1986 Turns 40: The Year That Made Us
Every year has a few good memories. 1986 has a résumé.
This year, everything 1986 gave the world turns forty, and since we spent that entire year on and around a certain dance floor in Philadelphia, we’re declaring ourselves the official tour guides. This page is the anniversary tour: every 1986-turns-40 story we’re telling this year, all in one place. We’ll keep adding to it as the anniversaries roll in, so bookmark it, or don’t, and just keep ending up here. That works too.
The year in question, from the inside:
April 12: Dance Party USA premieres on the USA Network. A half-hour show out of Philadelphia that would run six years and change our lives completely. We are not objective about this one and never will be.
June 11: Ferris Bueller takes the greatest day off in history. John Hughes hands the decade its motto: life moves pretty fast.
June 28: Wham! says goodbye to 72,000 people at Wembley. Meanwhile, two kids on basic cable refuse to accept it and keep the lip-syncs going all summer.
July 18: Aliens detonates in theaters. James Cameron proves sequels can outgrow originals, and “game over, man” enters the permanent record.
August 22: Stand By Me asks if anyone ever has friends like the ones they had at twelve, and every theater in America goes quiet.
September 13: Pee-wee’s Playhouse turns Saturday morning into an art form with a talking chair. Somehow an understatement.
December, two kids give “Last Christmas” everything they’ve got on national cable. More on that one when December gets here. The tape survived. Pray for us.
And that’s just the stuff with our fingerprints near it. 1986 also gave you Top Gun, Pretty in Pink, Karate Kid Part II, Labyrinth, Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way,” the Mets, and Halley’s Comet, which showed up once, looked around at what the year was doing, and won’t be back until 2061 because it knows it can’t compete.
Was 1986 the best year of the entire decade? We’re biased. We were sixteen-ish, the radio was perfect, and one of us was on television five days a week. But look at that list again and tell us we’re wrong.
Forty years. The music still plays. The tapes still exist. The party never actually stopped. You’re standing in it right now.
– Bobby and Jason
FAQ
What big movies came out in 1986?
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Aliens, Stand By Me, Top Gun, Pretty in Pink, Labyrinth, The Karate Kid Part II, and Big Trouble in Little China, among others. One year.
What happened in music in 1986?
Wham! played their farewell concert at Wembley, Run-DMC and Aerosmith merged rap and rock with “Walk This Way,” and MTV was at full power.
When did Dance Party USA start?
April 12, 1986, on the USA Network, which makes 2026 the show’s 40th anniversary year.