5. Michael Jackson, “Thriller”

4.Prince and the Revolution, “Let’s Go Crazy”

Hot 100 Peak: Number One
In 1984, Prince ruled every major musical category — pop, R&B, rock, dance — with one album, the soundtrack to Purple Rain. With that album’s opener, “Let’s Go Crazy,” he flashed the breadth of his mastery in one song: sprinting Linn drum-machine groove, blackout-dizzying guitar solo, adrenaline-swizzling synth solo, all kicked off by a fonkily reverbed testimony from the bandleader himself as a church-organ swelled. His band the Revolution (full collaborators for this alchemical moment in time), flaying every turn and breakdown, until it all concluded with Prince turning Hendrix into a cartoon superhero, while hopping off his motorcycle to kiss Apollonia in the video. C.A.

3. Chaka Khan, “I Feel for You”

Hot 100 Peak: Number Three
Ten years since her last Number Three hit, Rufus’ “Tell Me Something Good,” Chaka Khan finally matched it. For Khan, it recharged her career. For Prince, this high-tech cover of a 1979 album cut was a late feather an unstoppable year — beyond his Number One album/singles/movie were hits he also wrote for Sheila E. and the Time. For producer Arif Mardin, who’d been producing records since the mid-Sixties, it was a chance to change with the times, and possibly change them himself: “As we were mounting the recording onto the main master,” he told NPR, “my hand slipped on the repeat machine — ch-ch-ch-ch-Chaka Khan. So we said, ‘Let’s keep that, that’s very interesting.'” For America, “I Feel for You” was another early meeting with hip-hop culture (and its uncanny ability to be pop music) thanks to a Melle Mel rap, a sampled Stevie Wonder harmonica solo and video full of breakdancers. C.W.

2. Madonna, “Borderline”

Hot 100 Peak: Number 10
“I dared to believe this was going to be huge beyond belief, the biggest thing I’d ever had, after I heard ‘Borderline,'” Seymour Stein, the record man who signed Madonna, recalled. “The passion that she put into that song, I thought, there’s no stopping this girl.” His gut was right on target: The fifth and final single from Madonna’s 1983 debut album was her first to hit the Top 10. The melodic synth-a-palooza with the plunky low end was one of two on the LP penned by Reggie Lucas, who used a drum machine instead of a live drummer for the first time on the tune, doubling a synth bass with Anthony Jackson on electric bass guitar (“They’re playing so tight you can’t tell the difference,” Lucas said). Madonna turned in a sweetly-sung, restrained but emotional vocal (her voice wavers just so when she gets to “Feels like I’m going to lose my mind”) about a beau who has her heart twisted. The radio remix, which trims nearly three minutes from the tune, boasts one of Madge’s most iconic fade-outs, standing by as she “la la la”s into the void. C.G.

1. Prince and the Revolution, “When Doves Cry”