Roses’ 1989 self-titled debut is one of them, with multiple tracks from it making their way into this playlist. The ’80s was, of course, a time of restless musical innovation, and its impact is still reverberating across modern music now. With disco and punk relegated, new genres emerged such as New Wave and synth-pop (see a-ha’s classic “Take On Me”, which straddles both and which is in at number eight here) and, in the rock space, metal and indie (that Stone Roses record helped, in part, usher in the birth of the latter). Then there was the steady rise of R&B—repped here by Luther Vandross, Houston, Marvin Gaye (with the soaringly sensual “Sexual Healing”) and more—and the unstoppable ascent of hip-hop, N.W.A. and Run-DMC the two artists of the ’80s hip-hop era that come out on top in this playlist. Some of those genres were brought about by technological leaps forward, as were thrillingly singular moments in the modern-pop canon. Think Phil Collins’ vocoder- and drum-machine-powered “In the Air Tonight”, Prince’s “When Doves Cry”—another example of elite drum-machine wizardry—or Bronski Beat’s synth-pop queer anthem “Smalltown Boy”, a song that provided a vital message in the ’80s and which still sounds heart-stoppingly fresh (and urgent) now. Indeed, the most dazzling songs of the ’80s feel both plugged into their era and utterly forward-looking. And with all the bold new sounds the decade brought about, it’s perhaps no surprise that today’s modern-pop giants—including The Weeknd, Harry Styles, Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran—continue to delve into its riches in search of musical inspiration. Dive in for a celebration of a decade of decadence.