Swedish singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry owns the fourth most underrated 80s song with ‘Buffalo Stance,’ her biggest hit. The 1988 single went to #1 in her native Sweden and peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Of the ten songs on Chris Dalla Riva’s “underrated” chart, this one has the fewest Spotify streams. Cherry had a decent run in the late 80s and early 90s but has pretty much fallen off the map (despite releasing an album as recently as 2022).
The third most underrated song of the 1980s is the classic hip-hop anthem ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
This groundbreaking track has appeared at or near the top of countless critical lists of the best rap songs and best songs of its decade. And yet, apart from being sampled by plenty of modern rap songs, it has almost no footprint anymore.
The second most underrated song of the 1980s, according to Chris Dalla Riva’s analysis, is ‘Once in a Lifetime’ by Talking Heads. This was the first single from the band’s celebrated 1980 album Remain in Light.
This song has the same jam-heavy Afrobeat aesthetic as the rest of the album, but its soaring chorus and disarming spoken-word verses made it stand out as something close to a hummable hit. It reached the top 20 in the UK upon its release despite not breaking into the Hot 100 in the United States. A live recording from the Stop Making Sense concert film did crack that list several years later.
Earlier this summer, I posted a list of the “most forgotten” musical artists of the 60s and 70s, based on an analysis by Chris Dalla Riva on his Can’t Get Much Higher substack. Well, Dalla Riva has proved to be a gift that keeps on giving, because another of his recent analyses has inspired my posts for the next two weeks.
This time he set out to compile a list of the most underrated songs of the 80s, defining “underrated” as high quality mixed with relatively low popularity. To gauge quality, he aggregated critics lists of the best 80s songs to come up with a master list. To gauge present-day popularity, he used Spotify streams.
The week of August 31, 1985, was a big one for film soundtracks. Three of the top four songs atop the Hot 100 that week were from movies.
Topping the chart for the second week was Huey Lewis & the News’ ‘The Power of Love‘ from Back to the Future. In the #4 slot was Tina Turner’s ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)’ from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a movie in which she also starred.
Meet Me In Montauk 