The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s

Rolling Stone’s “The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s” is a ranked, one-song-per-artist celebration of the decade’s pop, rock, R&B, hip-hop, new wave, and dance explosions—built to capture both the era’s huge cultural hits and the deeper cult favorites that shaped how modern music sounds. The list is presented as an editorial package written by Rob Sheffield, and it uses the “one song per artist” rule to keep the focus on variety across the decade rather than letting a handful of megastars dominate the rankings.