3 Great Albums From 1984 You Might Have Forgotten

Massive albums arrived in 1984.

Madonna’s Like a Virgin, Prince’s Purple Rain, and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. raced up the charts. Also, future legends were emerging: Metallica released Ride the Lightning, The Smiths debuted, and The Cure continued to ascend as Robert Smith twisted gothic post-punk songs into pop gems.

Meanwhile, Van Halen released its final album before David Lee Roth’s exit. An album that featured the band’s biggest hit, “Jump.” It’s a song driven by a synthesizer played by one of the greatest guitarists in history.

And Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” arrived by way of Mike Campbell’s drum machine on a demo rejected by Tom Petty.

So, with all these timeless releases arriving within the same year, it’s easy to forget other great records from 1984. Here are a few you might have missed. As The Judds sang then, “Why Not Me?”

It’s a lot (it’s a lot)

Some Great Reward by Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode’s fourth album broke through in the States with the massive hit “People Are People.” But Some Great Reward is also noteworthy for its hi-fi sound. Earlier releases, like other electronic artists, had sounded thin. But Martin Gore and his band learned how to make the drum machines bigger, more explosive. “Master and Servant” talks about domination—the sexual and political. This album created a new kind of synth-pop domination for a group that brought dance club culture to mainstream audiences.

Let It Be by The Replacements

This is the album where The Replacements got serious. Let It Be crossed the threshold between a group of punks messing around and something to be taken seriously. Paul Westerberg crafted great songs and The Replacements sounded like a band with a plan. Well, not really a plan. They remained perfectly unhinged but the songs were so good the band-on-the-edge-of-disaster worked. Westerberg said the noisy, “fake hardcore rock” was a dead end. This is Westerberg becoming one of his generation’s leading songwriters, fronting one of the decade’s best bands.

Reckoning by R.E.M.

“So. Central Rain” might be when R.E.M. became America’s greatest band. The chorus is two words: I’m Sorry. It’s peak Michael Stipe. Powerful and fragile. This is a band where every member counts. Stipe, with Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry were an anti-’80s band. They rejected rock cliches and continued to do things their way even when they were filling stadiums. Reckoning existed before the stadiums but it also pointed to a place where their unadorned, jangly jams would someday become global anthems. The production sounds big and live. It’s a clearer sound than its predecessor. Though Stipe’s lyrics were often ambiguous, you can hear his confidence growing. Even when you couldn’t understand the words, you could certainly feel them.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns