Blockbuster Thrillers: Annivyrsary 1982
ISSUE #196
The first time I went crowd-surfing was in a stranger’s dark living room to “Come On Eileen.” I remember being lifted on shaky hands and the warm breeze borne from the drunken crowd. It was during that thumping chant of the bridge, every foot moving to the brow-beating stomp. My nose scraped the ceiling as I sang along.
Such is the effect of a great drinking song. A good chant will move through you like a shiver, up from the floor and out of your mouth. Depending on what you know about Dexys Midnight Runners, the song is either a one-hit wonder or a classic Irish rhapsody, a horny elegy to fading youth followed by the flurry of flying clothes. Regardless, when it comes on, you’re going to sing along.
The only reason we know the song at all was the prevalence of the video. 1982 is when MTV held the keys to culture. There hasn’t been a sea change like the birth of MTV in all of music history, save the breaking of punk with Nevermind and the invention of the .mp3. In the past, singles hit #1 from the strength of established names—Bowie, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac—but by the 80s, the one-hit wonder emerged, on the back of the flashy new music video.
Which is how Dexys Midnight Runners jumped the charts to break a streak of singles from a blockbuster hit. America in 1982 saw seven weeks with “Billie Jean,” one week with “Come On Eileen,” then four more weeks with “Beat It.”—two of seven singles on the nine-track Thriller, the highest-selling album of all time.
Michael Jackson and producer Quincy Jones set out to make the perfect follow-up to 1979’s Off the Wall, and in the process defined the blockbuster album—the same way Jaws, and later Star Wars, invented the blockbuster movie. On Thriller, there is no genre; there’s something for us all—guitar solos, dance hits, Halloween novelties. Jones and Jackson were meticulous auteurs: Jackson sang vocals through an eight-foot tube just to get an echo right; on “Billie Jean,” they played every bass they could until Jackson found one with a dark enough tone.
Darkness is one thing we had in spades in 1982—this was the pinnacle of the Halloween aesthetic. One year after Lennon was shot and three years into Thatcher, goth was reigning supreme in England from The Cure’s Pornography to Bauhaus. Under Reagan, America was ossifying into the free market’s shining empire. You either embraced the decadent glow—like Avalon by Roxy Music, Rio by Duran Duran, Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, or Psychedelic Furs—or you went against the grain with the likes of The Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, Circle Jerks, and The Damned. Even stalwarts like Bruce Springsteen were embracing the shadow, as he stripped down to a collection of murder ballads on Nebraska.
Still, blockbusters ran the show. Thriller was a smash, but so was Cats, which started its 18 year run on Broadway. Tootsie became the highest-grossing comedy, and movies were making so much cash that Coca-Cola bought Columbia Pictures—but the only thing close to Thriller was E.T., the highest-grossing film since Star Wars. It was a record held for eleven years, until Spielberg topped it with Jurassic Park.
But monster hits will go extinct and superstars fade to black holes. Dexys Midnight Runners were barely seen again, and we all know what happened to Michael. Success in the market makes as much sense as Cats—we await the choosing for the Heaviside Layer. Jellicle cats, sound and fury, the money signifies nothing. Memory, however, remains. Too-ra-loo-ra. Too-ra-loo-rye, aye.
1984 has been called the greatest year in pop, and I think it might still be true. If 1974 was music’s fallow period, ten years later was its opposite. We danced in the dark beneath the killing moon and under purple rain—this was the year the critics and the people met in the Minneapolis streets.