Classic Year of College Rock

It’s the classic year of college rock — or perhaps more specifically, it’s the year that Minneapolis dominated the sound of America from the upper reaches of the Top 40 to the underground of college radio.
The former was all about Prince, who undercut his Purple Rain train by quickly releasing the Paisley Underground-accented Around the World in a Day while others, like Ready for the World, were ripping off his 1999 synth groove. The latter belonged to the Replacements and especially Hüsker Dü, who released the twin titans of Flip Your Wig and New Day Rising on the heels of ’84’s Zen Arcade. But it’s also the year that rap began to edge its way onto the charts and the year U.K. rock began to shake off the stylized threads of the New Romantics for murky guitars via the Smiths and Jesus and Mary Chain, modernistic rock countered by the rise of roots rock from America’s heartland and the pubs of Britain, where Dire Straits had a surprise smash hit. They all provide plenty of reasons to love 1985.
Even though I was a music-addicted teenager in the ’80s, I had no interest in the big three — rap, punk, and synth pop. Fortunately, that left me plenty of time to focus my adolescent adoration on individual bands/objects (like New Order, R.E.M., the Smiths, INXS, Bauhaus), and still leave plenty of time to hear a bit of the rapturous perfect pop still being aired on the radio (‘Til Tuesday, anyone?).
Producers had finally figured out how to reconcile the sterility of digital production with the presence and atmosphere that a good song requires. The result of this was magic — pop songs that sounded like nothing else heard before them, pop songs that you got lost inside (especially when you were listening on your Walkman).
There’s a long list of artists affected by this production aesthetic (even when you narrow it down to 1985), but those who nailed it, themselves or with outside help, included a variety of talents: Bryan Adams, Simple Minds, Phil Collins, Tears for Fears, a-ha, Scritti Politti, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, the Power Station, Foreigner, Dire Straits, and Simply Red. Plus, of course, ‘Til Tuesday, whose “Voices Carry” was the clouded but strangely comforting song I listened to most on my Walkman that year.