Paul McCartney - ballroom dancing, 1982

"Like most people, I’ve got memories that go back to when I was a teenager, like when George Harrison and I used to go to the local dance and neither of us would ever dare to ask a girl to dance until the last waltz. It was then that we thought, ‘Oh God, we’ve wasted all our money when all we came here for was to touch a girl. We’ve got to do it. Okay, let’s waltz, come on.’ We were always too shy but we’d always try and grab someone for that last dance. But most times we’d get refused. We never really got into ballroom dancing but that was where you went if you wanted to dance."

Pauline Anna Strom - morning splendour, 1982

"Pauline Anna Tuell Strom (October 1, 1946 – December 13, 2020) was an American electronic music composer and synthesist best known under the pseudonym Trans-Millenia Consort. Strom made seven recordings between 1982 and 1988 including three LPs and four cassette tapes. Her 1982 debut, Trans-Millenia Consort, was released on Ether Ship Records."

Tom Verlaine - words from the front, 1982

"I think it was financial! In the seventies, when guitars were still cheap, nobody wanted a Jazzmaster because they weren't loud and didn't stay in tune. In '73/'74 you could buy a Jazzmaster for $150 easily. So that's why I started playing it, because we didn't have a lot of money and they were cheap. And then I really got used to it, plus the vibrato arm on it is very nice. I use really heavy strings on it—like a 14 to a 58 or something similar—and that's another part of the sound, I think."

Simon And Garfunkel - homeward bound live, 1982

"New York City's Central Park was in a state of deterioration in the mid-1970s. Though Central Park had been designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, at the start of the 1980s, the city lacked the financial resources to spend an estimated $3 million to restore or even to maintain the park. The nonprofit Central Park Conservancy was founded in 1980, and began a successful campaign to raise renovation funds."

Soft Cell - what, 1982

“What!” came a few months after “Tainted Love” and Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret‘s release, a non-LP single to mark time until Soft Cell’s next album. While non-album single releases were a regular thing in other parts of the world, it was still a relative rarity in the U.S., which may explain why it failed to chart, since record labels tend to ignore songs that don’t promote album sales. “What!” also had a fun, Pop Art-inspired video that despite being pretty fabulous got scant airplay – that didn’t help matters much."

Tracey Thorn - femme fatale cover, 1982

That was 30 years ago, when I was 19 years old. The songs are more or less all about Ben [Watt, her husband and long-time musical collaborator]. We had met on our first night at university, but he had a girlfriend back home, and things dragged on for a while, as they do. There were lots of scenes, tears, letters. Perfect inspiration for the kind of songwriter I was turning out to be. It was well received at the time and has proved enduringly popular, and I think that's because it's such a passionate record. It wears its heart very much on its sleeve, and is short enough to get away with doing so.

Tracey Thorn - dreamy, 1982

"A strange act of temporal travel occurs for me when hearing the voice of Tracey Thorn. Thanks to exposure at an impressionably young age to two songs which feature her voice, her soft tones still to this day have an overly powerful effect on me. For the most part, this power is melancholic, for it reminds that the home life which surrounded my childhood self when first listening to that voice no longer exists in the way it once did. Whenever versions of ‘Missing’ by Everything But The Girl or ‘Protection’ by Massive Attack come my way, I’m set at a certain distance from the present. Her voice is the sadness of adulthood, of broken relationships, of parental breakups and time juggled between fathers and mothers; all things occurring in my adulthood but which render me a child momentarily."

Tracey Thorn - plain sailing, 1982

"The album, featuring just voice and guitar, was in fact recorded in Pat Bermingham’s garden shed studio, and there is marvellously delicate and dulcet ambiance, that conversely puts the directness and emotionally charged nature of this song, and others on the album, fully into the foreground."

Scorpions - when the smoke is going down, 1982

"His work is concerned primarily with psychological and sociological anxiety, historical issues and political topics. His subject matter is the human condition. The metaphor for his art is dominated by the image of the child, particularly the wounded child, scarred physically and emotionally from within."

America - never be lonely, 1982

"View from the Ground is the tenth studio album by British-American folk rock duo America, released by Capitol Records in August 1982. This album marked a comeback for a group that had been generally written off since Dan Peek's departure five years before. It was a modest hit in the US, reaching number 41 on the Billboard album chart, and produced two hit singles: "You Can Do Magic" reached number eight on the Billboard singles chart and number five on the adult contemporary chart, and "Right Before Your Eyes" (also popularly known as "Rudolph Valentino") peaked at 45 on the Billboard singles chart and 16 on the adult contemporary chart. "You Can Do Magic" spent more time on the charts, 20 weeks, than any other America single. The song "Inspector Mills" was a hit in the Philippines in the '80s and remains one of the band's best-known songs in the country to date."

Tracey Thorn - small town girl, 1982

"Has there been a female singer in the last twenty years with a voice as sad, distinctive, unaffected and English as Tracey Thorn's?"

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - of all the things we've made, 1982

"The night before the last British tour began, me and Paul were in the studios until 3:30 in the morning recording what we both thought then would be the last song we would ever write. We'd had enough"

America - you can do magic, 1982

"You Can Do Magic" proved a solid comeback vehicle for America whose last Top 40 hit—"Today's the Day"—had occurred in 1976; the second of two subsequent appearances on the Hot 100 was in 1979. "You Can Do Magic" returned America to the Top 40 in August 1982 with the track reaching No. 8 that October, and holding that position for five weeks. The popularity of "You Can Do Magic" was paralleled by the success of the parent View From the Ground album which rose to No. 41 on Billboard's listing of the top 200 albums, the first time an album by America as a duo (rather than the original trio) had appeared in that chart's upper half."

Dexys Midnight Runners - come on eileen, 1982

"Come On Eileen" is a song by the English group Dexys Midnight Runners (credited to Dexys Midnight Runners and the Emerald Express), released in the United Kingdom in June 1982 as a single from their second studio album Too-Rye-Ay. It reached number one in the United States and was their second number one hit in the UK, following 1980's "Geno". The song was produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley and was initially claimed to be written by Kevin Rowland, Jim Paterson and Billy Adams, although Rowland later stated that the essence of the tune should be attributed to Kevin Archer."

Joe Jackson - steppin' out, 1982

"This song is about the anticipation and excitement of a night out on the town. Joe Jackson wrote and recorded the Night And Day album in New York City, and the first side of the album describes various encounters with the city. "Steppin' Out" is the last song on side one, and takes us on a journey through Manhattan in a taxi."

Tracey Thorn - new opened eyes, 1982

"This record, musically understated as it is, provides a quiet and necessary counterpart to some of the choices of listening we’ve had. We’ve lived so long with melodrama that we’ve forgotten there are other ways of showing passion."

Simon And Garfunkel - a heart in new york live, 1982

"The Concert in Central Park is the first live album by American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, released on February 16, 1982, by Warner Bros. Records. It was recorded on September 19, 1981, at a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, New York City, where the pair performed in front of 500,000 people. A film of the event was shown on TV and released on video. Proceeds went toward the redevelopment and maintenance of the park, which had deteriorated due to lack of municipal funding. The concert and album marked the start of a three-year reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel."

Duran Duran - save a prayer, 1982

"among the jungles, beaches, and temples of Sri Lanka in April 1982"