Though it was technically the fourth album they released that decade, 1984’s Grace Under Pressure heralded the true beginning of Rush’s ’80s phase. Where the preceding Moving Pictures and Signals were hardly lacking for synth-saturated arrangements or mainstream appeal, they ultimately sounded like the work of a seasoned prog-rock act tentatively exploring new technological frontiers. Grace Under Pressure, by contrast, saw Rush fully immerse themselves in an MTV-altered pop landscape dominated by the likes of The Police and Duran Duran. (Not coincidentally, it’s the first Rush album since their 1974 debut that wasn’t produced by longtime associate Terry Brown, and the first overall where every song clocks in under six minutes.) But beyond the post-New Wave period details—reggae rhythms on “Distant Early Warning,” jagged disco guitar lines on “Red Sector A,” post-punky ska on “The Enemy Within”—Neil Peart’s lyrics take a ripped-from-the-headlines approach to addressing Cold War panic, effectively flipping the fictionalized sci-fi dystopia of 2112 into Reagan-era docudrama.