I’ve lost count of how many 80s-themed events my young children have attended. Dropping them at the most recent neon-fringed disco, a few parents noted how weird it was that our children seem obsessed with an era they can barely imagine. When I was seven in 1984, there was no comparable hunger for dressing up as Glenn Miller and going to 40s jazz parties. Which, on reflection, seems a shame.

It’s undeniable that these kids are infected with contact nostalgia, growing up in the shadow of their parents’ memories. But it’s also clear that, these kids aside, most of those susceptible to the 80s bug are far too young to remember it. The adult fans of shows such as Stranger Things or the never-ending stream of rebooted and recycled properties from Transformers to Masters of the Universe might be longing for a pre-cellular time before technology dominated our lives, but it’s more likely they’re longing for a time when pop culture mattered.

Let me put it simply. Western pop culture peaked in the 1980s. More than that, I’d argue it peaked exactly 40 years ago, in 1984. (The fact I was then at the very receptive age of seven is, in this case, mere coincidence.)

The evidence isn’t hard to find. Just look at the films and television we continue to celebrate and recycle. Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, The Terminator, Footloose, Beverly Hills Cop — all have made recent returns to screens big and small. All released in 1984. Likewise the two toy-themed franchises mentioned above.

On the music front, The Smiths and Madonna released their first albums, alongside era-defining hits from Wham, Prince, Sade, U2, Michael Jackson, a-Ha and, uh, Corey Hart. David Bowie’s popularity was at an all-time high, if not his critical acclaim. In 2014, Rolling Stone declared it pop’s greatest year and, given how neatly this underlines my thesis, I’m in no mood to disagree.

Why 1984? Because it marks a high watermark of confidence in the West. The turmoil of the 60s and 70s had subsided, with angsty punk giving way to New Romantics and rock fusing with pop to create mainstream music that was anything but disposable — much of it getting constant airplay four decades later. British music, in particular, was on the ascendent, accounting for 40 of that year’s top 100 singles in the US. 

Technology was white hot. The space race was in full flight — and we were winning. The US launched its third space shuttle (the ill-fated Challenger) and conducted the first untethered spacewalk. While Japan remained a hotspot for electronics, Steve Jobs chose January to launch the first Apple Macintosh — establishing a brand that went on to not only computers but also, in 2024, the primary means by which many of us consume pop culture.

Which isn’t to imply the 80s were an unalloyed golden age. By 1984, Western economies had recovered from recession and entered a serious boom, but stubbornly high unemployment in the UK helped drive a period of social unrest, leading to the Tottenham riots of the following year.

What underpins this period of extreme cultural confidence is, perhaps, not the economic boom but rather the fact that the cold war was reaching a crux. Relations between East and West had deteriorated since the late-1970s and, by the end of 1983, nuclear annihilation felt like a very real prospect. 

One’s sense of identity is rarely so clarified as when facing an existential threat

It’s no coincidence that the year of The Terminator is also the year of nuclear horror drama Threads (following on from The Day After the previous December). What do you do when the world is ending? You party like it’s 1999 (which was actually released by Prince in 1982, as tensions were on the rise.) More than that, when you have a defined enemy, it’s easier to confidently celebrate your own culture. One’s sense of identity is rarely so clarified as when facing an existential threat.

Riven by economic collapse, the USSR was only months away from appointing Gorbachev as general secretary. Two years later, he would begin the process of perestroika. On Christmas Day 1991, the USSR dissolved. The Cold War was over. We won. On reflection, it seems a victory as pyrrhic as it was short-lived.

Nobody in their right mind would wish for another war, cold or otherwise. But it’s a shame that our culture seems to thrive most when under outside attack. In the wake of the Cold War, Western pop culture retreated from the triumphal excess of the 80s and tipped into self-doubt and angst. The enemy was now within. The Cold War was over, today’s culture wars had begun. 

Throughout the 90s, pop culture turned in on itself, embracing paranoia and suspicion of the institutions we were no longer obliged to defend (epitomised by 90’s phenomenon The X-Files). While there were flashes of innovation – such as house and trip hop – much of the decade’s music was either dominated by nostalgia (Britpop) or self-loathing (grunge). 

The fact that 1984 and its environs have become a golden age — to be repeatedly and ruthlessly mined — is not so much nostalgia for a lost childhood but rather for what now feels a safe space to enjoy our culture. Culture from a time when it was still OK to believe that the West was on the right side and that, in the face of the apocalypse, we had much to celebrate and defend.

It is telling that 1984 culminated with Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas topping the Christmas charts. These days, Bob Geldof’s starry charity single is textbook problematic, derided as the work of white saviours, its idealism matched only by its ignorance (the lyrics seemingly oblivious to snowy peaks in Africa or the predominance of Christianity – and Christmas – in large swathes of the continent). 

But what that Christmas had was confidence. Confidence that pop culture matters. That mass art can change the world. And, yes, a confidence that the West is the best — and, maybe, owes the rest of the world a helping hand. The Live Aid concerts of the following year would deliver on that confidence, watched by around half of the world’s population and raising £150 million for famine relief. 

So it is that, four decades on, we return to 1984 not out of simple nostalgia but rather an attempt to rediscover a lost confidence. A sense of pride in our culture and the people who created it. The past, as it goes, is a foreign country. Given what we now tend to think of our countries, it’s unsurprising so many might be tempted to emigrate.