The year music became eternal

1986 brought Stephen King’s It, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, films such as Top Gun and Blue Velvet, and the last sighting of Halley’s Comet before its expected return in 2061. Argentina won the World Cup with Diego Maradona at the center of an extraordinary campaign, while River Plate won the Copa Libertadores and then the Intercontinental Cup.

It was also a defining year for Argentine rock. Charly García, Soda Stereo and Zas were enjoying major success, while Sumo and the Redonditos continued to grow. In Argentina and around the world, the polished “eighties sound” ruled: huge hits, oversized productions, new hairstyles and clothes built around shoulder pads, fluorescent colors and geometric prints.

Beneath that dominant style, however, new currents were beginning to change the landscape. World music and independent rock were gaining ground, raising questions about which international albums from 1986 remained truly iconic, how they were made, what impact they had and why they still mattered 40 years later.

Peter Gabriel’s So stands as one of the clearest examples. When Gabriel was preparing to release what would become his most successful and iconic album, his record label told him to stop naming albums after himself. His previous four records had all been called Peter Gabriel, so he chose So, an almost anti-title that nevertheless became a distinctive mark of his arrival in the mainstream pop machinery of the 1980s.

Before So, Gabriel had achieved smaller successes with songs including “Games Without Frontiers,” “Biko” and “Shock the Monkey.” His lyrics were intelligent and often politically engaged, but his audience remained limited. He was not the obvious choice for a party playlist, and radio listeners did not turn him up as often as they did his former Genesis bandmates, who were already benefiting from their own sonic transformation. So changed that trajectory. Co-produced by Daniel Lanois, it became the moment when the label “world music” reached one of its most visible points in popular culture.

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It's great, but enough with naming the albums after yourself. You'll have to find a better idea.