LIVIN' IN THE '80S, OR "CAN'T SLOW DOWN: HOW 1984 BECAME POP'S BLOCKBUSTER YEAR"

I was dubious about "Can't Slow Down." It seemed too easy - any year in music history could be said to be important in hindsight - take any year: why not 1972, or 1968, or 1936, or 2007?  And while 1984 was a big year in music for me (It was probably the beginning of my music fandom - I was addicted to MTV and had branched out from my previous soft rock and oldies to classic/heavy rock/whatever got heavy MTV rotation), it seemed like any other year in the '80s could be substituted just as easily.

Apparently author Michaelangelo Matos is better at picking significant music years than I am. Matos uses the year as a pivot point - as he points out, when people describe the "fun" '80s, they're talking about the early '80s. It's also a point where new technologies and genres were being created (crazy thing - Quincy Jones pretty much predicted streaming music services in 1984). 

Opening with the record industry in a post-disco slump and ending with the Live Aid concerts, "Can't Slow Down" is an extensive overview of a packed year in popular culture. And who knew this much stuff happened in 1984?  Of course we get the stories of the winners - Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince - but we also get new wave, hip-hop, the birth of house music, hard rock, country, world music (1984 was the year that dorm room staple Bob Marley's "Legend" was released) as well as just about every genre and sub-genre imaginable. 

But it's not all new bands - more fascinating to me were the older bands trying to adapt to the new styles (most successfully ZZ Top and Yes) as well as radio stations previously devoted to middle of the road rock tentatively embracing "new music." The first chapter, dealing with radio stations cautiously trying to add more current songs to their beige '70s country rock dominated playlists could have been a whole book in itself, even if the changes instituted turned radio into the corporate monoliths they are today.

"I tell ya, Cyndi, I had it tough growing up..."

Speaking of foreshadowing, there's plenty of it, especially with Michael Jackson's tendency to surround himself with young showbiz kids or artists starting to dip into the cocaine a bit too frequently. 

Matos ably curates a ton of information into genre or artist specific chapters, making "Can't Slow Down" extremely readable, and he can also turn a phrase, such as "...a ballad as soft as a dead mango." It's also always eye-opening to recall just how racist and homophobic the '80s, a time I can remember in my lifetime were - case in point, a magazine for radio programmers described a Bronski Beat album like this: "English trio of limp-wristed boys are among the leading gay wavers in their home country...It's a shame that some wonderful music must be so lyrically radical." 

While it took a while to get used to the fact that there was no over-arching story, "Can't Slow Down" is a monster work of a year that I had no idea was so transformational. 

Buy, Borrow from the Library, or Pass
Definitely borrow. I'd even recommend buying, which is against my tightwad nature. There's gonna be at least a few chapters you're going to be interested in.