4 Pop Songs From the 1980s That Feel Like a Dopamine Rush

Everybody needs a little pick-me-up every now and then. Here are some 80s tracks that will sweep you off your feet and help you turn your day around.

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“Invisible Touch” by Genesis

This song, which ended up being Genesis‘ biggest hit, came about in a jam session. While the group’s guitarist Mike Rutherford played a drum riff, Phil Collins shouted out the “She seems to have an invisible touch” line of this song.

This chorus feels so simple, yet easily remains one of the hookiest of this decade of music.

“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police

Sting actually wrote this one before his time with The Police. Getting the band onto it actually took some convincing.

“It sounded like a No. 1 song to me,” he said of the track. “I took it to the band, who were reticent, still thinking it was soft. I was saying, ‘But listen, it’s a hit.’ We tried to do it from scratch as The Police, but it didn’t have the same energy as the demo. After a degree of hair-pulling and torturing on my part, I got the band to play over the top of my demo.”

“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” ended up being a No. 1 hit in the UK.

“Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper

You can’t talk about the impact of 80s music and skip over Cyndi Lauper. “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” was Lauper’s breakout hit and is still a dance-pop anthem for the girls of today.

Fun fact: This song was first written by Robert Hazard from a guy’s perspective. Lauper ended up making it her own.

“How Will I Know” by Whitney Houston

This classic 80s track was written by the duo Boy Meets Girl. The couple, George Merrill and Sharon Rubicam, also wrote “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” for Houston. However, with this song, they at first had Janet Jackson in mind.

“’How Will I Know’ was written in our funky little Venice, California garage, roughly 1984,” they told MusicRadar. Jackson passed on the track, but it was chosen as one of the featured tracks for Whitney’s self-titled debut album.

“The track and Whitney’s voice were so powerful,” the duo shared. “It was one of the great moments [hearing it for the first time], and still is a thrill to hear our song over the sound system in a grocery store or being sung by generations of contestants on American Idol or The Voice, and we are forever grateful to fate for aligning so perfectly!”

Photo by: Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images