Born in 1985

If you were born in 1985, you arrived in the most MTV year of the MTV decade. The music video had become the dominant art form of youth culture—Duran Duran on yachts, Cyndi Lauper in her thrift store spectacular, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" still playing everywhere. "We Are the World" was recorded in January by forty-five pop stars in a single Los Angeles night, the celebrity charity single as cultural event.

The Live Aid concert in July—Wembley and Philadelphia simultaneously—was watched by 1.9 billion people. Reagan was riding high, the country was prosperous on borrowed money, and the bumper stickers said "He who dies with the most toys wins.

" *Back to the Future* was the summer picture, DeLoreans and flux capacitors, and the nostalgia for 1955 that the film offered was extraordinarily comforting. New Coke launched in April—Coca-Cola changed its formula—and the consumer backlash was so immediate and visceral that by July they brought back "Classic Coke," having accidentally staged the greatest marketing event of the decade. The Titanic wreck was found on the ocean floor by Robert Ballard.

Crack cocaine was spreading through American cities at a terrifying rate. Nintendo's NES arrived in American stores with Super Mario Bros. and captured the imagination of every child in the country.

The shoulder-pad power suit, the preppie Lacoste shirt, the Swatch watch—the eighties were completely themselves.