That attitude is appropriate since Matos is upfront in his introduction about the fact that 1984 was both a year of commercial breakthroughs and an artistic demarcation line at the dead center of the decade. As the author notes , the second half of the eighties kind of sucked. If 1984 didn’t produce as much great pop as ’82 or ’83, it certainly had more than ’85 or ’86. Certainly the work Prince, Cyndi Lauper, R.E.M., The Replacements, and X produced that year was among the decade’s best.
And despite his book’s title, Matos does not limit himself to pop. Like Andrew Grant Jackson’s excellent books on 1965 and 1973, Can’t Slow Down is ostensibly formatted chronologically with each chapter titled for a specific date, but those chapters focus much more on a specific genre than any precise period in the year. While pop is front and center throughout the narrative, the author also covers hair metal, punk, hip-hop, jazz, corporate rock, classic rock, MOR, country, college rock, reggae, new wave, and dance music in satisfying depth. In a few instances, the book’s biggest artists—Prince, Madonna, Springsteen—commandeer whole chapters for themselves.
Along the way, Matos draws lines from the music to the deepening AIDS crisis, Ethiopia’s hunger crisis, Reagan’s “Star Wars” nightmare and Thatcher’s insidious influence in the UK, Satanic Panic, Apartheid, the WWF, Miami Vice, and other current events that help paint a vivid picture of a year both tumultuous and antiseptic. The latter can never be said about Matos’s consistently entertaining and enlightening book.
