CLEVELAND — Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” Van Halen’s “1984.” Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer.” U2’s “Unforgettable Fire.” Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense.” Wham!’s “Make It Big.” Don Henley’s “Building the Perfect Beast.” The Pretenders’ “Learning to Crawl.”

Guess how many weeks combined those 1984 albums – all multi-platinum sellers – spent on top of the Billboard 200 album chart that year?

Zero.

Those memorable releases couldn’t hit #1 in a year when Bruce Springsteeen had millions misinterpreting the lyrics to “Born in the USA”; when Prince was selling singles, albums and movie tickets with “Purple Rain”; when Michael Jackson still was releasing singles (and winning eight Grammy Awards) with his late ’82 release “Thriller”; and when the movie “Footloose” spawned six top 40 hits from the nine songs on its soundtrack album. Huey Lewis & the News’ “Sports,” which had five top 10 hits on it, spent a lone week on top.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame looks at the impact of that year with the new exhibition “1984,” which opened Monday.

It’s the year Jackson set a record for the most Grammys won in one night and the year MTV held its first MTV Video Music Awards.

Tessa Smith, lead designer for the exhibition, couldn’t draw on firsthand knowledge of the era — she’s 24 years old. But she knew she didn’t want to rely on the day-glo colors that often are used to depict the ’80s.

“I didn’t want it to look like a 24-year-old made an ’80s exhibit,” Smith said. “I tried to make it as authentic as possible without making it too cartoonish. I used colors from the L.A. Olympics in ’84 and tried to pull actual examples of 1980s graphic design. Instead of neon pink and neon blue, for a lot of the paint colors throughout the exhibit, I was using actual colors of artifacts. The yellow is from the Chaka Khan outfit and her yellow blouse. The dark blue is from the Lionel Richie jacket from the 1984 Olympics. I tried to really tie it all together to make it as cohesive and also as accurate as possible.”

Some of the artifacts sure to draw the attention of music fans from that era include Jackson’s red leather “Thriller” jacket, a lacy dress Turner wore in the “Private Dancer” video, a Blue Angel electric guitar Prince used on the “Purple Rain” and subsequent tours, Springsteen’s handwritten lyrics for “Born in the USA,” Richie’s jacket from the closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympics and items worn by Annie Lennox of Eurythmics and Sting of The Police during their 1984 Grammy performances.

“I would say most (of the artifacts) were in house already,” Smith said. “Most of our collection is on loan from the artists or their estates. We already had the Michael Jackson “Thriller” jacket, the Eddie Van Halen guitar and the Prince guitar. We were already working with those estates before, and some of them were in other places before they were pulled to put them in here.

“We did reach out to the Pointer Sisters and got those outfits in the very front just because we hadn’t featured them before and they were such a big part of the charts in ’84.”

Not everyone is represented — Cyndi Lauper has told the Rock Hall she won’t loan any of her items to the museum until she is inducted into the hall of fame, Smith said — but the designer also created a massive collage to represent some of the artists and genres that otherwise wouldn’t be featured. And all of the images in the collage were scanned and digitized from the museum’s collection, not pulled from the web.

“We tried to pare it back as much as possible,” Smith said. “In the past, we tried to fit as much as we could in a small space, but there are so many iconic pieces in this exhibit that we wanted to make it as simple as possible so that effect isn’t lost on you.”

Visitors should have plenty of time to see “1984.” Smith said there is no set end date for it, but it will be up for about a year and could be extended as the museum undergoes a major expansion project.

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