What is your favorite year in the 80s and why?

[UWS]

With the fourth season of Stranger Things coming out today, it made me wondering which year of that decade was my favorite.

My favorite year in the 1980s is 1984 because it was the year Ronald Reagan is re-elected President in a landslide, we saw famous ads "Morning Again in America" and "Bear in the Woods" and Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics.

What is your favorite year in the 80s and why?

[Middle-aged Europe]

1982 because I was born then.

[Klobmentum Mutilated Herself]

86.
 
Easy contender for best metal year of all time. Thrash peaked with magnum opuses from 3 of the Big 4 + Flotsam and Kreator, while death, doom, and prog metal were all getting started thanks to Possessed, Candlemass and Saint Vitus, and Voivod, with some legacy bands like Iron Maiden, Mercyful Fate, and Motörhead continuing to shine. Master of Puppets, Peace Sells, Doomsday for the Deceiver, Somewhere in Time, Reign in Blood, Rrröööaaarrr, Fatal Portrait, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Orgasmatron, Pleasure to Kill, Game Over. It's hard to think of a better year for metal. Just a crazy amount of amazing and influential music.

For mainstream music, you could not avoid my favorite band of all time, Genesis. If you managed to go one day without hearing a Genesis song on the radio or MTV, you'd certainly hear something from Peter Gabriel, Mike + The Mechanics, GTR with Steve Hackett and Steve Howe, or a holdover from Phil Collins's 1985 megahit. It may not have been remotely prog, but a prog ruled the entire music world for a few months in 86, which nobody could've saw coming a decade earlier. 

Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, and Barry Larkin had their rookie seasons, ushering in the era of baseball I grew up watching.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Literally 1984

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

[progressive85]

'85, the year I was born and also the year my favorite TV show, The Golden Girls debuted

[Mr. Smith]

1980, because it was more like The 70's...much better decade.

[The Dowager Mod]

1989, I made the cheer squad.

[Ferguson97]

1989, because it was the end of the 80's.

[dead0man]

1982, Cardinals World Series win (though the '85, '86 and '89 teams were better)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

1987. Several albums that I really like came out then, both in the West and in Japan, and several important and mostly positive events in my family members' lives took place.

[Schiff for Senate]

Vote tally so far:

1980: 1
1982: 2
1984: 2
1985: 1
1986: 2
1987: 1
1989: 2

A four-way tie between 1982, 1984, 1986 and 1989 (two votes apiece). The runner-ups were 1980, 1985 and 1987 (with one vote each). 1981, 1983, and 1988 received no votes.

[muon2]

1984 was the year when I started going out with my future wife and I ran my thesis experiment. I visited Martha's Vineyard completing all the counties in a state for the first time. I think I have to go with that. (It was also the last year that I shaved my beard.)

1988 would be the runner up with my wedding, first trip to Europe, and buying a home.

[Santander]

1980 - the only year without a Republican POTUS.

[dw93]

1989. Reagan finally left office, the Berlin Wall fell, the Simpsons aired, and while I find the film a bit overrated, the Disney Renaissance began with the release of the Little Mermaid.

[progressive85]

1989. Reagan finally left office, the Berlin Wall fell, the Simpsons aired, and while I find the film a bit overrated, the Disney Renaissance began with the release of the Little Mermaid.

Hard to believe just how dismal the outlook was for Disney's animation studios before The Little Mermaid went into theaters.  I think the nadir might have been 1985 with The Black Cauldron.

Disney Renaissance was a great boom to the company, and by 1991 with the phenomenal Beauty and the Beast it would enter a period of enormous success and expansion.  Disney Channel was also taking off around that time.

[politicallefty]

I was born in 87, but for music and movies, it has to be 84. From a political standpoint, the 80s were a nightmare.

[TDAS04]

1987 I guess, because I was born.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

1985 was the year of Revolution Summer and thus it wins hands down.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Second Summer of Love, 1988.