Friday Flashback: Party like it’s 1984
Friday, July 31st, 2009
In 1948, George Orwell wrote a novel envisioning the year 1984 as a dystopian future ruled by a totalitarian regime.
While said novel did inspire a film adaptation that year and a legendary advertisement for the first Apple Macintosh, those of us that actually remember 1984 know it didn’t quite turn out that way, as much as people feared Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher would make it so.
Politicians were hardly the only dominant force on the cultural landscape. If you would like, you could consider the mid 1980’s to be the Time of the Rock Gods, a time when the most powerful rock and pop icons ruled the scene like dinosaurs during the Jurassic.
In January 1984, Van Halen released the aptly titled “1984,” their last album with David Lee Roth. The album peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts. The number one album of the time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” not only ended up being the best-selling album of all time, but it featured guest guitarist Eddie Van Halen on “Beat It.”
If you were alive at this time, you or an older sibling had one or both of these albums. This was the sountrack of that year:
Play the first few bars of that for anyone alive at that time, even your grandma, and you’ll induce instant nostalgia.
But the point of this flashback isn’t I’m Old And This Is What Used To Be Popular. It’s really a case study in WTF Happened?
First of all, both of these artists were ludicrously popular in their day. Think of the most popular artist you know today. Multiply by ten. Still not even close. The most die-hard pop-hating metalhead would recognize “Beat It,” and even your mom knew the words to “Jump.”
No one has been that popular since - least of all those guys. Sometime in the mid 1990s, both of these artists suddenly dropped off the radar completely. There was no formal breakup or retirement, they just … went away. They each tried several times to regain their former glory, only to draw attention by how little attention they were drawing. Michael Jackson ended up being known mostly as a freak-faced alleged pedophile, only getting attention for his legal trouble up until his death a few weeks ago. Eddie Van Halen slowly turned into a sad parody of an aging rock star. While ex-Van Halen members have drifted off to help form one of the most insane ideas for a supergroup ever, Eddie and family have yet to get it together long enough to put out a new album. [Latest rumor is that they're working on one right now!; too bad Chinese Democracy is taken.]
So what happened? Did these artists play King of the Mountain too long? Or did they simply crush the mountain? Maybe that level of superstardom is just unsustainable - the time of the dinosaurs is over, and it’s time the smaller, more nimble mammals (for example, us) to take over.
