1983 was a special year for music for me. I was 13 years old, and I couldn’t get enough of MTV. I remember listening to all of these songs on my Sony Walkman during long road trips in the back of my parents car, and I spent hours watching music videos on MTV. Many of these songs remind me of Atari’s Pitfall game because I spent hours playing the game with these songs blasting in my head. If you were a teenager in the early ’80s, then you’re going to love this look back at the top ten year-end songs on the Billboard Hot 100 list. I’ve also got a few more of my favorite songs from 1983 that didn’t make the top ten, but I’m sure you’ll remember them as well.
So, sit back and enjoy a look back at videos featuring the top ten year-end Hot 100 songs of 1983 as well as a few of my favorites as well!
#1: The Police – Every Breath You Take (Spent eight weeks atop the Hot 100 chart)
#2: Michael Jackson – Billie Jean (Ranked #44 on Rolling Stone’s 2021 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time)
#3: Irene Cara – Flashdance… What a Feeling (Earned Cara the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female)
#4: Men at Work – Down Under (Spent four non-consecutive weeks atop the Hot 100 chart)
#5: Michael Jackson – Beat It (Spent three weeks atop the Hot 100 chart and includes a memorable guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen)
#6: Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart (Spent three weeks atop the Hot 100 chart)
#7: Hall & Oates – Maneater (Spent four weeks atop the Hot 100 chart, which was more than any of their five other number one hits)
#8: Patti Austin and James Ingram – Baby, Come to Me (The song peaked at #73 on the Hot 100 chart in 1982, but several months later, the soap opera General Hospital started featuring the song heavily as the love theme for character Luke Spencer, and it was re-released in October and hit number one in February 1983.)
#9: Michael Sembello – Maniac (Spent two weeks atop the Hot 100 chart)
#10: Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (The song was the Eurythmics first single released in the US, and in 2020, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.)
1983 was a great year for rock bands, and some of our all time favorite songs were released in ’83. Here’s a look at a few of our favorites!
Def Leppard – Photograph (Spent six weeks atop the Mainstream Rock chart and finished at number 90 on the year-end Hot 100 chart for 1983)
Golden Earring – Twilight Zone (Spent more than a half a year (27 weeks) on the Pop charts in the U.S. and hit number one on the Mainstream Rock charts. It finished 1983 at number 19 on the year-end Hot 100 chart.)
Toto – Africa (Toto’s only number one single on the Hot 100 chart – Has since become one of the best classic rock songs of all-time.)
Great list! I was 14 at this time. No surprise that Def Leppards Photograph was 90 on the billboard list. At that time This kind of music was not generally well received by radio station program managers. It did open the doors to what would become the Hair Band craze the 80s gave us.
Also to note: a lot of Adult oriented rock was NOT included in this list.
Still, the 80s was a great decade for music.
That was a good trip down memory lane. I was 16 in 83 my favorite was Def Leppard – Photograph. I remember my dad saying why do you want to listen to that long haired hippy music.